Thus we have all the vision that may be of Him and of ourselves; but it is of a self-wrought to splendour, brimmed with the Intellectual light, become that very light, pure, buoyant, unburdened, raised to Godhood or, better, knowing its Godhood, all aflame then- but crushed out once more if it should take up the discarded burden.  

But how comes the soul not to keep that ground? Because it has not yet escaped wholly: but there will be the time of vision unbroken, the self hindered no longer by any hindrance of body. Not that those hindrances beset that in us which has veritably seen; it is the other phase of the soul that suffers and that only when we withdraw from vision and take to knowing by proof, by evidence, by the reasoning processes of the mental habit. Such logic is not to be confounded with that act of ours in the vision; it is not our reason that has seen; it is something greater than reason, reason's Prior, as far above reason as the very object of that thought must be.

Ὁρᾶν δὴ ἔστιν ἐνταῦθα κἀκεῖνον καὶ ἑαυτὸν ὡς ὁρᾶν θέμις· ἑαυτὸν μὲν ἠγλαϊσμένον͵ φωτὸς πλήρη νοητοῦ͵ μᾶλλον δὲ φῶς αὐτὸ καθαρόν͵ ἀβαρῆ͵ κοῦφον͵ θεὸν γενόμενον͵ μᾶλλον δὲ ὄντα͵ ἀναφθέντα μὲν τότε͵ εἰ δὲ πάλιν βαρύνοιτο͵ ὥσπερ μαραινόμενον. 

Πῶς οὖν οὐ μένει ἐκεῖ; Ἢ ὅτι μήπω ἐξελήλυθεν ὅλος. Ἔσται δὲ ὅτε καὶ τὸ συνεχὲς ἔσται τῆς θέας οὐκέτι ἐνοχλουμένῳ οὐδεμίαν ἐνόχλησιν τοῦ σώματος. Ἔστι δὲ τὸ ἑωρακὸς οὐ τὸ ἐνοχλούμενον͵ ἀλλὰ τὸ ἄλλο͵ ὅτε τὸ ἑωρακὸς ἀργεῖ τὴν θέαν οὐκ ἀργοῦν τὴν ἐπιστήμην τὴν ἐν ἀποδείξεσι καὶ πίστεσι καὶ τῷ τῆς ψυχῆς διαλογισμῷ· τὸ δὲ ἰδεῖν καὶ τὸ ἑωρακός ἐστιν οὐκέτι λόγος͵ ἀλλὰ μεῖζον λόγου καὶ πρὸ λόγου καὶ ἐπὶ τῷ λόγῳ͵ ὥσπερ καὶ τὸ ὁρώμενον.