4 - The Mirror of Nature

Summary

This chapter discusses psychic contemplation as our participation in the contemplation of the World Soul, who creates the sensible world and time. As a result, we see the world as becoming alive and we transcend time by finding in ourselves the peace and rest of Nature, the lower power of the World Soul. The main faculty in ourselves which participates in Nature is imagination (and memory), although Nature herself doesn’t entertain perception, imagination, or memory. When we ascend to this level, we begin to live in the present, mindfully awake to our sensible experience, but also having a sense that we are something different from it. Sensible experience no longer deceives us because we see the sensible world in and through its archetypes, which are the logoi in Nature. Like a geometer who sees the intelligible structure of the square in squared sensible shapes, we intuitively see the essence of things (“what it is”) revealed to us through their qualities (“what it is like”).