The soul’s instant journey: understand God by the mind’s speed
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Nous — καὶ οὕτω νόησον ἀπὸ σεαυτοῦ καὶ κέλευσόν σου τῇ ψυχῇ Ἰνδικὴν πορευθῆναι, καὶ ταχύτερόν σου τῆς κελεύσεως ἐκεῖ ἔσται· μετελθεῖν δὲ αὐτῇ κέλευσον ἐπὶ τὸν ὠκεανόν, καὶ ἐκεῖ πάλιν ταχέως ἔσται, οὐχ ὡς μεταβᾶσα ἀπὸ τόπου εἰς τόπον, ἀλλ᾽ ὡς ἐκεῖ οὖσα· κέλευσον δὲ αὐτῇ καὶ εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν ἀναπτῆναι, καὶ οὐδὲ πτερῶν δεηθήσεται, ἀλλ᾽ οὐδὲ αὐτῇ οὐδὲν ἐμπόδιον, οὐ τὸ τοῦ ἡλίου πῦρ, οὐχ ὁ αἰθήρ, οὐχ ἡ δίνη, οὐδὲ τὰ τῶν ἄλλων ἀστέρων σώματα· πάντα δὲ διατεμοῦσα ἀναπτήσεται μέχρι τοῦ ἐσχάτου σώματος. εἰ δὲ βουληθείης καὶ αὐτὸ ὅλον διαρρήξασθαι, καὶ τὰ ἐκτός, εἴ γέ τι ἐκτὸς τοῦ κόσμου, θεάσασθαι, ἔξεστί σοι. ἰδὲ ὅσην δύναμιν, ὅσον τάχος ἔχεις. σὺ τὰ σύμπαντα δύνασαι ταῦτα, ὁ θεὸς δὲ οὔ; τοῦτον οὖν τὸν τρόπον νόησον τὸν Θεόν, ὥσπερ νοήματα πάντα ἐν ἑαυτῷ ἔχειν, τὸν κόσμον αὐτὸν ὅλον.
And thus understand from yourself. Command your soul to travel to India, and it will be there faster than your command. Command it to pass over to the Ocean, and again it will swiftly be there — not as though it had moved from place to place, but as already being there. Command it also to fly up into heaven, and it will not need wings; nothing will be an obstacle to it: not the fire of the sun, not the aether, not the whirl, nor the bodies of the other stars. Cutting through all things, it will fly up as far as the outermost body. And if you wished to tear through that whole body too and behold the things outside — if indeed anything is outside the cosmos — it is permitted to you. See what power, what speed you have. You can do all these things; can God not? Understand God, then, in this way: as having all thoughts in himself, the whole cosmos itself.
Nous tells Hermes to understand from himself. Command your soul to travel to India: it is there faster than your command. Bid it pass to the Ocean: again it is there swiftly, not as if it had changed from place to place, but as already being there. Command it to fly up into heaven: it needs no wings, and nothing blocks it — not the sun's fire, not the aether, not the whirl, not the bodies of the other stars. It cuts through all and flies to the outermost body; if you wished to tear through that whole body and behold what is outside the cosmos, if anything is outside, it is permitted. See what power and speed you have. You can do all these things; can God not? Understand God in this way: as having all thoughts in himself, the whole cosmos itself.
After the abstract claim that nothing is swifter or more encompassing than the incorporeal, Nous gives Hermes an experiment he can perform without equipment. Tell your own ψυχή to go to India, to the Ocean, to heaven: it is there before the command has cooled. This is not travel through space, 'from place to place' (ἀπὸ τόπου εἰς τόπον), but the mind's power to be present by thought. The section turns inner imagination into metaphysics. The soul needs no wings, and none of the cosmic barriers — sun-fire, aether, whirl, star-bodies — can stop it, because the faculty being tested is not a body among bodies.
The argument is daring but precise: if your finite soul can range in thought to the edges of the cosmos and even imagine the outside of the cosmos, how much more must God contain the whole? The question 'You can do all these things; can God not?' is not a boast about human fantasy; it is an analogy from the smaller incorporeal to the greater. The final phrase gives the doctrine in compressed form: understand God as 'having all thoughts in himself' — and those thoughts include 'the whole cosmos itself.' God contains the world noetically, not spatially. The cosmos is not lodged in him like an object in a box; it is present to him as thought is present to mind, wholly and at once.
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