In the Pronaos of the Temple of Wisdom

of man's evil actions befall merely the animal man—that is to say, his living animal principle—but not the real man or the spirit, connected with the higher elements of the soul. The more the soul is attracted to the vulgar and low, the more grossly material will the organism with which she clothes herself become. After death the gross substances must be purified or destroyed, while the pure elements rise up to the source from whence they came, until the time for a new incarnation in a form of flesh has arrived. This process is repeated until the soul has attained sufficient knowledge to become inaccessible to the attraction of that which is low. In this sense man's terrestrial existence may well be looked upon as being a punishment for harbouring evil desires and inclinations. Intellectual labour is an activity belonging to a lower state of existence, and is necessary because the original faculty of the soul of directly perceiving the truth has been lost. If the soul desires to obtain this faculty again, she must free herself from all intellectual conceptions, and penetrate into the formless. If she desires to reach up to the original inconceivable fountain of all, she must leave her own conceptions behind, she must become free from all sensual perceptions and intellectual speculations, free of thought and speech, and live in a state of spiritual contemplation. That which is beyond intellectual conception can be seen, but can neither be conceived nor described in words. Seeing is better than believing, knowledge is better than logis; spiritual knowledge is one, but human science is a multiplicity, and has nothing to do with the eternal Unity, from which all things take their origin.