the teacher, “What you sought is impossible. Form does not perform Nature’s act, for Nature acts upon it. How far apart are the agent’s rank and what is acted upon!”
Do you not see the Universal Soul, the First Intellect’s wife? When God married the two for the world’s appearance, the first child appearing from the Universal Soul was Nature. Nature could not perform the Universal Soul’s act within things. A part lacks the whole’s ruling, while the whole possesses the part’s ruling, being whole through the parts it contains.
When this ignorant spirit could not join the form to Nature, its mother, it said, “Perhaps this is through my incapacity and failure to apprehend knowledge concerning it.” It returns to seeking this from God, toward God.
It asked God that what receives Nature’s action receive the form’s action. It found the receptive loci affected by form unreceptive to what the forms receptive to Nature’s effect receive. The Real, glorified is He, gives things only according to the recipient’s readiness, as stated: it does not receive what its readiness does not give.
When this spirit distinguished its error from correctness and knew it had blown where no embers lay, it sought to remain with its form according to its readiness.
(The Ranks of Unveiling, Freedom and Self-Disclosure of the One Sought by All)
Before reaching
