V. 8. 3-4
(Armstrong Selection and Translation from the Enneads)
The gods who are in heaven, since they are free for contemplation, continually contemplate, as if at a distance, the things in that higher heaven of Noûs into which they raise their heads: but the gods in that higher heaven, all those who dwell upon it and in it, contemplate through their abiding in the whole of that heaven. For all things There are heaven; earth and sea and animals and plants and men are heaven; everything which belongs to that higher heaven is heavenly. The gods in it do not reject as unworthy of contemplation men or anything else that is There; it is worthy because it is There: they travel, always at rest, through all that higher country and region. The ‘ easy life’ is There. Truth is their mother and nurse and being and food. They see all things, not those which come to be but those which really are, and they see themselves in them: for all things There are transparent, and there is nothing dark or opaque; everything is clear, altogether and to its inmost part, to everything, for light is transparent to light. Each There has everything in itself and sees all things in every other, for all are everywhere and each and every one is all, and the glory is unbounded: for each of them is great, because even the small is great: the sun There is all the stars, and each star is the sun and all the others. One particular kind of being stands out in each, but in each all are manifest.
Movement There is pure; for the mover does not trouble it in its going by being different from it. Rest is not disturbed, for it is not mingled with that which is not at rest. Beauty is just beauty, since it does not exist in that which is not beautiful. Each walks not as if on alien soil, but each one’s place is its very self, and when it goes on the place where it came from goes with it; it is not one thing itself and its place another. The thing itself is Noûs and its ground is Noûs. It is as if one were to imagine that this visible heaven of ours which is luminous produced the light which comes from it ; but here different lights come from different parts, and each is only a part; There each comes always from the whole and is part and whole at once; it has the appearance of a part, but a penetrating look sees the whole in it, supposing that someone had the sort of sight which the story goes that Lynceus had, who saw into the inside of the earth, a story which symbolizes the sight they have There. They do not grow weary of contemplation There, or so filled with it as to cease contemplating: for there is no emptiness which would result in their being satisfied when they had filled it and reached their end: and things are not different from each other so as to make what belongs to one displeasing to another with different characteristics: and nothing There wears out or wearies. There is a lack of satisfaction There in the sense that fullness does not cause contempt for that which has produced it: for that which sees goes on seeing still more, and, perceiving its own infinity and that of what it sees, follows its own nature. There is no weariness in life There, since it is pure; for how should that which lives the best life grow weary? This life is wisdom, wisdom not acquired by reasonings, but always all present, without any failing which would make it need to be searched for. It is the first, not derived from any other wisdom; the very being of Noûs is wisdom; it does not exist first and then become wise. For this reason there is no greater wisdom: absolute knowledge has its throne beside Noûs in their common revelation, as they say symbolically Justice is throned beside Zeus. AM things of this kind There are like images seen by their own light, to be beheld by exceedingly blessed spectators. The greatness and the power of this wisdom can be imagined if we consider that it has with it and has made all beings. All things follow it, and it is the beings which came to be along with it. Both are one, and reality is wisdom There. We do not arrive at understanding this because we consider that the different branches of knowledge are made up of theorems and a collection of propositions, which is not true even of the sciences here below.