Illumination...

"When you know that you have become this perfect work,

when you are self-gathered in the purity of your being,

nothing now remaining that can shatter that inner unity,

nothing from without clinging to the authentic man,

when you find yourself wholly true to your essential nature,

wholly that only veritable Light which is not measured by space,

not narrowed to any circumscribed form nor again diffused as a thing void of term,

but ever unmeasurable as something greater than all measure and more than all quantity-

when you perceive that you have grown to this,

you are now become that very vision:

now call up all your confidence, strike forward yet a step-

you need a guide no longer- strain, and see."


Plotinus
Ennead I.6 [9], On Beauty
Translated by Stephen MacKenna