Hermes Trismegistus 580–470 BCE

Truth is everywhere and at every time.

Hermes Trismegistus was a legendary, Ancient Greek Hellenistic figure who assimilated the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth.

Here are a few of his quotations: one could take the word ‘God’ to mean our supreme being = pure consciousness and ‘Soul’ to be consciousness.

“If then you do not make yourself equal to God, you cannot apprehend God; for like is known by like. Leap clear of all that is corporeal, and make yourself grown to a like expanse with that greatness which is beyond all measure; rise above all time and become eternal; then you will apprehend God.”

“Think that for you too, nothing is impossible; deem that you too are immortal, and that you are able to grasp all things in your thought, to know every craft and science; find your home in the haunts of every living creature; make yourself higher than all heights and lower than all depths; bring together in yourself all opposites of quality, heat and cold, dryness and fluidity; think that you are everywhere at once, on land, at sea, in heaven; think that you are not yet begotten, that you are in the womb, that you are young, that you are old, that you have died, that you are in the world beyond the grave; grasp in your thought all of this at once, all times and places, all substances and qualities and magnitudes together; then you can apprehend God.”

“But if you shut up your soul in your body and abase yourself, and say “I know nothing, I can do nothing; I am afraid of earth and sea; I cannot mount to heaven; I know not what I was, nor what I shall be,” then what have you to do with God?”

“Close your eyes and let the mind expand. Let no fear of death or darkness arrest its course. Allow the mind to merge with Mind. Let it flow out upon the great curve of consciousness. Let it soar on the wings of the great bird of duration, up to the very Circle of Eternity.”

“The punishment of desire is the agony of unfulfillment”

“If thou but set foot on this path, thou shalt see it everywhere.”

“Birth is not the beginning of life – only of an individual awareness. Change into another state is not death – only the ending of this awareness.”

“The excellence of the soul is understanding; for the man who understands is conscious, devoted, and already godlike.”

“No eyes will raise to heaven. The pure will be thought insane and the impure will be honoured as wise. The madman will be believed brave, and the wicked esteemed as good.”

“O ye people, earth-born folk, ye who have given yourselves to drunkenness and sleep and ignorance of God, be sober now; cease from your surfeit, cease to be glamoured by irrational sleep!”

“My discourse leads to the truth; the mind is great and, guided by this teaching, is able to arrive at some understanding. When the mind has understood all things and found them to be in harmony with what has been expounded by the teachings, it is faithful and comes to rest in that beautiful faith.”

“But this discourse, expressed in our paternal language, keeps clear the meaning of its words. The very quality of speech and of the Egyptian words have, in themselves, the energy of the object they speak of.”

“The hearer must be of one mind with the speaker, my son, and of one spirit as well; he must have hearing quicker than the speech of the speaker.”

“The present issues from the past, and the future from the present. Everything is made one by this continuity. Time is like a circle, where all the points are so linked that one cannot say where it begins or ends, for all points precede and follow one another for ever.”