What I spent my life learning I now see everywhere—as I turn my attention from one thing to another, all sides grant me the same vision. The universe is a single living being, with a single body and a single consciousness. Every individual mind a tiny particle of one great mind. Each living creature like a limb or organ of one great body, working together, whether they realize it or not, to bring about events in accord with one great impulse. Everything in the universe so intricately woven together, forming a single fabric and chain of events. Whereas I once saw each fragmentary part and with some effort imagined the whole, my sight is now transformed. Having let go of fear and desire forever, I can see only the whole to which every part belongs, and this appears more real to me than anything else. What I knew before, my life and opinions, seem like smoke through which I glimpsed Nature darkly.
Rejoicing in this comprehensive vision, my self is dilated until it becomes one with infinite universal Nature. How minuscule the fraction of cosmic time that has been assigned to each of our lives. How small this clod of earth over which we creep. The more confidently I grasp this vision, the more clearly I understand that nothing is of any great moment in life except that we should do two simple things: First we must follow the guidance of our own higher nature, submitting ourselves to reason’s dictates. Second, we must deal wisely and dispassionately with whatever universal Nature sends to be our fate, whether pleasure or pain, praise or censure, life or death.
My soul ascends higher as the remaining life now ebbs from my limbs. The difference between knowing and seeing has somehow given way. Before my very gaze, the constellations surround me, like those adorning the walls in the temples of Mithras. I glide effortlessly alongside them like a ship sailing over the smoothest waters. Around me are the multitude of stars, a host of beings composed of pure light. Naked and flawless, they gracefully follow their course through the heavens without deviation. How they differ from men below on earth. We possess the same divine spark, yet it lies buried deep within us, and we live as though imprisoned, anchored down in the mud by our own folly and greed.
The mind of the Sage is like a star or our own sun, from which purity and simplicity shine forth. I’ve been fortunate enough to observe these characteristics in others. Men like Apollonius, Junius Rusticus, and Claudius Maximus by their own example showed me how to live wisely, virtuously, and in accord with Nature. Released now from earthly attachments, I feel my soul being transformed and cleansed, unveiling within me some glimmer of the deep wisdom that I once glimpsed in the words and actions of my beloved teachers. As I let life slip away, content to part from it, my mind is finally liberated to follow its own true nature without obstruction. I see things more clearly than ever before. The sun does not do the work of the rain or of the wind.
The sun himself and every star in heaven are telling me, “I was born to do what I am doing.” And I too was born to follow my own nature by striving for wisdom. Countless stars punctuate the night sky. Each one is distinct from the others, yet they all work together, forming the whole panoply of heaven. Man was meant to be like this: striving his whole life with patient endurance to cultivate the pure light of wisdom within himself and allowing it to shine forth for the benefit of others. Alone and yet at one with the community of fellow men around him, living wisely and in concord with them. The ancient Pythagoreans were right. To contemplate the unwavering purity and simplicity of the stars in this way is to cleanse our mind of earthly dross and set it free.
The rays of Apollo pour down in every direction but are not exhausted. Extending itself, sunlight touches objects and illuminates them without being weakened or defiled. It rests where it falls, caressing objects and exposing their features, neither deflected like the wind nor absorbed like the rain. Indeed, the mind of the wise man is itself like a heavenly sphere radiating the purest sunlight. It falls gracefully upon things, illuminating them without becoming entangled or degraded by them. For what does not welcome the light condemns itself to darkness. In the mind of one who has been purified, though, nothing is veiled or hidden.
Pure wisdom like the blazing fire of a sun consumes anything cast into it and burns brighter still. Reason adapts itself to any obstacle if it’s allowed to, finding the right virtue with which to respond. We have been given a duty of sorts to take care of this paltry body with its unruly feelings, but only our intellect is genuinely our own. We let go of our attachment to everything external, purifying and separating ourselves from things, when we firmly grasp the realization that they are transient and ultimately indifferent. When we cut our ties to the past and the future and center ourselves in the present moment, we set our soul free from external things, leaving it to invest itself wholly in fulfilling its own nature.
Things external to our own character such as health, wealth, and reputation are neither good nor bad. They present us with opportunities, which the wise man uses well and the fool badly. Though men desire wealth and other such things, these no more improve a man’s soul than a golden bridle improves a horse. We contaminate ourselves with these externals, blending and merging into things when we confuse them with our soul’s natural good. Rising above indifferent things, the mind of the wise becomes a well-rounded sphere, as Empedocles used to say. It neither overreaches itself, mingling with external things, nor shrinks away from them. Its light spreads evenly over the world around it. Complete in itself, smooth and round, bright and shining. Nothing clings to its surface and no harm can touch it.
I can still feel the pain over there in my body. That part of me that still lies bleeding and shuddering beneath the bedsheet. It seems very far away now. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Soon another lapse into unconsciousness will come. I think it will be the last one. And so I bid farewell to myself, in good cheer, not begrudging the loss. I take one last step forward to meet Death, not as an enemy but as an old friend and sparring partner. Clenching my fists gently and bracing myself against the unknown and unforeseen, I arm myself once more with the precepts of my philosophy:
The duration of a man’s life is merely a small point in time; the substance of it ever flowing away, the sense obscure; and the whole composition of the body tending to decay.
His soul is a restless vortex, good fortune is uncertain and fame is unreliable; in a word, as a rushing stream so are all things belonging to the body; as a dream, or as vapor, are all those that belong to the soul.
Life is warfare and a sojourn in a foreign land. Our reputation after life is nothing but oblivion. What is it then that will guide man? One thing alone: philosophy, the love of wisdom.
And philosophy consists in this: for a man to preserve that inner genius or divine spark within him from violence and injuries, and above all from harmful pains or pleasures; never to do anything either without purpose, or falsely, or hypocritically, regardless of the actions or inaction of others; to contentedly embrace all things that happen to him, as coming from the same source from whom he came himself, and above all things, with humility and calm cheerfulness, to anticipate death as being nothing else but the dissolution of those elements of which every living being is composed.