The Food of the Mind

So when the saints have reached the heavenly dwellings, they will see clearly the nature of the stars, one by one, and will understand whether they are living beings, or whatever their condition turns out to be. They will also grasp the other reasons for God’s works, which he himself will disclose to them. For he will show them, as one shows children, the causes of things and the power by which he made them, and will explain why that star was set in that particular quarter of the sky, and why it was separated from another by so wide a gap; what would have followed, for instance, if it had been nearer or farther off; or, if that star had been larger than this one, how the whole of things would not have stayed the same, but everything would have been changed into a different condition of being. [a]

Then, when they have finished all the matters that have to do with the stars and with the turning of the heavens, they will come to the things that are not seen — to the ones whose names alone we have heard, and to the ones that are invisible. The apostle Paul has told us that there are many of them, though what they are, or what difference there may be among them, our feeble minds cannot even guess.

And so the reasoning nature grows by one step at a time — not as it grew in this life, in flesh and body and soul, but enlarged in understanding and in power of perception. Already a perfect mind, it is raised to perfect knowledge, no longer hindered at all by the senses of the flesh, but increased in the growth that belongs to the mind. Gazing always purely, and, so to speak, face to face, on the causes of things, it reaches its completeness: first the completeness by which it climbs up to that state, and then the completeness by which it stays in it, having problems, and the understanding of things, and the causes of events, as the food it may feast on.

For in this life our bodies grow to the size they reach because enough food in the early years supplies the means of increase; but once the proper height has been attained, we no longer use food in order to grow, but in order to live and to be kept alive by it. In the same way, I think, the mind, once it has reached its perfection, eats and makes use of food that is fitting and suited to it, in just the measure where nothing is lacking and nothing is left over. And in every case this food is to be understood as the contemplation and understanding of God, in a measure appropriate and suited to this nature, which was made and created; and it is right that this measure should be kept by every one of those who are beginning to see God — that is, to understand him through purity of heart.