Synesius on the Astral Body

[sdi]

It is a great happiness to behold God; but to know God by means of the imagination is a higher intuition. Imagination is the sense of the senses, necessary to all others; it is the first body of the soul. [...] The hearing and the sight are not true senses, but rather instruments of sense, which put the animal in relation with the exterior world; in the service of imagination they transmit to their mistress impressions received by them from without, sensations which are transmitted to us from the objects by which we are surrounded. Imagination is the collective sense in which are united our various senses: in reality it is that which hears and which sees; it is through it that all the perceptions occur; and it assigns to each organ its particular function. From it all the faculties proceed: they are like the rays which go out from the center and which meet wholly in the center: many in progression, and one and the same in origin. The sense to which the organs are indispensable is a purely material sense; or, to speak more correctly, it is only a sense when it enters into the service of the imagination: imagination is the sense which has power of acting instantaneously without intermediaries. It has a divine character through which it approaches intuitive Intellect.

(Saint Synesius of Cyrene on Dreams VI, as translated by Isaac Myer. Emphasis mine.)

Comments

[boccaderlupo]

Synesius is a very interesting character, whom I was also incidentally reading about over the weekend. Had never read his actual writings, however. Thank you for this!

[sdi]

He is indeed fascinating! Bishop or not, he's a Neoplatonist or I'm a rodent. He sounds just like Porphyry.

I'm about ⅔ of the way through On Dreams and am finding it valuable; I may need to look at some of his other extant essays after. (I know Taylor translated On Providence, at least.)