על החלומות, ספר א כ״גOn Dreams, Book I 23
א׳
1[146] Such then is that which in the universe is figuratively called stairway. If we consider that which is so called in human beings we shall find it to be soul. Its foot is sense-perception, which is as it were the earthly element in it, and its head, the mind which is wholly unalloyed, the heavenly element, as it may be called.
ב׳
2[147] Up and down throughout its whole extent are moving incessantly the “words” of God, drawing it up with them when they ascend and disconnecting it with what is mortal, and exhibiting to it the spectacle of the only objects worthy of our gaze; and when they descend not casting it down, for neither does God nor does a divine Word cause harm, but condescending out of love for man and compassion for our race, to be helpers and comrades, that with the healing of their breath they may quicken into new life the soul which is still borne along in the body as in a river.
ג׳
3[148] In the understandings of those who have been purified to the utmost the Ruler of the universe walks noiselessly, alone, invisibly, for verily there is an oracle once vouchsafed to the Sage, in which it is said: “I will walk in you, and will be your God” (Lev. 26:12): but in the understandings of those who are still undergoing cleansing and have not yet fully washed their life defiled and stained by the body’s weight there walk angels, divine words, making them bright and clean with the doctrines of all that is good and beautiful.
ד׳
4[149] It is quite manifest what troups of evil tenants are ejected, in order that One, the good one, may enter and occupy. Be zealous therefore, O soul, to become a house of God, a holy temple, a most beauteous abiding-place; for perchance, perchance the Master of the whole world’s household shall be thine too and keep thee under His care as His special house, to preserve thee evermore strongly guarded and unharmed.
ה׳
5[150] It may be too that the Practiser has his own life presented to him in his vision as resembling a stairway; for practising is by nature an uneven business, at one moment going onward to a height, at another returning in the opposite direction, and at one time like a ship making life’s voyage with fair winds, at another with ill winds. For the life of practisers is, as one has said, a life “of alternate days,” sometimes alive and wakeful, sometimes dead or asleep.
ו׳
6[151] And this suggestion is not perhaps wide of the mark. For while it is the portion of the wise to dwell in the heavenly region of Olympus, since they have ever learned to make the heights their resort, and the depths of Hades are the abode allotted to the bad, who from first to last have made dying their occupation, and from the cradle to old age are accustomed to corruption,
ז׳
7[152] the practisers—midway between those extremes—are often stepping up and down as upon a stairway, either being drawn upwards by the better portion or dragged in the opposite direction by the worse, until God, the umpire of this strife and conflict, bestows the prizes on the better order, and brings its opposite to perdition.