על הגירת אברהם ל״דOn the Migration of Abraham 34
א׳
1[187] Quit, then, your meddling with heavenly concerns, and take up your abode, as I have said, in yourselves; leave behind you opinion, the country of the Chaldeans, and migrate to Haran, the place of sense-perception, which is understanding’s bodily tenement.
ב׳
2[188] For the translation of Haran is 188 “hole,” and holes are figures of openings used by sense-perception: for eyes are, in a way, openings and lairs used by sight, ears by hearing, nostrils to receive scents, the throat for tasting, and the whole structure of the body for touch.
ג׳
3[189] Gain, therefore, by a further sojourn, a peaceful and unhurried familiarity with these, and to the utmost of your power get an exact knowledge of the nature of each, and, when you have thoroughly learned what is good and bad in each, shun the one, and choose the other.
ד׳
4And when you have surveyed all your individual dwelling with absolute exactitude, and have acquired an insight into the true nature of each of its parts, bestir yourselves and seek for your departure hence, for it is a call not to death but to immortality.
ה׳
5[190] You will be able to descry sure indications of this, even while held fast in the dens and caves of the body and of the objects of sense. In deep sleep the mind quits its place, and, withdrawing from the perceptions and all other bodily faculties, begins to hold converse with itself, fixing its gaze on truth as on a mirror, and, having purged away as defilements all the impressions made upon it by the mental pictures presented by the senses, it is filled with Divine frenzy and discerns in dreams absolutely true prophecies concerning things to come. Thus is it at times. Or again it may be in waking hours.
ו׳
6[191] For when the mind, possessed by some philosophic principle, is drawn by it, it follows this, and needs must be oblivious of other things, of all the concerns of the cumbersome body. And if the senses are a hindrance to the exact sight of the spiritual object, those who find happiness in beholding are at pains to crush their attack; they shut their eyes, and stop up their ears, and check the impulses bred by their other senses, and deem it well to spend their days in solitude and darkness, that no object of sense-perception may bedim the eye of the soul, to which God has given the power to see things spiritual.