On Knowing the Nature of the Soul

Welcome, you who ask so sweet a question! Listen now to what I say about your own soul. There is a Maker who created humans and spirits, who nurtured the mind, the soul, the heart, and life itself. The peerless, all-powerful One, by His noble decree, gave humankind its fullness through four things. Phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile, and then blood, which flows through every limb. Then, out of pure grace and generosity, He drew from these four elements a vapor into the body. If someone understands it by true wisdom, without doubt he will call it the natural spirit. From this vapor He brings another vapor into being; the wise one calls it the animal spirit. Then from the animal spirit yet another rises, a vapor purer still emerges from it. It is very fine, luminous, and beautiful; in it the holy spirit finds its dwelling. They call it the human spirit, my son; from end to end it becomes able to receive the lights. When it becomes fully the home of the Holy Spirit, the mystics from then on name it the self. Know that the holy spirit grants it strength, and that it becomes the master that commands the senses. When it practices piety, restraint, and virtue, in the terms of the mystics it is the soul at peace. If it strays from piety and falls into sin, the name commanding soul is applied to it. And if for a moment it rests between the two, the mystics call it the self-reproaching soul. And what, then, is the root of piety and of sin? Brother, it is the grace and the wrath of the One who needs nothing. There the thread slipped from the hands of the people; whoever came into the sacred law was saved, was saved.