O soul: Imagine, through contemplation, the departure from the five senses. Then look after that: do you perceive anything other than what you used to perceive through the senses? If you find yourself perceiving something other than what you were witnessing through the senses, then the time for your return to your homeland has arrived, and you have attained your objective.

This is because the Intellect, when it desires to perceive a thing, isolates it from all else and extracts it from whatever accompanied it; then it perceives it as a solitary perception through its own solitary essence. For just as the senses cannot perceive a solitary [abstract] thing, likewise the Intellect cannot perceive a composite thing, nor can it know it with intellectual knowledge.

without isolating its meanings, discerning them, and extracting every genus from them to make each solitary in itself. Only then does the Intellect perceive all its meanings in isolation.

It has thus become clear that the Senses, being composite, perceive composite things; whereas the Intellect, being solitary and simple, perceives simple, solitary things.

Contemplate, O soul, how whenever the Intellect follows composition, it departs from solitude; it also departs from that solitary perception which is the perception of Truth, the delight in Truth, and the knowledge of Truth.