For he whose gods are many, his service increases, his toil and exhaustion intensify, his anxieties abound, and his soul becomes dissipated until he perishes.

O soul: Indeed, weariness and boredom are coupled with the bestial soul, while patience and steadfastness are coupled with the perfect human souls. Let not boredom and weariness drive you out from the bound of patience, causing you to seek relief in adopting [multiple] gods; for you would then be divided by their worship and service, becoming foolish and dissolved. Consequently, your light would be extinguished, your strength weakened, your nobility lost, and your authority vanished—and this is your very death; so beware of it and turn away from its ways.

O soul: You ought to be certain of this knowledge and the meanings and forms it possesses. Do not imagine that anything you must seek to know lies outside of your own essence; rather, all your knowledge is with you and within you. Do not wander in your quest away from what is already with you. For many people possess something yet forget they have it; they seek it outside of themselves and go astray, until remembrance comes to them, and they remember and find it within themselves, not outside of them.

Be certain, O soul: that absolutely none of the things that are known and exist in a permanent, eternal existence are outside of you at all. The only thing outside of you is that which was separated from your dross and sediment in the first beginning—it is the thing susceptible to accidents,