The author of the Philosophumena professes to give us some additional information on this philosopher who “bewailed all things, condemning the ignorance of all that lives, and of all men, in pity for the life of mortals,” but the obscure philosopher does not lend himself very easily to the controversial purposes of the patristic writer.  Heracleitus called the Universal Principle ([Greek:  ton hapanton archae]) Intellectual Fire ([Greek:  pur noeron]), and said that the sphere surrounding us and reaching to the Moon was filled with evil, but beyond the Moon-sphere it was purer.[97]

The sentences that the author quotes from Heracleitus in Book IX, are not only obscure enough in themselves, but are also rendered all the more obscure by the polemical treatment they are subjected to by the patristic writer.  Heracleitus makes the ALL inclusive of all Being and Non-Being, all pairs of opposites, “differentiation and non-differentiation, the generable and ingenerable, mortal and immortal, the Logos and Aeon, and the Father and Son,” which he calls the “Just God.”  This ALL is the “Sadasat-Tatparam yat” of the Bhagavad Gita, inclusive of Being (Sat), Non-Being (Asat), and That Which transcends them (Tatparam yat).[98]

This Logos plays an important part in the system of the Ephesian sage, who says that they who give ear to the Logos (the Word or Supreme Reason) know that “All is One” ([Greek:  hen panta eidenai]).  Such an admission he calls, “Reflex Harmony” ([Greek:  palintropos harmoniae]), like unto the Supernal Harmony, which he calls Hidden or Occult, and declares its superiority to the Manifested Harmony.  The ignorance and misery of men arise from their not acting according to this Harmony, that is to say, according to (Divine) Nature ([Greek:  kata phusin]).

He also declares that the Aeon, the Emanative Deity, is as a child playing at creation, an idea found in both the Hindu and Hermetic Scriptures.  In the former the Universe is said to be the sport (Lila) of Vishnu, who is spoken of in one of his incarnations as Lilavatara, descending on earth for his own pleasure, when as Krishna he assumed the shape of man as a pretence (a purely Docetic doctrine), hence called Lila-manusha-vigraha; while in the latter we learn from a magic papyrus that Thoth (the God of Wisdom) created the world by bursting into “seven peals of laughter.”  This, of course, typifies the Bliss of the Deity in Emanation or Creation, caused by that Divine Love and Compassion for all that lives and breathes, which is the well-spring of the Supreme Cause of the Universe.

Diving into the Mystery of Being, Heracleitus showed how a thing could be good or evil, and evil or good, at one and the same time, as for instance sea water which preserved and nourished fishes but destroyed men.  So also, speaking in his usual paradoxical manner, which can only be understood by a full comprehension of the dual nature of man,—­the real divine entity, and the passing and ever-changing manifestation, which so many take for the whole man—­he says: