The Vision of Poimandres
The Teaching
I seemed to see a presence vast beyond all measure, who called my name and said to me: "What do you want to hear and see, and learn and come to know through thought?"
"I am Poimandres," he said, "the mind of sovereignty; I know what you want, and I am with you everywhere."
Then he changed his form, and in an instant everything was opened to me, and I saw a vision of light, unbounded and joyous.
"That light is I," he said to me, "the mind, your god, who existed before the wet and dark beginning that appeared in your vision. The radiant word that comes from mind is the son of god."
"Focus your thought on the light and come to know it."
Commentary
The Poimandres is one of the oldest Hermetic texts and one of the clearest accounts of what all the mystical traditions are pointing at: direct encounter with the divine mind as the ground of one's own consciousness.
'The radiant word that comes from mind is the son of god', this is John's Logos made explicitly philosophical. The Nous (divine mind) of Plotinus's Neoplatonism is the same figure. The Upanishadic Brahman as pure consciousness is the same.
The instruction 'focus your thought on the light' is the universal contemplative method: turn attention toward its own source. What you discover is not a separate divine entity but the divine as the very ground of awareness itself.