The mind seems like an aperture onto the soul's wisdom, but at the same time it is a purposeful urgency to prise itself open while being passively receptive of whatever momentary light might come through. Out of this impossible twist of demands it has constructed a metaphysical ideal or rather an ideal of metaphysics, in which it has a core task, namely the investigation of how this here now is and how it originates, how appearing appears. It petitions the soul in the name of this question in all its variant forms, and in the pious expectation that fidelity to this quest is an expression of its immanent identity with soul. As if the act of soul is to be master of this mystery. The absurdity and impossibility of the quest are what underwrite its virtue. The world seems wondrous as it is ensouled, as there arises in it the entire complex of phenomena which question it. The various selves are radii of this contemplation and the nugget of truth they each conceal is the transcript of the divine philosophising, written in letters of white fire within them.