So reverse your way of thinking, or you will be left deprived of God, like the people at festivals who by their gluttony stuff themselves with things which it is not lawful for those going in to the gods to take, thinking that these are more obviously real than the vision of the god for whom they ought to be celebrating the festival, and take no part in the rites within. Yes, in these our rites also the god, since he is not seen, creates disbelief in his existence in those who think that that alone is obviously real which they see only with the flesh; as if people who slept through their life thought the things in their dreams were real and obvious, but, if someone woke them up, disbelieved in what they saw with their eyes open and went to sleep again.
- Plotinus, Ennead V.5.11, trans. Armstrong
