What, then, is the inner activity of Consciousness? The inherent task of consciousness is to understand, and understanding entails the cognition of causes. In trying to understand itself, Consciousness can only turn towards its origin and thus posit or behold the First as the transcendent principle of its own reality. As the Neoplatonists would put it, having emerged from the First, Consciousness “turns back” towards it in order to understand the pre-condition of its own existence. Becoming thus aware of another entity, the originary unity of Consciousness breaks up into duality, and with it emerge the categories of identity and difference, of greater and smaller, of number, of change and of rest. In fact, in a way not fully explained, or perhaps even explicable, the entire ideal world of Platonic forms and ideas emerges effortlessly in the course of Consciousness’ effort to understand itself.