THEMES ON THIS PAGE:
| 1. THE FALL OF THE SOUL |
2. PEAK EXPERIENCE | 3. CONTEMPLATION | 4. BEAUTY |
Plotinus (204-270 AD) was a major Neo-Platonist philosopher who lived in late antiquity, mostly in Rome. He was a central figure of Neoplatonism – a school of philosophy based on the thoughts of the philosopher Plato, who had lived centuries earlier. Historical accounts describe Plotinus as an extraordinary person of wisdom, composure, and justice. His teachings were collected by his student Porphyry and compiled in the book Enneads. Their influence on later philosophers has been immense, especially in the Middle Ages.
Plotinus’ teachings are inspired by Plato, and he regards himself as walking in his footstep and explaining his ideas. In fact, however, his philosophy goes much beyond Plato.
Inspired by Plato’s notion of The One, Plotinus views reality as composed of several levels: (1) The One, (2) the Intellect, (3) the Soul. The highest level of being is The One (the Good). From the One emanates the Intellect, and from the intellect emanates the Soul. The Soul itself contains two levels: The higher part is the universal Soul, and the lower part is the individual souls of individual people. In addition, underneath all this, there is also the material world, which is the lowest, imperfect level.
Thus, Plotinus’ philosophy is “vertical,” in the sense that it focuses on the relationships between higher and lower levels reality. Every being, says Plotinus, yearns to rise to the levels above it. Human beings therefore yearn to transcend the material world towards the highest level of being. This can be done through a life of virtue, meditation, and philosophical investigations, which Plotinus practiced throughout his life.
|
TOPIC 1. THE FALL OF THE SOUL |
Plotinus regarded his philosophical views as a way of life: The philosopher lives a life of virtue and contemplation, trying to achieve a mystical union with the One. His student Porphyry wrote about his teacher: “The goal of his life was to unite, to approach the Divine above all. And four times during the period I was with him, he achieved this Union.”
The following text, from Ennead 4, Tractate 8, is the only text in which Plotinus speaks about himself personally. Here he describes the shocking experience of falling down from the height of ecstasy to the material body. This experience is the starting point for discussing the issue: Why does the soul fall so low, to the material world, if it belongs to a higher realm? His answer is that the soul also has a role to illuminate the material body, just as the sun shines down on the earth. And while it descends to the body to do its job, it sometimes forgets itself, becomes attached to pleasures, and remains stuck in the material world. Even then, however, the soul does not completely lose itself, because part of it continues to yearn for spiritual heights.
Often I rise from my body into myself, and I become external to all things, and inside myself. What an extraordinarily wonderful beauty I then see! It is especially then that I believe that I belong to the higher reality. I then achieve the noblest form of life: I unify with the divine, and I station myself in it. Once I reach this supreme activity, I place myself above any other spiritual entity.
Yet, after this rest in the Supreme, when I come back down from intuitive understanding into rational thought, then I ask myself: How is it possible that I am going down now? And how could my soul possibly enter my body – the soul which is such a high being, even when it is in the body, as it has just revealed itself to be when it appeared in itself?
[…]
The appetite for the divine Intellect urges the individual souls to return to their source, but they also have a power to conduct this lower, material world. They may be compared to the light that is connected high up to the sun, but which does not reject its role to shine on what lies beneath it. In the Intellectual, they remain with the universal Soul and are free of worry and trouble. In the heavenly sphere, absorbed in the universal Soul, they are administrators with it just like kings, associated with the supreme ruler and governing with him, and they do not descend from their kingly positions.
So far, the souls are in one place with their overlord. But there comes a time when they descend from the universal realm to become partial and self-centered, and now that they are separate, each one finds its way to its own place [=its own body]. When this state continues for a long time, the soul becomes a deserter from the All. Its separation has disconnected it, its vision is no longer directed towards the Intellectual, it is a partial thing, isolated, weakened, full of worries, preoccupied with the fragment. Separated from the whole, it resides in one form of being [=a human]. It abandons everything else, entering into one human being and caring only for him, for a thing that is in a world full of things. Thus it has drifted away from the universal, and it starts to manage the particular [human] being. It is now caught in this contact; it is directed towards the external [=material] to which it has become present, and it sinks deeply into it.
With this comes what is known as the “throwing away of the wings,” being imprisoned in a body: The soul has lost that innocence of conducting the higher, which it knew when it stood with the universal Soul, that earlier state to which all its interest would call it to return quickly.
It has fallen, it is in chains. Excluded from expressing itself through its intellectual side, it operates through sense perception. It is a captive. This is the burial of the Soul in a cave.
Nevertheless, it always has something transcendent. By a conversion towards the intellective act, it is freed from the chains, and it escapes when it makes its memories the starting point of a new vision of essential being. […] The souls that have become divided and attached to something partial have also their transcendent side, but they are preoccupied with sensation, and by exercising perception they receive into themselves much that clashes with their nature and which brings distress and trouble. Because the object of their concern is partial, deficient, exposed to many foreign influences, arousing desires for it and pleasure in it, a pleasure which is their trap.
But there is always the other part of the soul, which finds no interest in temporary pleasure, but maintains its own appropriate way.
|
TOPIC 2. PEAK EXPERIENCE |
Plotinus’ philosophy revolves around the goal of rising to the highest level of reality - the Supreme (The One or The Good) - and unifying with it. This is the experience that we all yearn to realize, and which Plotinus achieved several times in his life. This mystical unity is beyond words, beyond analysis and logic. It requires a higher mode of understanding than discursive thinking. Nevertheless, at the end of his Ennead 6, in Tractate 9, Chapters 9-11, Plotinus gives us a powerful glimpse of what he has in mind.
From Chapter 9
The soul looks at the fountain of Life, which is also the fountain of Intellect, the beginning of Being, the fountain of the Good, root of the Soul. When these pour out of the Supreme, they do not become less, as if they were a quantity of mass. They are not perishable, they are eternal. They flow from an eternal principle which produces them not through fragmentation but from an unbroken identity. Therefore, they too remain constant. As long as the sun shines, there will be light.
[…] Here the soul is in peace, outside evil, taking refuge in the place that is pure of all wrong. Here it has its true knowing, here it is immune. Here the true is living, and anything that is separate from it is just a shadow, a mimicry. Life in the Supreme is the native activity of the Intellect.
[…] Those who find this experience strange may understand when they think about our earthly yearnings and the joy we have when we win what we desire most of all. But they should always remember that in the material world what we love is perishable, hurtful, that what we love is mimicry, which goes wrong because everything was a mistake. Our good was not here; this was not what we were looking for. Our true love is only there. There we can hold it and be with it, possess it in its truth, and no longer sink in a foreign body. Anybody who has seen knows what I have in mind.
[…] Thus we have all the vision that we can have of the Supreme and of ourselves, and the vision becomes splendor, filled with the Intellectual light. It becomes this light, pure, afloat, unburdened, raised to divinity – or better, knowing its divinity, all aflame. But it is crushed again if it has to return to the burden of the body.
From Chapter 10
The soul has not yet escaped fully [from the material world]. But there will be a time of uninterrupted vision. The self, which is now hindered, will no longer be hindered by any material body. In fact, those hindrances do not really influence that within us which has truly seen. It is a different aspect of the soul that suffers, and it suffers only when we withdraw from vision and turn to discursive knowing by proof, by evidence, by the reasoning processes of our mental habit. Such logic should not be confused with our act of vision. It is not our reason that has seen, it is something greater than reason, reason's Prior, which is far above reason […]
In this seeing, we neither grasp an object nor notice a distinction. There are no two. The person is changed, he is no longer himself, and does not belong to himself. He is merged with the Supreme, sunken into it, one with it: center coincides with center, because on this higher level, things that touch at all are one. There is duality only in separation. When we separate ourselves, we are outside the Supreme. This is why the vision confuses any attempt to describe it. We cannot detach ourselves from the Supreme in order to describe it.
From Chapter 11
The person who has experienced this unity with the Supreme must carry its image imprinted upon him, if he only remembers. He has become the unity. Once he has achieved his way up, nothing inside or outside him produces any multiplicity – no movement, no passion, no desire. Reasoning is suspended, and all Intellection, and even (if this word can be said) his own self. In perfect stillness he has attained isolation. His being is calmed, and he turns neither to this side nor to that, not even inwards to himself. He is so completely resting that he has become rest itself. He no longer belongs to the order of the beautiful – he has risen beyond beauty. He has gone even beyond the virtues.
[…]
Things here [in the material world] are signs; they show to wise teachers how the supreme is known. The “priest” who learned how to read the signs may enter the holy place and realize the vision of the inaccessible...
.
|
TOPIC 3. CONTEMPLATION |
The teachings of Plotinus include not only theory but also practice. His book Enneads (essays collected by his student Porphyry) consists mostly of theoretical discussions about the levels of reality, the soul, and the nature of beauty, virtue, love, and related topic. But at times he also discusses the practical way to rise to the highest level of being and to achieve mystical union. This philosophical-mystical way includes several main elements: achieving purity and virtuous behavior; philosophical reflection on reality; and contemplative techniques. His precise contemplative technique is not completely clear, but a number of paragraph in his Enneads give us a taste of it. Thus, in ENNEAD 5, Tractate 1, Chapter 12, he suggests that it involves focusing our attention inside ourselves and blocking any perception of material things outside us:
If we want the perception of the great faculties of the soul, we must direct the faculty of perception inward and focus its attention there. Hoping to hear the desired voice, we let all other sounds pass, and we wait for the coming of this most welcome sound. We must leave behind all sensible hearing, unless completely necessary, and keep the soul's perception pure and ready to hear the voices from above.
Plotinus himself practiced contemplation regularly, as attested by his student Porphyry. One of Plotinus’ most detailed explanation of the practice of contemplation appears in his Ennead 1, Tractate 6, Chapters 8-9.
From Chapter 8
But what must we do? Where does the path lie? How can we attain the vision of the inaccessible beauty which dwells in sacred domains, away from the common ways of seeing which everybody has, even the profane person?
If a person has the strength, he should withdraw into himself, giving up everything that is known by the eyes, turning away forever from the material beauty which once used to give him joy. When he perceives beautiful shapes in a material body, he should not pursue them. He must know that they are copies, remains, shadows, and go away quickly towards their source. Because if anyone clings to what is like a beautiful image that plays over the water – isn’t there a myth about such a dupe [Narcissus], how he sank into the depths of the water and was swept away to nothingness? Likewise, somebody who is preoccupied with material beauty and will not free himself will fall, not in body but in soul, down to the dark depths which are hated by the Intellect. There, blind even in the lower world, he will have contact only with shadows. […]
What, then, is our path, and how do we escape [from the lower, material world]? This is not a journey for the feet. The feet bring us only from land to land. We should also not think of a coach or ship to carry us away. We must push out all these kinds of things and refuse to look at them. We must close our eyes, and instead of our visual perception get another faculty. We must awaken this faculty – everyone has it, but only few people ever use it.
From Chapter 9
And this inner vision, how does it work? Since it has just awakened, it is too weak to contain the ultimate brilliance. Therefore, the soul must be trained: First, it should get accustomed to see noble behaviors. Then, it will notice the works of beauty produced not by works of arts, but by the virtue of people who are known for their goodness. Lastly, it must inspect the souls of those who have shaped these beautiful forms [virtuous behaviors].
But how can you look into a virtuous soul and find its loveliness?
Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act like the artist who creates a statue when he wants to make it beautiful: He cuts away here, he makes smooth there, he makes this line lighter, another line purer, until a lovely face grows from his work. This is what you too should do: Cut away everything in you that is too much, straighten everything that is crooked, bring light to everything that is dark. Work to turn everything into one glow of beauty, and never stop chiseling your statue, until the god-like splendor of beauty will shine from it on you, until you will see the perfect goodness established securely in the spotless temple.
Work until you become this perfect work, and until you are self-collected in the purity of your being, so that nothing remains that can fragment this inner unity, nothing external that attaches to the authentic man. [Work until] you find yourself completely true to your essential nature, and you are fully the only true light which has no size and is not limited to any shape and does not extend in time, but is always beyond measure and greater than any measure and is more than any quantity. When you realize that this is what you have become, then you are now ready for vision. Now gain your confidence, take a step forward – you don’t need a guide anymore – try and see.
This is the only eye that can see the powerful beauty. If the eye that tries the vision is darkened by evil, if it is impure or weak and is too cowardly for the greatest brightness, then it will see nothing, even if somebody will point to what lies right before it. Any vision needs an eye which is adapted to what should be seen, and which has some similarity to it. An eye can never see the sun unless it has become sun-like, and a soul can never have a vision of the highest beauty unless it is itself beautiful.
Therefore, anybody who wants to see god and beauty should first become god-like and beautiful.
