Authors: Brian Hines
I
F THE ONE
had remained wholly itself, unimaginable unity, obviously there would be nobody around to ponder the One, or anything else. Each of us is proof that oneness somehow has turned into many-ness. Additional concrete evidence surrounds us in every direction. Outside my window I see a profusion of trees and bushes, each bearing numerous leaves, each leaf composed of a multitude of cells, each cell a miniature universe of countless atoms.
And so it goes, levels upon levels of fecund multiplicity. Nature, it is said, abhors a vacuum. Every speck of physical reality is filled with energy or matter. Even empty space, physicists tell us, is seething with activity. Virtual particles unceasingly spring in and out of existence, flecks of quantum foam cast up by an invisible, energetic ocean.
What is the ultimate source of all this? The One, from which emanates the Many.
Those other than the First have come into being in the sense that they are derived from other, higher, principles…. But Parmenides in Plato speaks more accurately, and distinguishes from each other the first One, which is more properly called One, and the second which he calls “One-Many, “and the third, “One and Many.”
[II-9-3, V-l-8]
Here is Plotinus’s grand scheme of creation in a nutshell: the One is, naturally, simply One; the second, spirit, is so much a unity that it is properly called a One-Many; the third, soul, is more divided—hence, a One and Many. And then there is what comes after immaterial soul. Physical existence. The ground floor. Earth. The end of the line. Unity depleted to the utmost.
“Last stop! Everyone out!”
“Where are we?”
“Read the sign:
Many”
“Oh, God,” the soul says. “I didn’t mean to go this far.”
Yes, but there is a way to turn around and return to the One. This is the central ever-so-optimistic message of Plotinus. And even though we souls have ventured farther from our homeland than is desirable (if we desire happiness and well-being, that is) it isn’t the One that is at fault. What has been created is just fine, exactly as it should be. What’s gone awry is how we’ve used creation, not creation itself. The One couldn’t help but make what has been made.
And all things when they come to perfection produce; the One is always perfect and therefore produces everlastingly; and its product is less than itself.
[V-l-6]
There’s our problem: what is produced is necessarily less than the producer. We’re at the end of reality’s production line, occupied with what are, speaking bluntly, the dregs of creation. What starts off in the divine heights as crystal clear being is unavoidably muddied by form and matter in the course of its flow to the physical universe. There isn’t any sort of cosmic conspiracy to make us suffer or tempt us with sordidness. This is just the way it is. Plotinus tries to help us understand with a helpful but limited analogy.
The First, then, should be compared to light, the next
[spirit]
to the sun, and the third
[soul]
to the celestial body of the moon, which gets its light from the sun.
[V-6-4]
There is only one entity, the One, underlying all of the apparent diversity in both the spiritual and material realms. It’s easy to overlook this, of course, just as someone gazing at a beautiful full moon generally fails to remember that he or she is admiring reflected light. Without the sun, the moon would be dark. And without light, so would the sun.
Plotinus, however, describes a view modern science has disproved: that light radiates from the sun without changing the sun. We know now, of course, that the energetic processes causing photons to leave the sun will, far in the future, cause it to burn out. The One, though, is not comprised of material substance. Nor is spirit (intellect). So neither is affected in any way by the creative energies continuously radiating from them to form the lower realities. Creation did not happen somewhere in the past. It is happening now, everywhere, within and without us.
But he
[the One]
irradiates for ever, abiding unchanged over the intelligible…. Resembling the One thus, Intellect produces in the same way, pouring forth a multiple power—this is a likeness of it—just as that which was before it poured it forth.
[V-3-12, V-2-1]
To indulge in a little philosophical jargon, Plotinus teaches that existence emanates from the One while essence emanates from spirit and soul (roughly speaking, essence makes something
what
it is while existence produces the actuality
that
it is).
So, spirit, through the intermediary of soul, is the direct creator of all the thoughts and things with which we presently are familiar. If this doesn’t make sense, particularly the distinction between spirit and soul, don’t despair. Plotinus often fails to clearly differentiate these creative powers and we’ll be delving more deeply into the nature of spirit and soul later on.
In the end, it is fruitless to try to comprehend what lies beyond our usual means of understanding: sense perception and reason. As Plotinus told us before, to return to the One we need to “wake another way of seeing, which everyone has but few use.” Again and again the
Enneads
caution against reducing spirituality to something physical out of a desire to get a firmer grip on what otherwise seems so ephemeral.
For the things which one thinks are most real, are least real; and the [materially] large has less genuine existence…. So reverse your way of thinking, or you will be left deprived of God.
[V-5-11]
How easy it is to read these words and how difficult to take them to heart. Plotinus warns that we are enmeshed in a gigantic illusion that encompasses the entire physical universe, a hall of mirrors that inverts reality so that what is most true, spirit, appears insubstantial and uncertain while what is least true, matter, captures our attention by virtue of its seeming substance.
What we need to do is look more clearly into the nature of things, and try to trace creation back to its divine source. We, of course, are part of creation. So if we can figure out what our essence consists of and where it resides, the mystery of the outward creation also will be resolved.
Plotinus often uses light as an example of how to approach this process of swimming upstream to find the source of creation’s flow. Consider all the moonstruck poets who have been inspired to compose flowery odes about earth’s nighttime companion. The sun, it seems, inspires less fervent romantic inspiration. Light itself, almost none at all. Light suffuses the air within which we live and breathe so we generally overlook it. What we notice is a source of light: a star, lamp, fire, lantern. Even the moon, a mere reflector of the sun’s beams, captures more of our attention than light itself
There is a spiritual lesson here: dematerialize your vision and you will see more of substantial reality. Though the moon appears lovely, its glory radiates from the sun. And the essence of the sun, the spiritual sun at least, is pure light.
Imagine, says Plotinus, something small and luminous. Next, put a larger transparent sphere around this source of light. Observe: light now shines throughout the sphere, and all this luminosity comes from the central source. Now, here comes the important part. Take away the source’s bulk, and leave its power.
Would you still say that the light was somewhere, or would it be equally present over the whole outer sphere? You will no longer rest in your thought on the place where it was before, and you will not any more say where it comes from or where it is going, but you will be puzzled and put in amazement when, fixing your gaze now here and now there in the spherical body, you yourself perceive the light.
[VI-4-7]
Here is an example of how Plotinus uses a material metaphor as a crutch to prop up our rational understanding of some aspect of spiritual reality. At first we lean upon the metaphor, comfortably visualizing something familiar: a source of light surrounded by a sphere. “Ah, like a light bulb shining within a circular glass globe,” we think. He asks us to picture the light filling all of the sphere, perhaps even spilling over to brighten the room outside. This is still easy to imagine, as we see a similar phenomenon each time a light switch is flicked.
But then Plotinus takes away our crutch and asks us to stand without material support. The light bulb has disappeared, yet there still is light. How can this be? Indeed, it would be puzzling to walk into an absolutely bare room with no windows, close the door, and find the room illuminated bright as day. Our experience has always been that light comes from something. Here, though, it seemingly springs from nothing.
Amazement and puzzlement, these are signs that one has truly seen spirit or the One. It could not be otherwise. Beholding the power behind all other powers, the maker of all that could ever be made, could we be in the presence of anything but wonder beyond wonder?
A
JOURNEY NECESSARILY
is across a distance. Otherwise, we would already be at the place that is both our starting point and our destination,
here.
In addition, this distance must be bridgeable; if not, we will never reach our goal,
there.
When here and there span the vastness of intergalactic space or the equally vast expanse of the time since creation began, it is natural to throw up one’s hands and say, “Never to be reached, never to be known.”
Such is the fate of much of modern science, which has extended theoretical explanations of the universe to places and times, such as the center of a black hole or the first instant of the big bang, which never can be experienced directly. Man seemingly is able to firmly grasp only what little of the cosmos is presently close at hand.
Similarly, for the religiously-minded the unmistakable presence of God is almost always a far-off goal, not an immediate reality. Death, many religions promise, will bridge the gap between spiritual aspiration and realization. The implication is that wherever God or heaven is, this isn’t anywhere that we can travel to now. Plotinus disagrees.
Our world is not separated from the spiritual world…. We deny that God is in one place but not in another.
[II-9-16
1
, VI-5-4]
Here, in a nutshell, is the reason why it is possible to return to God in this very lifetime. The One has never left us; it is we who have left the One. The distance we have to cross is precisely zero from God’s point of view, while from our perspective it is as far as our diverse mental and material cravings have taken us from the central still point of spiritual unity.
For nothing is a long way off or far from anything else…. But if there is neither far nor near, it
[the All]
must be present whole if it is present at all. And it is wholly present to each and every one of those for which it is neither far nor near, but they are able to receive it.
[IV-3-11, VI-4-2]
This message is wonderfully reassuring yet also rather disturbing. The One is right here, right now, both inside of me and outside of me. Great! But this takes away any excuses I may have been using to explain my lack of spiritual realization: “God is too far away for me to experience him”; “I must wait until God makes his presence known on earth”; “Only after death will I be able to rise up to heaven and meet God.” Plotinus tells us that the One is wholly present to those who are able to receive it. And it isn’t present to those who are not.
Not so great! For now the responsibility is on my shoulders to experience God. It’s much as if I was waiting comfortably at my home for a delivery truck to bring me a long-awaited gift I thought was being sent from a far-distant location. Then a message comes: “Start digging. The gift lies under the ground right in front of your door.” Well, while it’s nice to know my present is relatively close by previously I had faith that it would be delivered right into my hands and now I’m told I have to put in some sweat and toil before I can enjoy it.
Spiritual realization is available to all, that’s grace, but only obtained by those who work for it, hence the need for effort. In addition to challenging the primacy of grace over effort, or faith over good works, Plotinus’s vision of an undivided cosmos leads to a conclusion that is at odds with another central tenet of many theologies: God misses us, and wants us back.
When you think about it, it is indeed a rather strange notion that the almighty lacks anything at all. It’s nice to feel needed: “I have to return to God so he can be truly content.” But when we speak this way we’re saying that even though God created the universe, he placed it so far away from himself that now he’s lost touch with us and is sad about the situation. “Come back!” many people imagine God is crying.
Perhaps Plotinus’s teaching is closer to the truth.
That One, therefore, since it has no otherness is always present, and we are present to it when we have no otherness; and the One does not desire us, so as to be around us, but we desire it, so that we are around it…. He does not need the things which have come into being from him, but leaves what has come into being altogether alone, because he needs nothing of it, but is the same as he was before he brought it into being.
[VI-9-8, V-5-12]
In other words, we need God; God doesn’t need us. The One is not lessened by creation’s emanation, nor would the One gain if creation ceased to exist. It is infinite and unchanging, the All that never can be less or more. So it is a mistake to conceive our relationship with the One in any sort of human terms.
As was noted before, I can only have a genuine personal relationship with someone if that entity is also a person. If that entity happens to be the One, and the One is unity, present in every place (including me), then whatever my relationship is with this power, it isn’t personal. In fact, my very personhood is the primary barrier to knowing the One. When I am truly myself, says Plotinus, I will realize I am not separate from all else. Whatever I am in my deepest being isn’t different from what you are.
Since we look towards the outside, away from the point at which we are all joined together, we are unaware of the fact that we are one. We are like faces turned towards the outside, but attached on the inside to one single head. If we could turn around—either spontaneously or if we were lucky enough to “have Athena pull us by the hair”—then, all at once, we would see God, ourselves, and the All.
[VI-5-7]
2
In the Iliad (I, 197-8) Minerva comes down from heaven and, seen only by Achilles, pulls him by his hair. If we’re lucky, Plotinus implies, perhaps a divine being will do us the same favor and jolt us out of our fascination with material multiplicity so that we may behold spiritual unity. Still, there isn’t much of a hint elsewhere in the
Enneads
that we should count on a celestial whim for salvation.
Plotinus’s mystical philosophy may seem uncomfortably detached to those who turn to angels, spirit guides, and other personalized metaphysical entities for support and guidance. However, we must remember that his teachings are based on nothing other than love. This love, though, is not personal but universal. Its endpoint is unity, or at least the almost complete unity of soul and spirit, rather than a relationship.
In everyday life we are unfamiliar with anything other than relations between parts of creation. Man and woman, mind and thoughts, nature and technology, writers and readers, energy and matter—almost everything we have ever experienced, inside or outside of us, has involved a relationship between something and something else. Even when I say “I think” or “I feel,” I’m describing a relation between two different parts of me, the “I” that experiences and the thinking or feeling being experienced.
What if, though, the spiritual essence of outward reality is exactly the same as my own inward spiritual essence, or soul? Could everything out there somehow also be in here? If so, what difference would there be between me, or you, and everything else?
If then we have a part in true knowledge, we are those
[spiritual realities].
… So then, being together with all things, we are those: so then, we are all and one.
[VI-5-7]
Here Plotinus points toward the equal opportunity for spiritual realization that a unified cosmos offers. No person, no culture, no country, no religion is any closer to or farther from divine truth than is any other. Spirituality is an individual affair and every human soul is capable of experiencing the great Plotinian truth that all spiritual realities are within the essence of his or her consciousness. Since this is true for every person on earth, not just a favored few, “we are all and one.” Though each soul is separate, a drop of the spiritual ocean, the ocean somehow is wondrously contained within each drop.
This sounds marvelous. Yet it isn’t reality for most of us. Yes, we may think or believe that we are all one, but this is a far cry from the actual experience of unity. And there are those, perhaps a majority, who don’t find oneness all that appealing. “Individuality is the hallmark of being human,” they proclaim. “We are meant to be more than a featureless drop in a limitless ocean.”
Plotinus found a pleasing middle ground in his mystic philosophy that should appeal to both the unifiers and the individualists. Yes, he taught, each soul is separate. And yes, all souls are one. Logically, this may be confusing. Experientially, it is what Plotinus found in the course of his personal voyage of spiritual discovery.
So then the soul must be in this way both one and many and divided and indivisible.
[IV-1-2]
Logic takes us only so far in our quest to know reality as it is, for nature deigns to operate by its own largely inscrutable rules, notwithstanding man’s attempts to systematize those rules and package them in tidy analytical bundles. Our angle of vision determines how reality appears. This is why spirit and soul can be both one and many, and the One both everywhere and nowhere.
Consider a candle placed inside a metallic cylinder with variously shaped and sized cutouts: stars, triangles, circles, ovals, hexagons.
When placed in a dark room, the candlelight will cast all sorts of images upon the walls. The light is one, while its projected images are many. The light emanates from a single place, while its radiation is all around the room. As crude as this metaphor is, perhaps it helps us understand how the radiance of the One can appear so diffused and variegated.
All these things are the One and not the One: they are he because they come from him; they are not he, because it is in abiding by himself that he gives them.
[V-2-2]
Doodling with a pencil, someone idly sprinkles dots across a blank page. Then each dot is connected with more dots, forming a continuous serpentine sequence. Eventually all the dots will merge into what looks like a solid line. The line then can be said to be both one and many. The individual dots remain under the surface of the line, so to speak, but are as much a whole as they are parts. Each dot, if it was conscious, could say “I am me! A single dot, proudly myself!” Yet a broader vision would see a line with no divisions.
Is it better to know the self as a restricted part, or a boundless whole? For Plotinus, the choice is obvious. My spiritual goal should be to bring together what has been separated, to narrow if not completely eliminate the difference between my limited personal consciousness and the One’s universal super consciousness. Presently the One and I are like two concentric circles that have drifted apart (with me, of course, having done the drifting).
For here too when the centers have come together they are one, but there is duality when they are separate.
[VI-9-10]
Souls have a choice: to face toward oneness, or manyness. There is no such choice for bodies made of matter, nor is there a choice for the One. Matter is always many and the One is always one. Since presently we find ourselves existing in a material world, the challenge is to turn away from the multiplicity of matter if we have a desire to return to our source, unity.
Certainly there is some vestige of unity within matter or it could not remain what it is. But it is so dim and indistinct as to be almost unrecognizable. This is why it is so easy to distinguish this from that, and here from there, in the physical world. Only at the most basic subatomic level are parts absolutely identical. Every electron is the same, while each person is unique.
The soul’s uniqueness always will remain, says Plotinus, but will be greatly reduced after leaving the material realm. He observes that it would be absurd for someone, such as Socrates, to engage in so much strenuous spiritual seeking only to be completely dissolved in oneness when what has been sought is found. Why strive so mightily to be immersed in the One if there will be no consciousness of the immersion?
Are they the souls of particular individuals in the lower order, but belong in the higher order to that higher unity? But this will mean that Socrates, and the soul of Socrates, will exist as long as he is in the body; but he will cease to be precisely when he attains to the very best. Now no real being ever ceases to be … but each remains distinct in otherness, having the same essential being.
[IV-3-5]
So this is good news. Who would relish the thought of being themselves, just as they are now, for eternity? I frequently get tired of myself—same old thoughts, same old feelings, same old beliefs, same old habits—and I’ve spent only fifty-five years with my body and mind. The idea of being me forever sounds like some sort of existentialist nightmare.
Yet the prospect of being nothing at all certainly isn’t appealing either. Being everything does have a better ring to it. Still, if I turn out to be everything it seems likely that I won’t know it. Who will be around to enjoy all that omnipresence? Perhaps being the entire All would be wonderfully pleasant, but I prefer the idea of being a contented piece of the All that has been stripped of impermanence and illusion. And this is just what Plotinus promises.
The soul’s being one, then, does not do away with the many souls, any more than being does away with beings, nor does the multiplicity there in the true All fight with the one.
[VI-4-4]