Authors: Brian Hines
The Neoplatonic metaphysics encapsulated in the paragraph above bear a strong resemblance to Christianity. So just as Plotinus has been pithily described as “Plato without the politics,” it can be said, albeit somewhat simplistically that Christianity is “Neoplatonism with Jesus.”
Keith Ward, an Anglican priest and author of
God: A Guide for the Perplexed,
writes: “Why is there no Platonic religion? Well, in a sense there is. It is called Christianity. Or at least Christianity took from Plato many of the most important aspects of his thought, and attached them to its own central teaching that Jesus was the supreme manifestation of God.”
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What we find in the
Enneads
, in contrast to the
Bible
, is an elevated spirituality almost completely devoid of particulars. Plotinus, along with virtually all of his Greek philosophical brethren, sought universal truths, not individual instances of those verities. Neoplatonic spirituality thus has a scientific tenor that is rarely found in other religious theologies or metaphysical systems, for science similarly seeks knowledge of the fundamental laws of nature, as well as an understanding of the relations between the general laws and particular phenomena.
Resonating with Plotinus
I
T SHOULD BE
obvious that I resonate with Plotinus, or I wouldn’t have devoted so much time and effort to writing
Return to the One
. Up to a few years ago I knew next to nothing about his teachings. But I was strongly drawn to his mystic philosophy once I started to seriously study the
Enneads
. For most of my fifty-five years I’ve cast my intellectual net widely in the world’s ocean of philosophical, religious, mystical, and metaphysical literature. Yet I’ve never found a spiritual system so simultaneously appealing to the mind and the heart, to reason and intuition, to logic and passion.
So I must unabashedly admit that throughout
Return to the One
you will find a prejudice that colors every aspect of my commentary. Here is that presumption: the general thrust of Plotinus’s philosophy is true. I don’t mean that it is just true for me, or for Plotinus, but that it is objectively true—an accurate reflection both of the nature of ultimate reality and the means by which it is possible to know this highest truth.
The content and style of my writing follows naturally from this prejudice. My un-hidden agenda is to be an advocate for Plotinus’s teachings, not a detached analyzer of them. In taking this stance, I chart a course midway between the extreme objectivist position that it is possible to know exactly what Plotinus taught if we study his language, culture, philosophical influences, and so forth, in sufficient precision and detail, and the extreme subjectivist position that whatever I or anyone else says about Plotinus, it is just a personal opinion to be taken as such.
I do believe that it is possible to know the spiritual truths that Plotinus knew, but only if we inwardly become our true selves, which will be found to be identical with Plotinus’s true self. This obviously separates my approach from that of most scholars, for they poke and probe Plotinus’s teachings as if they were external objects of knowledge akin to fossils excavated from an ancient riverbed, which is exactly how Plotinus says we should
not
consider his philosophy
We will not be able to fully understand Plotinus’s teachings through a method that isn’t in tune with Plotinus’s theory of knowledge, which Sara Rappe encapsulates: “For him [Plotinus], the condition sine qua non for knowledge is the unity of the knower and the object of knowledge, a condition that discursive thought of any kind necessarily precludes.”
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It’s much as if you were out on a walk with a friend, and she said, “Come over here and smell this flower. It’s got an amazing fragrance.” Your friend knew about the fragrance because she had inhaled it and thereby made it part of her (physical) being.
You wouldn’t be able to know what she knew if, instead of smelling the flower, you broke it off at the stem, took it to a laboratory, and analyzed its chemical composition. This would give you a certain knowledge but not the knowledge of fragrance. In fact, after you pluck the flower, the fragrance will begin to fade, indicating that an effort to obtain analytical knowledge obviates the intuitive knowledge that comes from simply smelling.
Bringing bones to life
S
IMILARLY,
we have to embrace Plotinus’s philosophy in the fashion in which he himself embraced it if we want to absorb the inner spiritual essence as well as the outer conceptual trappings of his teachings. Plotinus wants to change our whole way of looking at the world and ourselves. This is much different, and considerably more difficult, than perceiving his teachings as we perceive everything else: as something separate and distinct from our own selves. Sara Rappe says:
For Plotinus, the task of the philosopher will not be to deliver a discursive exposition concerning the principles of reality, but rather to remind the reader to ‘turn the act of awareness inward, and insist that it hold attention there.’
(Enneads
Vl.12.15)
11
Along these lines, Robert Meager, author of
Augustine: An Introduction,
describes the approach he took toward his subject: “Any authentically open inquiry into the thinking of another person must at some point take the form of commentary, of ‘minding-with’ that person. To mind with someone is to assume a common posture of mind with that person…. Indeed, unless we are willing to think Augustine’s thoughts we cannot presume to think about them.”
12
Meager says that his commentary on Augustine’s writings “strives to resume and to continue the original activity”
13
This also is my goal with
Return to the One.
I don’t want you to look on Plotinus’s teachings as if they were bleached dinosaur bones from a far-distant time and place reassembled for your inspection in a musty museum. So in this book I have done my best to flesh out the skeleton of Plotinus’s often austere exposition of his mystical message, and to describe his philosophy in an informal, modern style. I am hopeful that this will help his teachings come alive for you, as they have for me.
“Return to the One” in a nutshell
F
OLLOWING
this introduction is a description of Plotinus the person and his thoroughly Greek teaching approach. Then we turn to how the ancient Greeks viewed philosophy: as a way of life, an art of living. As a mystic philosopher, Plotinus taught that life is lived truly not
here
but
there,
on a plane of consciousness closer to ultimate reality than this crude physical existence.
This leads us naturally into a chapter concerned with the mystical connotation of a “leap of faith,” which is quite different from how religions generally use this phrase. Mystics such as Plotinus urge us to embrace mystery rather than clinging onto theological or philosophical concepts that claim to explain mystery (but really just push it out of sight of the mind’s eye).
I should mention that if the reader wants to jump right into the detailed discussion of Plotinus’s teachings that begins with the “God Is the Goal” chapter, he or she should feel free to do so, coming back later, if desired, to the preliminary chapters. But the final chapter in this Preliminaries section, “Reading the Writings of Plotinus,” shouldn’t be skipped, as it contains information that is critical for appreciating and understanding the many quotations from the
Enneads
in this book. This chapter includes an explanation of how Plotinus’s paradoxical use of language supports his mystical philosophy.
We then move into the core of
Return to the One,
the organization of which reflects the grand themes of Plotinus’s philosophy: “The One,” “And Many,” “Soul’s Descent,” “And Return.” The first two sections lay out the design of the cosmos, from the highest unity of the One down to the lowest multiplicity of the physical universe. The last two sections describe the soul’s journey through these realms, descending to materiality from spiritual regions and returning, through contemplation, to its original home.
Within each section are short topical chapters with quotations from the
Enneads
and my commentary. The chapter titles reflect my fondness for alliteration: “Reality Is a Radiation,” “First Is Formless,” “Soul Is the Self,” and so on. These short aphorisms are intended to be an aid in remembering the central tenets of Plotinus’s teachings.
You’ll find that I frequently use examples from everyday life to illustrate a philosophical point, and often try to leaven Plotinus’s serious tone with some lighthearted observations. To my mind, humor and spirituality are better thought of as bedfellows than antagonists: a smile points us up, both bodily and spiritually, whereas a frown turns us down.
This book wraps up with a section called, entirely appropriately, “Wrap-Up.” Here I begin by considering Plotinus’s teachings within the broader purview of exoteric and esoteric spirituality, which are distinguished by their relative emphasis on seeking divinity outwardly and inwardly, respectively (Plotinus is decidedly in the esoteric camp). This leads into a more extensive examination of a subject raised earlier: that mysticism has an affinity of method with science, and an affinity of subject matter with religion, producing the possibility of a true spiritual science.
I argue, in the next chapter, that viewing Plotinus as a spiritual scientist helps to explain why Neoplatonism and Christianity were so much at odds in the period surrounding Plotinus’s death in 270. This theme continues into a chapter concerned with the legacy of Plotinus and Plato, which can be recognized in the Neoplatonist sentiments expressed by such great medieval thinkers as Meister Eckhart, Nicolas of Cusa, the anonymous author of
The Cloud of Unknowing,
and Marsilio Ficino.
The wrap-up finishes with a personal summation of how I’ve come to look upon the rational mysticism of Plotinus: as a great experiment with truth. Then, the book concludes with something completely different from what has come before: a fable. This tale, “Stuck at Lake Partway,” is my attempt to relate to the reader, in a non-intellectual fashion, how Plotinus has led me to critically examine the nature of my commitment to spirituality.
P
LOTINUS TIRELESSLY WORKED
on personal and cultural levels to find the oneness beyond multiplicity. Within his own consciousness, he sought unity. Within the Greek philosophical tradition, he sought unity. By all accounts, he ably succeeded in accomplishing both ends. As J.V. Luce says:
Plotinus was an idealistic thinker who believed he could give positive answers to the great philosophical questions about God, the soul, and the world. Looking back over the whole course of Greek philosophy he tried to distill its inherited wisdom into one all-embracing and spiritualistic system.
… He inherited and worked within the best traditions of Greek rationalism deriving ultimately from Plato and Pythagoras. But he was also a mystic in the sense that his philosophy was enhanced and deepened in its spirituality by a recurrent experience of mystical union with the divine nature.
1
Most of what we know about the life of Plotinus comes from a short biography written by one of his students, Porphyry, a noted philosopher in his own right. Porphyry begins by explaining why the biography is brief: “Plotinus resembled someone ashamed of being in a body.”
2
Plotinus wouldn’t speak about his parents, homeland, or date of birth.
In like fashion, we’re told that Plotinus refused a request made by one of his students to have a portrait made of him, explaining: “Isn’t it enough that I have to bear this image with which Nature has covered us? Must I also consent to leaving behind me an image of that image—this one even longer-lasting—as if it were an image of something worth seeing?”
3
Realizations before writing
P
LOTINUS PROBABLY
was born in Egypt in 205. Even though he may not have been of Greek parentage, scholars agree that his background is thoroughly Greek. Porphyry tells us that in his late twenties Plotinus began studying in Alexandria with a teacher, Ammonius Saccus, and remained with him for eleven years. This was after Plotinus had gone to other teachers who left him unsatisfied. A friend had referred him to Ammonius and at once Plotinus knew that he was the man for whom he had been searching.
After trying (but failing) to journey to Persia and India to investigate Eastern thought, Plotinus went to Rome in 244. For about ten years he taught philosophy, but wouldn’t speak about what he had learned from Ammonius. Eventually, though, Plotinus began to base his lectures on Ammonius’s teachings. Still, ten more years passed before Plotinus started writing.
Philosophy was a way of life for Plotinus, not an intellectual exercise. He studied for eleven years with Ammonius, a man who wrote nothing. Plotinus taught for ten years in Rome but refused to talk about what he learned from Ammonius. Then, after finally feeling free to speak of Ammonius’s wisdom, for another decade Plotinus refrained from setting down his own teachings in writing.
Dialogue over dissertation
P
LOTINUS CLEARLY FAVORED
dialogue over dissertation. A conversation between a student and teacher is alive, open-ended, full of possibilities, a meeting of soul with soul in the present moment. A writing is dead, closed up, completed, a record of what was thought by someone else in the past. In
The Seventh Letter,
Plato explains why he will never write a treatise on some subject:
For it does not admit of exposition like other branches of knowledge; but after much converse about the matter itself and a life lived together, suddenly a light, as it were, is kindled in one soul by a flame that leaps to it from another, and thereafter sustains itself
… For this reason no man of intelligence will venture to express his philosophical views in language, especially not in language that is unchangeable, which is true of that which is set down in written characters.
4
This doesn’t mean that books are useless for the seeker of wisdom, just that the value of genuine inner knowledge is much greater than any attempt to outwardly communicate the knowledge one has attained. Thus, as has already been noted, the rational side of Plotinus’s mysticism is aimed not so much at transmitting some bit of philosophical knowledge from teacher to student, but rather at encouraging the student to search out that truth for him- or herself. Questions are more important than answers.
Plotinus didn’t force his teachings upon anybody; his students were free to decide for themselves what to accept or reject. Porphyry says, “He used to encourage his listeners to ask questions themselves, and as a result his classes were full of disorder and idle babble.”
5
When Porphyry first started studying with Plotinus, he questioned a central aspect of Plotinus’s philosophy: that the forms did not exist outside of
nous,
or spirit, (the next highest level of reality after the One).
Porphyry set down his objections in writing. Plotinus had another student, Amelius, read Porphyry’s essay to him. Then he smilingly said, “It’s up to you, Amelius, to solve the problems into which Porphyry has fallen out of ignorance of our views.”
6
According to Porphyry:
Amelius then wrote a rather lengthy book entitled “Against the Objections of Porphyry.” I in turn wrote a response to this, and Amelius replied to my writing. On the third time, I, Porphyry, was able—albeit with difficulty—to understand what was being said, and I changed my views, whereupon I wrote a retraction, which I read before the assembly
7
This anecdote captures the spirit of classic Greek philosophy: restrained, courteous, respectful, patient, non-authoritarian. Even though Plotinus was a spiritual guide for his students, he did not preach to them; he did not demand unthinking fealty; he did not set himself up as the only channel of truth. Plotinus’s warmth and love pervaded his school’s meetings, as Porphyry tells us:
His intelligence was clearly evident when he spoke; its light used to illuminate his face. He was always pleasant to look at, but in those moments he was even more beautiful. He would break into a light sweat, and his gentleness shone forth. He showed his gentle tolerance for questions as well as his vigor in answering them.
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To form, not inform
W
HEN
P
LOTINUS BEGAN
writing the
Enneads,
he did not intend them to be a tightly organized description of his philosophy. Instead, Plotinus wrote about subjects and problems that came up in the meetings of his school. Few people ever saw the treatises, as Porphyry says that it wasn’t easy to make copies. Living as we do in an age when printed books are cheap and readily available, it is difficult to imagine how precious a hand-copied set of the
Enneads
would have been to Plotinus’s students.
Porphyry tells us, “These books were entrusted only to a small number of persons, for it was not yet easy to obtain them; they were given out with a bad conscience, and not simply or recklessly. Rather, every effort was made to choose those who were to receive them.”
9
Today, we tend to look upon philosophical works as informative rather than formative. That is, a philosopher’s book is read with the expectation of learning something new, not of becoming someone new. Pierre Hadot speaks of the difficulty of comprehending classical philosophical writings from our present perspective.
Above all, the work, even if it is apparently theoretical and systematic, is written not so much to inform the reader of a doctrinal content but to form him, to make him traverse a certain itinerary in the course of which he will make spiritual progress. This procedure is clear in the works of Plotinus and Augustine, in which all the detours, starts and stops, and digressions of the work are formative elements. One must always approach a philosophical work of antiquity with this idea of spiritual progress in mind.
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The world’s worst written book?
T
HUS
I
BELIEVE
that R. Baine Harris is unduly critical when he says, “Although extremely profound and provocative, the
Enneads
probably deserves to be called the world’s worst written book since Plotinus seems to presume that the reader already has a complete knowledge of his system when he discusses any topic.”
11
True, but we need to remember that Plotinus was writing for his innermost circle of students, who were well acquainted with the general thrust of his philosophy. This helps explain why the treatises in the
Enneads
are almost impenetrable if one reads them without any prior knowledge of Plotinus’s philosophy.
Plotinus jumps around from subject to subject; he sets up counterarguments to a possible answer to a question and argues each so persuasively that the reader has trouble deciding which side Plotinus truly favors; he uses the same term, such as “soul” or “intellect,” in various ways depending on the context, frustrating a literal translation through his unique use of the Greek language; he sprinkles his writing with “as it were” and “so to speak,” indicating that even if the reader grasps what he is saying, what he is saying is not the whole truth.
Some of the literary eccentricities evident in the
Enneads
can be attributed to Plotinus’s mystical subject matter and some are commensurate with the sophisticated audience for whom he was writing. And then there is the factor of his unusual composition style. His biographer, Porphyry, says that Plotinus never reread what he wrote because his eyesight was so poor. Further, he had bad handwriting and was a terrible speller.
Plotinus composed fluidly, however, “writing down what he had stored up in his soul in such a way that he seemed to be copying straight out of a book.”
12
He had a remarkable ability to maintain a focus on his subject matter even while attending to other tasks. Porphyry says that Plotinus could be fully engaged in a conversation and still keep his mind on what he had been writing about. When his guest left, Plotinus would return to composing as if he had never taken a break.
In the world, not of the world
P
LOTINUS’S PERSONAL LIFE
testifies to his ability to adhere to the oft-heard spiritual adage, “live in the world without being of the world.” Porphyry writes:
Many men and women of the most eminent families, when they were about to die, brought their children to Plotinus—males as well as females—and handed them over to him, along with all their possessions, as if to a kind of holy and divine guardian. This was why his house had become full of boys and girls.
txt2">… And yet, although he was responsible for the cares and concerns of the lives of so many people, he never—as long as he was awake—let slacken his constant tension directed towards the Spirit.
13
This reminds us that philosophy, the love of wisdom, was a full-time pursuit for Plotinus. He ceaselessly sought to unite his consciousness with spirit, the first emanation of the One, knowing it to be the essence of his existence. Yet Plotinus didn’t live in a philosophical ivory tower far removed from everyday life. In addition to his teaching duties, caring for the children entrusted to him involved him in many practical affairs.
We’re also told that “although he spent twenty-six entire years in Rome, and acted as arbitrator in disputes between many people, he never made a single enemy amongst the politicians,”
14
another indication of his ability to remain inwardly centered in spirit while outwardly acting in the world.
The primary goal of the mystic philosopher, as Plotinus teaches in the
Enneads,
is to bring the movable center of his or her consciousness into alignment with the unmoving center of existence, the One. A person’s illusory and shifting sense of individuality thus must be distinguished from a true sense of self. If one traces his or her I-ness back to its source, as one would trace a line (or radius) back to the center of the circle from which it emanates, then the core of one’s self will be found to be identical with the core of everything.
Truth trumps tradition
W
ISDOM LIES WITHIN
, not without. The only way to know divine truth is to unite one’s consciousness so fully with it as to become it. Since union with anything or anyone outside of one’s own self is impossible, this leads the philosopher to be more respectful than reverential of other people, regardless of their seeming spiritual attainments. Though Plotinus had a tremendous respect for his fellow Greek philosophers, alive or dead, we can be sure that he agreed with Plato: “But a man is not to be reverenced more than the truth, and therefore I will speak out.”
15
Hence, Porphyry tells us that Plotinus writes what is in his own mind rather than bowing to tradition. After a student would read a commentary by another philosopher on a text from Plato or Aristotle, “Plotinus borrowed nothing at all from these commentaries; on the contrary, he was personal and original in his theoretical reflection, and brought to his investigations the spirit of Ammonius.”
16
In a treatise about time, for example, Plotinus says: