Return to the One (14 page)

Creation Is Contemplation

B
Y NOW
I
HOPE
the reader is beginning to feel familiar with the basic structure of Plotinus’s cosmos, an ever-flowing emanation of energy and consciousness with no sharp boundaries, just general demarcations. Accordingly, the descriptions in the
Enneads
of these realms tend to blur into each other so that it often is difficult to tell what level of creation Plotinus is talking about. Still, the basic structure is clear.

Above all is the One, the wellspring of creation. From the One emanates spirit, the unified realm of forms. From spirit emanates soul, a more differentiated domain that includes both individual souls and the all-encompassing Soul of the All. The lowest aspect of soul is nature, which brings into being the physical universe, the last and lowest emanation of the One. The physical universe arguably can be considered a fourth region of creation because of the dominance of matter here.

This is, so to speak, the geography that must be traversed to return to the One. Remember, of course, that the One, spirit, soul, and nature are not separated by time or space, but by degrees of consciousness. The soul’s journey is to take place right here, right now. But how? What is the means of transport from one realm to another? And what do we do when we leave the confines of earthly experience? What sort of “culture” can we expect to find in the spiritual regions?

Plotinus makes it simple for us. There is one answer to all of these questions:
contemplation.
Contemplation is how the spiritual seeker rises up and it is how creation came down. Contemplation is the primary activity, perhaps the sole activity, in higher regions of consciousness. Contemplation is what spiritual beings do. If we learn how to contemplate, we’ll experience no culture shock during our journey to the One. We’ll fit right in wherever we find ourselves.

All things are a by-product of contemplation…. Every soul is, and becomes, that which she contemplates.
[III-8-8, IV-3-8
¹
]

But it is not only souls that contemplate, says Plotinus. Everything contemplates. Even earth, bare topsoil, is a contemplator, along with the plants that spring up from the ground. Plotinus recognizes the seeming absurdity of this point of view, and in one of his rare attempts at levity in the
Enneads
he starts off his arguments about the primacy of contemplation with a self-deprecating, soft-sell approach.

Suppose we said, playing at first before we set out to be serious, that all things aspire to contemplation, and direct their gaze to this end—not only rational but irrational living things, and the power of growth in plants, and the earth which brings them forth…. Could anyone endure the oddity of this line of thought?
[III-8-1]

It certainly is an odd notion that plants and earth engage in what contemplation normally is considered to be. “Should we lease or buy our next car?” your spouse asks. “I don’t know,” you reply, “I’ve got to contemplate the matter.”

Usually this means that you’ll compare the short- and long-term costs of leasing versus buying, assess how much money you have available for car payments, and arrive at a well-reasoned conclusion. Contemplation, in this sense, is a means to an end. It may not be entirely rational (maybe the facts point toward leasing but your intuition says buy), yet, like reason, this sort of contemplation is an attempt to know something you are presently uncertain of.

This isn’t what Plotinus means by contemplation (in Greek,
theoria).
And herein lies the key to understanding that his view of contemplation is not odd at all, but supremely natural. John Deck says:

For Plotinus as for Aristotle, any contemplation is knowledge. Plotinus does not view it as consideration, or mulling over. For this reason it is a mistake to take “contemplation,” as he uses it, to be “thought,” if by “thought” we mean a mental process or act which is not in firm possession of its object…. In discursive reasoning
[dianoia
or
logismos],
the object is not yet possessed, it is being sought. Thus discursive reasoning is not yet knowledge.
²

So how is it possible to say that nature does not contemplate? Isn’t it a truism that all of nature obeys the laws of nature? Don’t all atomic particles know exactly what to do when gravity, electro-magnetism, or a nuclear force beckons them into action? Doesn’t the silent contemplation of nature know much more about physical reality than all the noisy reasoning of scientists? The cosmos effortlessly creates supernovas, galaxies beyond counting, and black holes. Can we?

If she
[Nature]
were asked why she creates, she would reply—if that is, she were willing to listen to the questioner and to speak—

“You should not have questioned me, but understood in silence, just as I myself keep silent, for I am not accustomed to talk. What is there to understand? That what comes into being is the object of my silent contemplation, and that the product of my contemplation comes into being in a natural way. I myself was born of such contemplation; this is why I have a natural love of contemplation.”
[III-8-4]
³

As Pierre Hadot puts it, nature is like a painter who is able to form an image on canvas merely by looking at a model.
⁴
What does nature look at? What does she contemplate? Spirit, the world of forms. Nature, like almost all contemplators, thus looks Janus-like in two directions: upward toward its prior in the grand scheme of emanation from the One, and downward toward what comes after it, the physical universe (the exceptions are at the extremes: the One, for which there is nothing prior to contemplate, and matter, for which there is nothing after that can come into being).

Creation thus is a continuous flow of contemplation, a never-ending stream of conscious energy that is simultaneously in ceaseless flux and eternal rest. At rest, because spirit, or intellect, eternally possesses all forms as a manyness that still remains undivided. In flux, because here in the physical realm the forms unfold within time and space and we say, with excessive confidence, “This caused that” or “I created such-and-such.”

Intellect gives to the Soul of the All, and Soul (the one which comes next after Intellect) gives from itself to the soul next after it, enlightening it and impressing form on it, and this last soul immediately makes, as if under orders.
[II-3-17]

Plotinus is saying that normally we individual human souls are almost at the bottom of the cosmos’s organizational chart. We’ve got some powerful bosses above us—the Soul of the All, which takes orders from spirit, which is governed by the One—and there isn’t much left after us to order around. Just matter/energy and other souls, whom we do our best to manipulate to our ends with decidedly mixed success. And even these efforts are “under orders,” as we shall find in a later section (“Providence Is Pervasive”).

As was noted previously, the
Enneads
advise us to shun the role most people long to play, albeit unconsciously, but are terribly unqualified for: Master of the Universe. That position, teaches Plotinus, is already filled and it never will open up for our advancement. All the same, we do our best to be mini-masters of our mini-universes, an exhausting, frustrating, unfulfilling, and ultimately impossible task. We try to create order in our lives but messiness always seeps in around the edges of the little personal islands of peace and harmony we keep trying to construct in the midst of a larger cruel world.

The problem, in Plotinus’s view, is twofold. First, we’re facing in the wrong direction if we want to move toward lasting happiness and well-being. We should be looking up toward spirit, rather than down toward matter. If our attention is directed toward our source, our creator, we will become that. If our attention is directed toward what comes after us, what we attempt to create, then we will become that. The choice is ours.

Second, even when we try to create something good and beautiful in the world, in our relationships, or within ourselves, we generally make a mess of things. Effective creation requires concentrated contemplation. The most successful people in any area—work, family, romance, athletics, art, science, spirituality—devote themselves wholeheartedly and single-pointedly to their goals. Most of us, unfortunately, lack the willpower to focus so attentively on what we desire to achieve or create.

And failures, too, both in what comes into being and what is done, are failures of contemplators who are distracted from their object of contemplation.
[III-8-7]

Along these lines, it’s understandable that we usually approach spirituality as we do most everything else in life: as something to be possessed. If, with enough effort, I can get a good job, a loving spouse, a fit body, and a nice home, then why shouldn’t I be able to reach out and also bring spirit into my soul?

Because spirit is, so to speak, much bigger than we are. A mouse doesn’t hold up an elephant; any holding is going to be accomplished by the larger being. Not only is spirit exceedingly vaster in power and consciousness than we are, it being the creator and we the created, but spirit also is more unified and formless than our divided physicality. So with spirit we not only lack the ability to grasp what might otherwise be an object of contemplation, there also is nothing familiar to lay hold of

This makes spiritual contemplation exceedingly difficult, at least as long as the contemplator tries to make spirit something to be known. Recall that for Plotinus true contemplation is knowledge, not an attempt at knowing. It seems that we must go directly from ignorance to knowledge, from darkness to light, without passing through the intermediate stages so familiar in everyday life of “I’m starting to understand. Things are getting clearer. Ah, now I know!”

On the journey to the One, it isn’t seeing that we want, but sight. Not what has been created, but the creator. Not signs of spirit, but spirit itself. Not thoughts of unity, but actual oneness.

As we return to the One from our sojourn in the depths of manyness, we shouldn’t be surprised to find in the course of our ascent that what is experienced becomes more and more akin to the experiencer. As duality is replaced by unity, differences of all sorts become increasingly blurred. And this includes the difference between the seer and what is seen, the hearer and what is heard, the knower and what is known.

But, as contemplation ascends from nature to soul, and soul to intellect, and the contemplations become always more intimate and united to the contemplators … it is clear that in intellect both are one.
[III-8-8]

In a sense, then, we can indeed become masters of the universe. If we are able to contemplate spirit deeply enough, we will essentially become spirit. Whatever spirit knows, which is everything, we will know. Whatever spirit can do, which is anything, we will be able to do. What a wonder, to be released from the confines of the pitifully limited knowing and doing of everyday life, to be able to enter into the mysteries of the universe not as a detached observer but as an intimate part of Mystery itself.

There is, however, a catch to all this. We can’t remain ourselves, at least as we presently know ourselves to be, and also become the creator of the cosmos. This, it must be admitted, would be a ridiculous contradiction. After all, if I’m really on the way to becoming a divine being why can’t I find the leftovers in the refrigerator? Hmmm. Maybe it’s because I’m so busily occupied with contemplating and creating material things outside of myself instead of the spiritual reality inside myself.

If the form which makes things here below was our real being, our craftsmanship would have the mastery without toil and trouble.
[V-8-7]

The key to effortless and potent creating is to unite form and being. The reason I stand in front of the open refrigerator for so long, staring blankly into its recesses, is that the form of the leftovers I’m seeking is separate from my own being. The seeker and the sought are different things, which is why finding the leftovers takes such a long time. By contrast, I have no difficulty creating a thought or an image in my mind because my creation is part of my being, not separate from myself.

In the same fashion, Plotinus teaches that spirit contemplates the forms within itself, and instantly physical reality manifests, just as I am able to contemplate an object, “Volvo,” and instantly a mental image of a car arises in my mind. The reason a real car doesn’t manifest in my garage, saving me from having to go out and buy one, is that my contemplation is of an object outside of myself. Spirit produces real reality because the forms spirit contemplates are part and parcel of itself.

Here Plotinus describes the immediacy and ease of physical creation, making some jibes at those who believe the creator thinks and acts like we do. It’s a lengthy quotation, but worth studying for the insights it provides into Plotinus’s worldview.

Since we concede that this world has its being and its qualities from elsewhere, are we to imagine that its creator thought it up by himself, as well as the fact that it ought to be placed in the center; then he thought up water, and that it ought to be placed on top of the earth; and then everything else in order as far as the heavens?