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Authors: Brian Hines

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Introduction

 

I
F SOMETHING
has been lost and you’re not sure where to look for it, there’s good reason to start searching right where you are rather than far afield. Most of us have had the experience of wandering around the house looking for our car keys, only to find that they were sitting unnoticed in our pocket or purse the whole time. Can we apply this lesson to finding meaning and well-being in life? I believe we can.

This book is about the spiritual teachings of Plotinus, a third-century Greek philosopher and mystic. He left a collection of writings known as the
Enneads
, so called because one of his students, Porphyry, edited that collection into six sets of nine treatises each (
enneades
in Greek means “nines”).

A central message of the
Enneads
is that what each of us truly longs for, even if we don’t consciously realize it, is to return to the One—which may be thought of as “God,” if this more familiar term for ultimate reality is stripped of its personal or theistic connotations.

The One, for Plotinus, is unequivocally and indisputably
one
. It is the root of everything in existence, for the One is both the source of being and the ground of being (even though, as we will learn, it also is beyond being). So at a deep, mystical level you are the One, I am the One, this book you are holding is the One, and everything else outside and inside of us is the One.

Sign in the seeking

W
HY IS IT
, then, that the world appears to be constituted of so many distinct entities? I certainly seem to be separate from you, and you from me. Each of us feels closer to some objects, people, and concepts than to other objects, people, and concepts, but always there remains a gap between one’s self and all that is other than one’s self.

It is natural to try to bridge this gap because humans have an innate longing for intimacy and union, not isolation and separation. Indeed, every urge—such as to worship, to act rightly, to love, to create, to know—flows from a primal drive for fulfillment. We want to make whole what has been broken, to find what has been lost, to do what demands to be done, to return from where we have come.

Looking at the world, people appear to be going in myriads of different directions. It is difficult to discern much rhyme or reason in the wondrous diversity of human pursuits. Some devote their lives to selfless service, others to egotistical self-aggrandizement. Some avidly pursue scientific knowledge, others spiritual wisdom. Some hold family and friends dear, others find companionship in solitude. Where, in all this chaotic activity, is there any sign of the universal order Plotinus speaks of in the
Enneads?

The sign is in the seeking, not in what is being sought. Everyone is looking for something—desperately, passionately, ceaselessly. There is no end to the number of different “somethings,” but the
looking
is common to all. So we are drawn to ask: What if the seeming multiplicity of the cosmos is an illusion and a clearer vision would see that unity underlies all this manyness? Then the quest for any particular thing would, in truth, be a quest for that single thing.

Perhaps all of the seemingly random motion of life on Earth, with six billion people scurrying here and there, each seeking a unique this and that, actually results from an astoundingly simple and largely unconscious impulse: to return to the One. Here is how Plotinus puts it (see the “
Reading the Writings of Plotinus
” chapter for a description of the numbering scheme, such as “VI-7-31,” used in the
Enneads):

The soul loves the Good
[the One]
because, from the beginning, she has been incited by the Good to love him. And the soul which has this love at hand does not wait to be reminded by the beauties of this lower world, but since she has this love—even if she does not realize it—she is constantly searching.
[VI-7-31]
1

 

Almost every one of us is looking for meaning and well-being everywhere except the most obvious and closest place: the center of one’s consciousness. This is, of course, the place where we are right here and right now, for if you or I were not conscious, we could not be reading or writing these words. The problem is that we are aware not only of a conscious core but also of the many peripheral sensations, thoughts, and emotions scattered throughout the consciousness.

The great Plotinian goal is to discard from consciousness all that is not the One. What remains is, logically, the One—divine reality, plain and simple. In this sense, then, Plotinus is highly religious; the root meaning of “religion” is found in the Latin
religare,
to bind back, or reconnect, the individual with God.

Since Plotinus’s teachings clearly point toward a direct experience of the One and other spiritual realities, not merely an intellectual understanding of them, Plotinus is recognized as a mystic as well as a philosopher. There are many connotations of “mystic,” but Evelyn Underhill cogently notes there is one essential of mysticism: union between God and the soul.
2

This is precisely Plotinus’s overarching purpose, which he shares with many other mystics, religious believers, and spiritual seekers. Aldous Huxley neatly summed up the essence of this universal mystical metaphysics in his book,
The Perennial Philosophy.

Philosophia perennis—
the phrase was coined by Leibniz; but the thing—the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man’s final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being—the thing is immemorial and universal.
3

 

Wisdom for a Western mind

S
O
P
LOTINUS
isn’t telling us anything new, nor is he telling us anything complex. The meaning of life (or, we might say, that which gives life meaning) is to be found as close to home as could possibly be imagined: right within, or more accurately
as,
the center of one’s consciousness. What makes Plotinus unique is that, as a Greek philosopher, his explication of the perennial philosophy is framed in a thoroughly “Western” fashion.

If someone has a Western mind, he or she is more likely to be convinced by another Western mind that the tenets of the perennial philosophy are true. Such conviction is requisite for believing in those tenets and for making them the foundation of one’s life, and indeed one’s very being. But what is the Western mind? It’s easier to inwardly intuit than to outwardly describe.

I’m quite sure that I have a predominantly Western mind. But since Western ways of thinking and relating to the world are so intimately entwined in my consciousness, I primarily notice my Western-ness when I associate with people thoroughly imbued with an Eastern mentality—who may or may not be Indian, Chinese, Japanese, or such, because “Western” and “Eastern” are internal attitudes, not external attributes. In our increasingly borderless world marked by free-flowing education, information, and technology, an Indian computer scientist may have a Western mind, while her American tai chi instructor may have an Eastern mentality

I don’t have an ironclad definition of the Western and Eastern minds (which implies that my own may not indisputably be of the Occidental variety). But here are a few lighthearted ways to distinguish them experientially

If you attend a talk on some spiritual subject—a lecture, sermon, discourse—and the people around you are reaching for handkerchiefs to dab their tears of love and devotion, while you are pulling out a notebook and pen to jot down critical questions to ask the speaker, you have a Western mind. If passages in your Bible or other holy book are highlighted in various colors, you have a Western mind (give yourself extra points if objections are penciled in the margin next to pronouncements you disagree with).

I don’t mean to imply that the Western mind is entirely detached, rational, skeptical, independent, and analytical. Even those with a strong predilection toward a Western mentality are capable of manifesting the opposite characteristics as well: intimacy, intuition, faithfulness, interdependency holism. This is because each of us is a mixture of what we might call “masculine” and “feminine” qualities. The challenge, psychologically, spiritually, even societally, is to find the proper blend of masculine and feminine, Western and Eastern, yang and yin, respectively.

Richard Tarnas, author of
The Passion of the Western Mind,
says that the masculinity of the Western mind is a questing force, ceaselessly striving for freedom and progress. Present in both men and women, the rebellious and individualistic Western mind seeks to become differentiated from the cultural matrix that gives it birth.
4

Yet Tarnas also observes that “this separation necessarily calls forth a longing for a reunion with that which has been lost…. I believe this has all along been the underlying goal of Western intellectual and spiritual evolution.
For the deepest passion of the Western mind has been to reunite with the ground of its own being.

5
Tarnas implies that there is no conflict between the Western mind and the spiritual goal of divine union, which fits with the fact that Plotinus embraces both.

The roots of Western thought spring from the fertile ground of ancient Greece. So when I discovered the spiritual teachings of Plotinus, I felt like I had come home. I was instantly comfortable with his approach to spirituality: a blend of rationality and mysticism, of reasonable words and ecstatic contemplation. The culture within which Plotinus studied, taught, and wrote his philosophy is the culture that gave birth to Western civilization. Could there be a better place for a Western mind to look for spiritual inspiration? Richard Tarnas explains why his book starts off as it does:

We begin with the Greeks. It was some twenty-five centuries ago that the Hellenic world brought forth that extraordinary flowering of culture that marked the dawn of Western civilization. Endowed with seemingly primeval clarity and creativity, the ancient Greeks provided the Western mind with what has proved to be a perennial source of insight, inspiration, and renewal. Modern science, medieval theology, classical humanism—all stand deeply in their debt.

Greek thought was as fundamental for Copernicus and Kepler, and Augustine and Aquinas, as for Cicero and Petrarch. Our way of thinking is still profoundly Greek in its underlying logic, so much so that before we can begin to grasp the character of our own thought, we must first look closely at that of the Greeks. They remain fundamental for us in other ways as well: Curious, innovative, critical, intensely engaged with life and with death, searching for order and meaning yet skeptical of conventional verities, the Greeks were originators of intellectual values as relevant today as they were in the fifth century B.C.
6

 

Alfred North Whitehead famously said that it is a safe generalization that all of Western philosophy is but a series of footnotes to Plato. This is an implied endorsement of Plotinus’s importance, since Plato is Plotinus’s philosophical forebear. Separated by some 600 years (Plato lived from 427–347
B.C.E.
, and Plotinus from 205–270
C.E.
), modern scholars call Plotinus a Neoplatonist.

I won’t go into the details of what distinguishes a Platonist from a Neoplatonist, because this isn’t necessary to appreciate Plotinus’s teachings. Suffice it to say that, according to Maria Luisa Gatti, Plotinus differs from Plato mainly in the elimination of politics from his philosophy, his more radical assertion that reality is monistic (a unified whole), and the spiritualization of his philosophical system.
7

Neoplatonism and Christianity

E
CHOING
W
HITEHEAD
, can we say that all of Western spirituality is but a series of footnotes to Plotinus? This would be going too far, even though Richard Tarnas says this of Saint Augustine (354–430), who had a great formative influence on Christian theology: “Plotinus’s philosophy, in turn, was pivotal in Augustine’s gradual conversion to Christianity. Augustine saw Plotinus as one in whom ‘Plato lived again,’ and regarded Plato’s thought itself as ‘the most pure and bright in all philosophy,’ so profound as to be in almost perfect concordance with the Christian faith.”
8

During the third century, in Plotinus’s lifetime, Neoplatonism and Christianity competed for the hearts and minds of those in the Mediterranean world. Nowadays, among Christians at least, this tends to be viewed as a battle between the ethereal teachings of Jesus and a crude paganism.

Indeed, the spiritual message of one of these combatants can be summarized in this fashion: There is only one God, who is all love; every human being has an immortal soul, whose highest destiny is to be united with God; if we live virtuous lives, we will join our heavenly Father after death, but if we do not, justice will be done; we must humbly yield to the divine will, accepting with equanimity whatever life brings us; to be attracted to the sensual pleasures of this world is to be distanced from God, the Good we seek but never find in material pursuits. And then there is the Christian conception of spirituality, which I won’t bother to summarize, as it should already be familiar to the reader.

BOOK: Return to the One
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