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Authors: Brian Hines

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Section IV

The One

And Many—

Soul’s Descent,

A
ND
R
ETURN

Soul Is the Self

 

W
E DESCENDED
from the spiritual world.

We fully experienced what earthly existence has to offer.

Now, in every human soul, there is a longing to return to our divine home.

This longing is natural. Our spiritual hunger is ever-present. But we mistake it for a worldly appetite and try to satiate ourselves with matter. Since the immaterial soul can’t merge with materiality, a frustrating sense of incompleteness always remains with us. We know we’re lacking something but can’t quite put our fingers on it.

How could we? The soul has been lost and soul is the true self. What is doing the looking is what has to be found. Our search for happiness takes us everywhere but the only place well-being can be discovered: no place.

For we should not look for a place in which to put it
[soul]
, but make it exist outside all place.
[V-l-10]

 

Here we approach the essence of Plotinus’s mystical philosophy. It is wonderfully simple and beautiful. The problem lies not in understanding his teaching but in experiencing it.

Self is the soul is spirit is the source, the One.

This is the formula that transmutes our limited, pained, fragmented consciousness into the omnipresent, ever-blissful, all-knowing principle of the cosmos. Reflecting the perennial message of mysticism, “the macrocosm is the microcosm,” Plotinus says that the three grand spheres of reality—the One, spirit, soul—are within each of us, as well as without. I recall a song that proclaims, “We are the world.” Yes, but not only the world,
everything.

So our return to the One is also a return to ourselves. There is no place the spiritual seeker needs to explore other than the depths of his or her own consciousness. The One is overall. It is existence itself. Whatever exists is, at heart, present with the One. This includes us.

Plato says the One is not outside anything, but is in company with all without their knowing. For they run away outside it, or rather outside themselves. They cannot then catch the one they have run away from, nor seek for another when they have lost themselves.
[VI-9-7]

 

Rumi, a Persian mystic, speaks of a sage who told a man how to unearth a buried treasure.
1
Paraphrased, the story goes like this: “Stand here,” the sage says, “and shoot an arrow in that direction. Where the arrow lands, there the treasure will be found.” The man gets a bow and enthusiastically does as instructed, carefully watching the high arc of the arrow as it flies away.

After digging where it landed, he is dismayed at not finding any treasure. “I’ll keep trying,” he vows. More arrows are shot, and soon the ground is cratered with holes. But still no treasure. Exhausted, he goes back to the sage and complains that all his work has gone for naught.

“I didn’t tell you to shoot with all your strength,” the sage tells him. “Simply let the arrow drop from your bow.” The treasure, it turns out, was right beneath the man’s feet.

Similarly, Plotinus says that our spiritual wealth is so close we are unable to find it. What separates us from what we seek isn’t physical distance but rather the mistaken notion that we are separated at all. For it is by running outside ourselves that we distance ourselves from the One. A spiritual seeker’s first step, then, is to stop moving and realize his or her true self.

The soul is the self.
[IV-7-1]

 

Previously we learned that human consciousness is composite. While the pure soul is formless spirit, consciousness is able to mix with lower manifestations of the One, which include matter in the form of nature, mind in the form of reason, and other mental faculties. These mustn’t be confused with their lofty counterparts, the intelligible matter and intuitive intelligence soul experiences in the spiritual world.

Hence, when reading Plotinus we must remember that “soul” can mean different things depending on the context. A translator of the
Enneads,
Stephen MacKenna, says, “The word Soul used of man often conveys, in Plotinus’s practice, the idea of the highest in man, what we should be apt to call Spirit; sometimes, where the notion is mainly of intellectual operation, Mind will be the nearest translation; very often ‘Life-Principle’ is the nearest.”
2

Soul, or
psyche,
has many powers. The quest of the mystic philosopher is to explore the full range of what he or she is capable of, not being content to act like an animal or even think like a person. Our beastly and rational sides are indeed parts of our present human nature but are not the highest aspect of soul.

Reasoning does distinguish us from the unthinking instincts and growth-principles of lower animals and plants. Rationality makes us distinctly human but this isn’t the same as our true self. Plotinus explains in the quotation below that spirit is the essence of soul “when we use it,” and spirit isn’t ours when we don’t use it. Though his language is rather convoluted, his meaning is simple: when matter and mind are left behind, soul is spirit.

What then prevents pure Intellect
[spirit]
from being in soul? Nothing, we shall reply. But ought we to go on to say that it belongs to soul? But we shall not say that it belongs to soul, but we shall say that it is our intellect, being different from the reasoning part and having gone up on high…. And it is ours when we use it, but not ours when we do not use it.
[V-3-3]

 

Spirit cannot belong to soul, or be a part of soul, because spirit essentially
is
soul, at least when soul has ascended within to the spiritual world and “gone up on high.” However, if a person’s consciousness is filled with sensations, memories, and thoughts of the material world, then he isn’t using spirit, for matter is using him. That is, his consciousness becomes filled with all that he is not and he loses touch with the purity of what he really is: soul-spirit.

To know himself, he must discard all that has become attached to him that is not spirit. This means that during inward contemplation his awareness of just about everything he currently considers himself to be has to go: his unique body, personality, beliefs, thoughts, emotions, and so on. Gerard J.P. O’Daly says, “First of all, selfhood, for Plotinus, would be in strict contrast to individuality…. [It] is an ingathering, an elimination of all that is disparate.”
3

Yes, we must so know, if we are to know what “self knowledge” in Intellect means. A man has certainly become Intellect when he lets all the rest which belongs to him go and looks at this with this and himself with himself: that is, it is as Intellect he sees himself.
[V-3-4]

 

Earlier we learned that creation is contemplation. From the One’s contemplation emanates spirit; from the spirit’s contemplation emanates soul; from the soul’s contemplation emanates nature, the physical universe. This is how the One becomes many, by the higher force contemplating, and bringing into being what is lower. And contemplation also is how the many become the One. When we turn our attention from what is beneath us, matter, to what is above us, spirit (intellect), the process of emanation is reversed. Now the individual soul begins to return to its source and realize its true nature.

Therefore one must become Intellect and entrust one’s soul to and set it firmly under Intellect, that it may be awake to receive what that sees, and may by this Intellect behold the One, without adding any sense-perception or receiving anything from sense-perception into that Intellect.
[VI-9-3]

 

Since the macrocosm is within the microcosm, to know ourselves as soul is to progressively know, or rather become, the levels of the cosmos. What we contemplate, we become. The soul, being formless, is able to take on the characteristics of what it contemplates. Because the soul isn’t made of matter, it has a divine nature. But this nature can be veiled by the soul’s association with matter and a longstanding contemplation of material things through countless incarnations in the physical world.

Our demonstration that the soul is not a body makes it clear that it is akin to the diviner and to the eternal nature. It certainly does not have a shape or a color, and it is intangible.
[IV-T-IO]

 

Entering the one-many that is the spiritual world, the World of Forms, the formlessness of the individual soul effortlessly imbibes the form of spirit and the two become as united as two can be while still remaining distinct.

Intellect therefore makes soul still more divine by being its father and by being present to it; for there is nothing between but the fact that they are different, soul as next in order and as the recipient, Intellect as the form.
[V-l-3]

 

If the reader doesn’t clearly understand the difference between soul and spirit, or intellect, there’s no need to despair, for there isn’t much that distinguishes them. A.H. Armstrong says, “The boundary between Soul and Intellect is often not very well-defined in the
Enneads….
The unity of the divine, the immediate presence of the higher in the lower, the unbroken continuity of the divine life from its source to its last diffusion were always essential parts of the thought of Plotinus.”
4

To return to the One it’s only necessary to know where spirit can be found, not how spirit can be described. Spirit is found within, as we learned from a previous quotation:

As for soul, the part of it directed to Intellect is, so to speak, within, and the part outside Intellect directed to the outside.
[V-3-7]

 

Within what? Not the body. Recall that Plotinus teaches that the body is within soul, not the other way around. So the spiritual journey doesn’t take place within our physical frames, nor, of course, does it involve traveling through any kind of physical space.

Realizing our true self as soul depends on the focus of our attention. When our attention is directed to the outside world, not surprisingly we learn about what is outside of us. When our attention is directed to the interior world, we learn about what is within, ourselves. Even though this “within” can’t be delimited by geographical coordinates of up, down, right, left, forward, or back, Plotinus cites an intriguing statement by Plato.

And he said obscurely about us that the soul is “on top in the head.”
[V-l-10]

 

This is a reference to a line in Plato’s
Timaeus:
“And we should consider that God gave the sovereign part of the human soul to be the divinity of each one, being that part which, as we say, dwells at the top of the body.”
5
Of course, the intangible soul doesn’t actually reside in any particular physical location. But the connection between the matter of body and the consciousness of soul certainly appears to be centered in the head or brain. This is where our thinking, feeling, and perceiving seem to take place.

However, the fact that we say “I think,” “I feel,” and “I perceive” implies that a person’s true self is not the same as all the goings-on in his or her head. There is the “I” that is pure consciousness and then there are the countless thoughts, emotions, and perceptions that each of us is conscious of.

To return to the One, we must become one ourselves, since duality can never experience unity. Presently most of us are fractured. Rather than simply being aware, we are aware of awareness. Instead of simply thinking, we think about thoughts.

This uniquely human splintering of consciousness helps
Homo sapiens
adapt to the complex physical world but it prevents us from experiencing the deeper reality from which the manyness of materiality emanates. From an evolutionary standpoint, a capacity for self-reflection seems to be advantageous. However, the goal of the mystic philosopher is devolution, returning to the source.

Wondrously, self-realization is God-realization. Our real self is reality itself. Spiritual practice thus is exceedingly simple while also exceedingly subtle. Look too far and you miss the immediate presence of what is being sought. Clutch too tightly and you fail to hold onto what has never left your grasp. Move too quickly and you run past the One who steadfastly remains by your side.

Without Is Within

 

P
SYCHOLOGISTS
tell us that a mature personality clearly distinguishes between self and other. Newborn babies can’t do this. One of the first things an infant must learn is that he or she is an entity separate from the external environment. So, as we grow up, the worlds within and without ourselves become increasingly distinct.

As adults, our personal thoughts and feelings are considered to be separate from both the inner worlds of other people and the outer physical world. While there is communication between these realms of “I—you” and “I—it,” there is no true communion. I can know someone or something from the outside but not from the inside. To believe otherwise would, it seems, be a regression to an infantile stage of development in which without is within and within is without.

Yet such a state is what Plotinus urges us to achieve above all else. A Biblical adage, Matthew 18:3, comes to mind: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Perhaps the wide-eyed innocent gaze of a newborn baby more truly reflects amazement at what has been lost by coming into the physical world than (as we normally consider) a grateful appreciation of the wondrous sights and sounds of materiality.

If we come to be at one with our self, and no longer split ourselves into two, we are simultaneously One and All, together with that God who is noiselessly present, and we stay with him as long as we are willing and able.
[V-8-11]
1

 

Plotinus says that so long as a person is separated from the self that is his soul, split into two by body-consciousness, he will be separated from both the rest of creation and God. But when we become one ourselves at the same time we become the One that is All, everything that exists. This transformation sounds miraculous and it is. Yet it also is eminently logical.

If God is not a fiction, this power is either present in physical reality or absent. If present, God seemingly would be present everywhere rather than just in certain places. If absent, then spirituality appears to be a lost cause; for then there is no link between God and man, and spiritual endeavor would amount to stumbling around in a material maze with no exit. Plotinus strenuously disagreed with the Gnostics of his time who held that the universe was bereft of God, having been created by an evil maker, and that salvation was promised to only a select few. As we read before:

God is present to all beings, and he is in this world, however we may conceive of this presence; therefore the world participates in God. Or, if God is absent from the world, he is also absent from you, and you can say nothing either about Him or the beings which come after Him.
[II-9-16]
2

 

In other words, it is the height of arrogance for someone to claim that God is present to him or her but is absent from the rest of us. If God is here in the world, he is in everybody. If he is not in the world, then no one is able to speak with any confidence about divine matters, including those who pretend to proclaim a unique revelation.

Plotinus was a mystic who taught that any person was capable of realizing what he had come to know. In one of Plotinus’s few explicit first-person descriptions of his mystical vision, he says that when he was completely within himself he united with the All, the

“greater portion.”

Often I reawaken from my body to myself: I come to be outside other things, and inside myself. What an extraordinarily wonderful beauty I then see! It is then, above all, that I believe I belong to the greater portion. I then realize the best form of life; I become at one with the Divine, and I establish myself in it.
[IV-8-1]
3

 

How is it possible for a single soul to experience the totality of the spiritual world? Because, as A.H. Armstrong says, “The One is not a God ‘outside’ the world. Nor is He remote from us, but intimately present in the center of our souls; or rather we are in Him…. And just because the One is not any particular thing He is present to all things according to their capacity to receive Him.”
4

Our preoccupation with sensing physical forms and thinking thoughts associated with those forms prevents us from experiencing the presence of the One. When attention is directed without, only what is physical or personal can be perceived. Our senses convey information about materiality; then those sensations become grist for our mental mills, which generate our unique memories and interpretations of physical reality. This keeps us bound to a limited and largely subjective knowledge of the cosmos.

Plotinus says that there is another way of sensing and another way of knowing: rather than bringing inside mere impressions of what is outside, bring the whole shebang (a non-philosophical but entirely apt term) within your consciousness. Don’t just sniff the cork if you want to imbibe the essence of ultimate reality, drink the entire bottle. The cautious sobriety of reason and sense perception is incapable of experiencing spirit’s intoxicating beauty.

But those who do not see the whole only acknowledge the external impression, but those who are altogether, we may say, drunk and filled with the nectar, since the beauty has penetrated through the whole of their soul, are not simply spectators. For there is no longer one thing outside and another outside which is looking at it, but the keen sighted has what is seen within.
[V-8-10]

 

Here Plotinus describes, as best he can, the nature of his mystical vision. He did not apprehend spirit and the One in the way we gaze upon an object of this world, as something separate from ourselves. Rather, in the depth of his inner contemplation there was no longer one thing outside, spiritual reality, and “another outside which is looking at it,” himself. By uniting his soul-consciousness with universal-consciousness, Plotinus brought within what at first appeared without. Then there was little or no difference between the perceiver and the perceived, soul and spirit, the drop and the ocean.

Someone who becomes spirit comes to know it in the same fashion as he knows his own consciousness: immediately and intuitively.

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]

 

In this quotation (cited previously), Plotinus assures us that when we are able to raise our consciousnesses to the level of spirit, there is no longer any significant difference between us and the totality of the spiritual world. What a relief! For isn’t it true that all of our difficulties here on Earth stem from our separateness?

Our separate bodies must be nourished and protected; our separate egos, the same. This takes time and trouble, and the job doesn’t always go so well. We fall ill. Dangers are always present. Disappointments and frustrations dog us. Life as we know it now is a never-ending struggle to preserve our separate existences in the face of onslaughts that threaten the integrity of body mind, and personality. We look to others for love and support but the Other is also what we fear, for it is not us.

So it’s wonderful to hear Plotinus say that in the spiritual world each of us
is
that world. And so is everyone and everything else. All is united in the one-many that is spirit. Thus there is nothing to fear, nothing to crave, nothing to be done except love, know, and enjoy. Here is Plotinus’s description of the person who has transcended the illusory separateness of this physical universe and become one with the divine:

For he will see an intellect which sees nothing perceived by the senses, none of these mortal things, but apprehends the eternal by its eternity, and all the things in the intelligible world, having become itself an intelligible universe full of light, illuminated by the truth from the Good, which radiates truth over all the intelligibles.
[IV-7-10]

 

It isn’t possible for a person to know himself as soul, as spirit, or as the One, by observing one part of his self with some other part. Such a dualistic approach would never lead to the unity the mystic philosopher seeks. He or she isn’t after the sort of knowledge that comes from dividing reality into pieces, the job of reason and sense-perception, but rather seeks the intuitive intelligence of true being.

Plotinus reassures us: There is nothing to fear in not being yourself. Of course, emptying ourselves of all that is familiar to us now would indeed be frightful if this is all that we are.

If I am merely an individual, then if I take away my individuality—my unique thoughts, perceptions, emotions, and so forth—I am nothing. I face the terror of existential emptiness. What pleasure or goodness could there be in becoming a void? However, if my soul is a drop of the spiritual ocean, then by realizing my deepest self I become everything rather than nothing. Rather than merely being a separate part of existence, I become a part that is also the whole.

So that a man in this state, by his intuition of himself, and when he actually sees himself, has everything included in this seeing, and by his intuition of everything has himself included.
[IV-4-2]

 

Mystics are often accused of being self-absorbed and world-denying, concerned only with their own salvation or enlightenment. Yet Plotinus says that when a spiritual seeker contemplates himself, his true self, he contemplates everything. Because the essence of us, soul, also is the essence of the universe, spirit, there is nothing more self-less than truly knowing the self.

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