Return to the One (4 page)

But, as it is, we must first take the most important statements about it and consider whether our own account will agree with any of them.
[III-7-7]

And after observing that the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus has left us guessing about what he really meant, Plotinus makes a telling statement that could apply equally to portions of his own writings:

He has neglected to make clear to us what he is saying, perhaps because we ought to seek by ourselves, as he himself sought and found.
[IV-8-1]

It is much more important to actually tread the path that leads to the One, than to have an intellectual understanding of what lies along the path. Spiritual knowledge is gained by direct experience, not second-hand reports. Plotinus urges us to carefully examine the teachings of past philosophers (including him now) to sort out those who appear to have come closest to the truth and then to question how we can attain the same level of understanding.

Now we must consider that some of the blessed philosophers of ancient times have found out the truth; but it is proper to investigate which of them have attained it most completely, and how we too could reach an understanding about these things.
[III-7-1]

Plotinus doesn’t claim he has climbed to any philosophical heights that were not reached by at least some of his predecessors. What he has done, they did, and we can also do. The door that leads to the chamber of spiritual truth always has been, is now, and always will be wide open. All that changes is how those who have passed through this door attempt to describe the indescribable perennial philosophy.

Our doctrines are not novel, nor do they date from today: they were stated long ago, but not in an explicit way. Our present doctrines are explanations of those older ones, and they use Plato’s own words to prove that they are ancient.
[V-l-8]
¹⁷

Philosophy as a Way of Life

U
NDENIABLY
, there is an adventurous spirit in Plotinus’s philosophy. Bernard McGinn says: “Plotinus’s ability to combine abstruse philosophical analysis with a tone of deep personal feeling is unique—reading him is like being invited to embark on a journey of exploration into uncharted territory in search of hidden treasure: a bracing and perhaps dangerous enterprise.”
¹

Contrast this with the modern perspective of what philosophy is all about. When people envision a philosopher, a likely image is of a gray-haired intellectual ensconced in a high-backed leather chair surrounded with floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with musty tomes, holding forth with his or her fellow philosophers on some abstruse question that has little or nothing to do with everyday life.

There is considerable truth in this image, for much of what passes for philosophical inquiry today is little more than word-play, abstract ideas having sport with other abstract ideas in a conceptual arena far removed from everyday life. This is much different from the goal of Greek philosophy during Plotinus’s lifetime.

Philosophy, an art of living

I
N HIS BOOK
,
Philosophy as a Way of Life,
Pierre Hadot says, “Ancient philosophy proposed to mankind an art of living. By contrast, modern philosophy appears above all as the construction of a technical jargon reserved for specialists…. In modern university philosophy, philosophy is obviously no longer a way of life or form of life—unless it be the form of life of a professor of philosophy”
²

As an ancient rather than a modern philosopher, Plotinus isn’t asking us to merely intellectually believe in a philosophy of life; he extends a much more significant invitation to embrace philosophy
as
life, inseparable from our very being. This is why Plotinus’s mystical philosophy seems so exciting, challenging, and adventurous: so is life.

Hadot notes that for the ancients, “Philosophy … took on the form of an exercise of the thought, will, and the totality of one’s being, the goal of which was to achieve a state practically inaccessible to mankind: wisdom. Philosophy was a method of spiritual progress which demanded a radical conversion and transformation of the individual’s way of being.”
³

In the age of Plotinus, the word “philosophy” had not yet lost its original meaning: love of wisdom.
Philo,
in Greek, means love.
Sophia,
wisdom. Just as philodendrons are climbing plants that love to entwine themselves around trees
(dendron),
so did the ancient Greek philosophers seek to embrace wisdom. For them philosophy wasn’t an academic exercise but a way of life that led to the greatest possible well-being,
eudaimonia.

Wisdom and well-being are intimately connected in Plotinus’s philosophy because the highest truth is also the highest good—the One (often termed the Good, with a capital G, indicating its superiority to all lesser goods). Hence, the key to achieving
eudaimonia
is realizing what truly exists. Without a solid foundation of being there is no possibility of achieving well-being.

This is why Plotinus taught that no matter what we’re doing with our lives, it’s all pretty much worthless if we’re not yet in touch with our genuine beings. We are like children playing make-believe who don’t realize the princess is really a plastic toy, her castle is a cardboard box, and her precious gems are cheap trinkets. However important this children’s play may seem to us when we are young and impressionable, with the coming of maturity these things are seen for what they really are.

Plato’s cave

P
LOTINUS,
following Plato, did not cleanly divide creation into what exists and what doesn’t exist, or into being and not-being. Instead, he envisioned a great chain of being connecting everything, all the way from what is most lasting and real down to the things in this physical universe, which possess the least being of anything. Thus, something can exist yet barely be. And this, of course, includes one’s own self.

Plato, in
The Republic,
provides a vivid metaphor of our human condition: we are prisoners in a cave. The cave is both without and within us, for we are aware of both external and internal reality. Plato says that we human beings have been living in this cave from birth, chained so that we cannot move, able to look only at the far wall of the cavern.

On this wall we see shadows dancing. A shadow may be our own, that of another person, or of an object that is being carried along a low wall behind us, behind which a fire burns, enabling the shadow of the object to be seen. These substantial objects, the spiritual forms, are real; their shadows are much less real. So the basic message of this metaphor is that what we are aware of now, physical existence, is smoke and mirrors, while the unseen mystery of spiritual existence is the solid truth behind appearances.

What we generally consider to be beautiful and good, then, isn’t real. This world is like a dream, illusory and ephemeral. Whatever beauty and goodness it seems to possess is a shadow of true beauty and goodness. Hence, it is supremely important to pursue wisdom above all else. If we don’t know what really is, how can we make the correct choice about what to do? Right living flows naturally from knowledge of real being.

Love is wonderful but our love should be directed toward what is most real. Otherwise, our situation is akin to that of a man who embraces his lover’s shadow when she enters his bedroom. How senseless it would be for him to cast himself upon the floor, passionately grasping at a vague image of the beautiful woman standing before him. He will never enjoy the delight of her company, nor will he be able to know and love her as she truly is, until he turns from her shadow to the reality.

Nothing in this world can fully satisfy us because nothing here truly is. And the farther away we are from consciousness of the One, the less being we ourselves possess. We are shadows trying to drink from a mirage. We’re in love with reflections. We’re starving for reality but continue to devour illusion. Not surprisingly, we’re never satiated.

From this perspective, it’s time to stop trying to squeeze more happiness out of the things, thoughts, and people of this world. We need to recognize that we’re living in a desert—our arid consciousness of physical reality alone—that is almost completely devoid of sustenance for the soul, the enduring essence of us that feels spiritual hunger and thirst. We have to start moving toward the One, for this is our source and it alone will satisfy.

Where is the One?

T
HE PROBLEM,
though, is knowing which direction to go. Parts of reality are lying around all over the place in plain view. But the wholeness of reality is well-hidden. If this weren’t the case, there would be no need for scientists to labor so mightily to discover a theory of everything that explains the fundamental nature of the universe, nor for mystics to undergo such arduous disciplines to realize God. The soul needs a guide to the realm of ultimate truth and well-being, the One. Plotinus says:

We must not look, but must, as it were, close our eyes and exchange our faculty of vision for another. We must awaken this faculty which everyone possesses, but few people ever use.
[I-6-8]
⁴

Plotinus taught that anyone in love with wisdom (namely, a philosopher) has to undertake a quest to find his or her beloved, for truth resides at the summit of the spiritual mountain that is the cosmos. The path leads the soul from its current immersion in the depths of materiality and sensual pursuits to the more ethereal heights of mind and intuitive intelligence, and then to the spiritual pinnacle of reality, the One.

Plotinus invites us to enter an unfamiliar domain of consciousness that is beyond matter, sensation, reason, and all that is known now. As was noted earlier, this truly would be “a bracing and perhaps dangerous enterprise,” for journeying to an unknown higher level of consciousness obviously is a much more adventurous move than simply rearranging the familiar thoughts that comprise the contents of one’s present level of consciousness.

Simply put, actually returning to the One bears no resemblance to merely thinking, “I am returning to the One.”

Philosophy is lived, not thought

I
N LIKE FASHION
, Pierre Hadot observes that there is a distinction between discourse about philosophy and philosophy itself.

Philosophical theories are in the service of the philosophical life…. The act of living in a genuinely philosophical way thus corresponds to an order of reality totally different from that of philosophical discourse.
⁵

This gets back to the distinction between a philosophy of life and philosophy
as
life. The former is separable from someone’s life, a collection of concepts that mirrors, more or less, his or her understanding of the purpose of earthly existence and the priorities that should be placed on various worldly activities. Since concepts can differ significantly from reality (I can conceive that the earth is flat, but it really is round), a person’s philosophy of life usually bears only a passing resemblance to his or her actual life. The face we present to others when we respond to the question “What do you believe in?” generally is a mask that disguises, to a greater or lesser degree, our hidden heartfelt beliefs and desires.

By contrast, the goal of a person who aspires to philosophy
as
life is to significantly narrow, if not eliminate completely, the gap between his philosophy of life and his life. Then there is no need for him to utter a word when queried about what he believes in, because his everyday actions, including his demeanor at the very moment the question is asked, comprise the complete honest answer. The philosophy he espouses then is not something that explains his life; his life explains the philosophy he espouses.

This is how the ancient Greeks, including Plotinus, looked upon philosophy, the love of wisdom. A lover shouldn’t have to say, “I love you,” to his or her beloved, as lovely as those words are. Actions do the speaking in love, as in philosophy. As Pierre Hadot puts it:

One could say that what differentiates ancient from modern philosophy is the fact that, in ancient philosophy, it was not only Chrysippus [a founder of Stoicism] or Epicurus [founder of Epicureanism] who, just because they had developed a philosophical discourse, were considered philosophers.

Rather, every person who lived according to the precepts of Chrysippus or Epicurus was every bit as much of a philosopher as they. A politician like Cato of Utica was considered a philosopher and even a sage, even though he wrote and taught nothing, because his life was perfectly Stoic.
⁶

The philosophical systems of Stoicism and Epicureanism are poles apart; Stoicism posits that good lies in the virtuous state of the soul, and Epicureanism affirms that matter alone is real and that the good life consists in the pursuit of pleasure. However, Hadot notes, they are united in their embrace of philosophy as a way of life to be pursued at each instant, whatever that life may be, a stance shared by the other Greek philosophical traditions such as Socratism, Platonism, Aristotelianism, Cynicism, and Skepticism.

Plotinus considered himself a Platonist, but modern scholars usually call him a Neoplatonist, largely because his teachings are decidedly more mystical and less worldly than Plato’s. Regardless of what term is used to classify Plotinus’s philosophy, there is no doubt that he intended it to be the foundation of an experiential way of life rather than an intellectual philosophy of life.

A central message of the
Enneads
is that the basic “itinerary” of our return to the One is to know ourselves first as soul, then as spirit, and finally as the source—God, the One. This steadily leads us from multiplicity to unity. Our goal is to be one, not many. In reality, for each of us there is only one being thinking thoughts and acting out actions. So whenever someone thinks one way and acts another a division is created that is at odds with the true nature of both the self and the cosmos. Truth is One, not multiple.

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]
⁷