Plotinus
EVEN A CURSORY study of the religions of the world will reveal that among them there exist certain differences in dogma, ritual, and creed. But looking further, we discover a connecting unity, a common thread of truth, running through all faiths. This truth has been propagated through the ages by a small number of men and women who, building their wisdom on the rock of spiritual experience, have transcended these religious differences.
The Roman philosopher Plotinus was one of these. Born into a corrupt age, in an empire sick and tottering from excess, he rises like a shaft of pure light from a dark and troubled period in history. His influence was such that St. Augustine, a century later, praised him as instrumental in his own conversion, thereby infusing Plotinian ideals into many Christian thinkers to follow. Numerous lines of poetry by Dante, Spenser, Coleridge, Emerson, and Wordsworth echo Plotinus, and we can only wonder at his effect upon those who lacked their facility of pen.
IN the third century, the western world was beset with internal discord, constant warring, and a rapid succession of emperors (twenty-nine in seventy years). Famine and plague were commonplace, impoverishing an empire once thought invincible. Philosophy, too, was at its lowest ebb. Stoicism, which had been the moral guide of the cultured for five centuries, was reduced to insignificance.
But a religious consciousness began to seize the minds of a few men. Drawn to the philosophy of Plato, they hoped to extract from his dialogues the nucleus of a spiritual life.
It was to this group that Plotinus belonged. Yet, Plotinus occupies a unique position among his contemporaries. For, above all, he was a philosopher who not only discoursed on God, but had experienced Him. Serene, joyful, and supremely responsive to the radiance of his own soul- these are his distinguishing traits. They mark him as a mystic. A member of that small fraternity of men who have fallen in love with Truth, and found it by the agency of truth itself.
Most of what we know of his life is to be learned from a short biographical treatise written by his principal disciple, Porphyry, who also compiled and edited the Enneads, the only written works of Plotinus. Porphyry’s account, which he attached by way of introduction to the Enneads, is somewhat gossipy and meandering, and often contains blatant eulogizing. But his intimate comments on his master’s life and his accuracy in matters of fact make it historically noteworthy.
Porphyry introduces us to Plotinus by curiously noting that his teacher had not the slightest desire himself for recognition. “Plotinus showed an unconquerable reluctance to sit to a painter or a sculptor,” he begins. “Is it not enough to carry about this image in which nature has enclosed us? Do you really think I must also consent to leave, as a desirable spectacle to posterity, an image of an image?” Plotinus himself con firmed.
How close in thought is this following selection from the Crest-Jewel of Discrimination, written some six hundred years later by the Indian seer-philosopher Shankara: “You never identify yourself with the shadow cast by your body, or with its reflection, or with the body you see in a dream or in your imagination. There fore you should not identify yourself with this living body, either.”
There exists no record that Plotinus ever came into contact with Indian philosophy, but some historians have suggested that it was for that specific purpose he accompanied Emperor Gordian in an expedition to the East. The campaign failed, however, and the Emperor was murdered. Plotinus barely escaped with his life to Antioch the following year, A.D. 244.
PLOTINUS was then forty years of age. It was to be another ten years before he would begin writing the Enneads. Porphyry tells us his master soon after went to Rome, where he spent the remaining twenty-six years of his life teaching and expounding his philosophy among a growing number of students. Plotinus himself was educated in Alexandria, a seat of learning and culture in the western world. For a period of eleven years he studied under the neo-Platonist Ammonius Saccas. Little is known of Ammonius, except that he was born a Christian, but later converted to paganism.
Porphyry relates that Plotinus was consistently reluctant, even loathful, to disclose details about his past. “Plotinus . . . seemed ashamed of being in the body,” he commented. “So deeply rooted was this feeling that he could never be induced to tell of his ancestry, his parentage, or his birthplace.” However, this did not completely discourage his biographer, who somehow managed to determine the year of his birth (204). But, as he later wrote:
… He never disclosed the month or day. This was because he did not desire any birthday sacrifice or feast; yet he himself sacrificed on the traditional birthdays of Plato and Socrates, afterwards giving a banquet at which, every member of the circle was expected to deliver an address.
Throughout his life Plotinus remained a contemplative observer of the world around him, virtuous to a fault, and ascetic in his habits. He considered celibacy essential to growth of the spirit, insisting upon renunciation of sensual pleasures if one is to remove the dross of the world.
Shankara, too, clearly emphasized the importance of withdrawing the mind from the objects of sense pleasure if one is to attain the goal of liberation:
A man should be continually occupied in trying to free himself from the bondage of ignorance He who neglects this duty and is passionately absorbed in feeding the cravings of the body, commits suicide thereby. For the body is merely a vehicle of experience for the human spirit.
Attachment to body, objects and persons is considered fatal to a seeker for liberation. He who has completely overcome attachment is ready for the state of liberation.
Again, much like Shankara, Plotinus stressed a continuing process of purification, and used the example of a sculptor and his marble to illustrate his point: “Withdraw into yourself,” he tells us, “and if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful … cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked … and never cease chiseling until … you shall see the perfect Good ness established in the stainless shrine.”
THOUGH stem in renunciation, Plotinus did not lack sweetness of character. His warmth and gentleness of disposition drew a wide assortment of people to him, philosophers, statesmen, and children alike. “He is gentle,” noted Porphyry, “and always at the call of those having the slightest acquaintance with him. After spending twenty-six entire years in Rome, and acting, too, as arbiter in many differences, he had never made an enemy of any citizen.”
A strict vegetarian, he strongly condemned the killing of animals for any purpose. “Plotinus was often distressed by an intestinal complaint.” Porphyry writes, “but . . . he refused such medicaments as contained any substances taken from wild beasts and reptiles; all the more, he remarked, since he could not approve of eating the flesh of animals reared for the table.”
Plotinus’ stainless character and contemplative life encouraged many to renounce the world for a higher purpose. The Senator Rogatianus, when on the point of assuming a position of City Magistrate, suddenly determined to forsake his position, property, and life of indulgence. Plotinus frequently praised the senator and considered him a model for others to follow who were drawn to philosophy.
There is a story that an Egyptian priest once visited Rome, and desiring to exhibit his powers, offered to call forth a visible manifestation of Plotinus’ indwelling spirit. At the summons a divine being appeared, and the Egyptian exclaimed: “You are singularly graced; the guiding spirit within you is none of the lower degree, but a god.”
“Thus Plotinus had for an indwelling spirit,” Porphyry tells us, “a Being of the more divine degree, and he kept his own divine spirit unceasingly intent upon that inner presence.” According to Porphyry, his master experienced ecstatic union with that “inner presence” four times. “His one aim in life was to rise to God and become one with Him. Four times during the time I was with him, he achieved this relation, not as mere passive mergence, but by the ineffable act.” Porphyry also related that “I too was once admitted and entered into Union.”
Although Plotinus professed a dislike for medical practitioners, he had among them one close friend, Eustochius. In the year 270, Plotinus fell seriously ill from a throat infection and left Rome to stay on an estate in Campania. He sent for Eustochius immediately, but the doctor was delayed and Plotinus, as it were, had to put off dying. When the physician arrived, Plotinus said: “I have been waiting for you; now I shall restore the Divine in me to the Divine that is all.” He then abandoned the body. Thus passed away one of the most remarkable spiritual personalities of the Roman age.
SCHOLAR A.H. Armstrong comments on the scope of Plotinus’ greatness:
He is at once metaphysician and mystic, a hard and honest thinker who enjoyed intense spiritual experience and could describe it in the language of a great poet … a traditionalist who could think for himself and encouraged free discussion in others.
It must be mentioned that Plotinus was not a completely original thinker. He borrowed heavily, for instance, from Plato’s Timaeus and the sixth book of the Republic to create his own interpretation of the One (or Good), Divine Intellect, and Soul – the Platonic trinity. According to this theory, Reality proceeds from its transcendent First Principle, or the One, in an unbroken chain of successive stages, through Divine Intellect – the highest knowable principle- and thence to the Soul, where it manifests itself in various levels of experience and activity. In its final stages, Reality assumes the forms of bodies. But, Plotinus emphasized, despite their variety, these bodily forms are not independent of one another, but create a homogenous “unity embracing all.” Multiplicity is discovered in unity, and unity in multiplicity; for all things ultimately proceed from God, and, in turn, the Divine permeates everything.
The destiny of the soul, Plotinus stressed, is to become spirit, to flower into perfection through contemplation of its real nature. And though he was ready to admit that the true contemplative must divorce himself from the world’s pleasures and pursuits, Plotinus looked upon this world as a “majestic” manifestation of beauty, reverberating with divinity. Thus began a continuing argument with the Christians, particularly the Gnostics, who were inclined to consider the world as the creation of “fallen gods and demons.” We find for example, this dark outlook on life typified in the commentaries of a recluse such as Peter Damiani. He writes: “Whoever would search the summit of perfection should … shudder at traversing the world, as if he were to plunge into a sea of blood. For the world is so filthy with vices, that any holy mind is befouled even by thinking about it.”
But the holy mind of Plotinus found it far different:
It would be unsound to condemn this universe as less than beautiful, or as less than the noblest universe possible on the corporeal level. A majestic organism complete within itself, the minutest part related to the whole, a marvelous artistry shown not only in the stateliest parts but in those of such littleness you would not have thought Providence would bother about them . . . the exquisite design of fruits and leaves, the abundance and the delicacy and diversity of flowers The Divine Spirit, in Its unperturbed serenity, has brought this universe into being by communicating from Its own store to matter.
PLOTINUS held that the cosmos was without beginning, guided by Divine Intellect from which issue the visible manifestations of its supreme Intelligence. This cosmic Intellect serves, as it were, as a mediator between the Soul and the One. Under its orderly rule, Plotinus contended, there exists no estrangement of parts, no “feebleness of distinction.” It is a universe, in the final analysis, directed by reason, consort of the Divine Intellect, in whose bosom all differences are absorbed.
In the third Ennead, we find:
The Divine Intellect, then, in Its unperturbed serenity has brought the universe into being by communicating from Its own store to matter; and this emanation of the Divine Intellect is Reason [or Logos]. This Logos within a seed contains all the parts and qualities concentrated in identity; there is no distinction, no internal hindering; then there comes a pushing into bulk, part rises in distinction from part, and at once the members of the organism stand in each other’s way and begin to wear each other down. Yet while each utters its own voice, all is brought into an ordered system by the ruling Reason.
This concept of a primal “seed” from which the material universe springs and at the same time has its being is basic to Vedantic philosophy. It is impossible for the Vedantist to conceive any first chapter in the creation of the cosmos. It is beginningless and endless.
Swami Prabhavananda, in The Spiritual Heritage of India, writes:
God, who contains within Himself the seed, the material cause, of the universe, first brings forth the universe out of His own being, and then in due time takes it back again to Himself. This process of creation and dissolution goes on for ever and ever, for it is beginningless and endless.
The inhabitants of this world are all moving toward one goal- absorption in God. Eternity, the dimension less ocean of joy and bliss, is the witness of our universe, a cycle only in an “infinite succession of universes.” But in the lower planes of existence the creatures of the world, deluded by ignorance (or maya), remain fettered by the chain of cause and effect. Thus, to the Vedantist, human birth, the highest rung on the ladder of bodily existence, is extolled because only to man is final liberation from the round of birth and rebirth possible. “Only through God’s grace,” says Shankara, “may we obtain those three rarest advantages – human birth, the longing for liberation, and discipleship to an illumined teacher.”
But the Divine Mystery still remains. How did man ever become separated from the Primal Cause, the nature of his true Self, in the first place? Vedanta says that in truth he is not separated, but because of the enigmatic workings of maya he remains ignorant of the Self – deluded. The majority of us wander in the world of appearances, mechanically responding to names and forms. It is only when we transcend name and form (by means of one or more or all of the four yogas: bhakti, jnana, raja, or karma), and finally perceive the spacial and temporal attributes of the world to be merely shadows of Reality, that the veil of ignorance is tom aside, and the Author of all reveals Himself.
Plotinus ascribes this ignorance of the Divine to self-will, the desire for “self-ownership.” He writes in the Fifth Ennead: “All awe and admiration [by those ignorant] … is for the alien, and clinging to this they have broken away as far as a soul may; their regard for the mundane and their disregard of themselves bring about their utter ignoring of the Divine.”
St. Augustine expressed much the same idea a century later: “… Men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the oceans, and the circuits of the stars- and pass themselves by.”
Still, Plotinus regarded the world as essentially good. Only its superficial temptations and allurements have led man away from God. Identified with the mortal body, he forgets his immortal Self.
The soul by nature loves God and longs to be at one with Him in the noble love of a daughter for a noble father; but coming to human birth and lured by the courtships of this sphere, she takes up with another love, a mortal, leaves her father and falls. But one day coming to hate her shame, she puts off evil, once more seeks her father and finds peace.
This “straying away” from God to meander down the paths of the world, forgetfully immersed in its pleasures and enticements, is illustrated by a parable of Sri Ramakrishna:
In a room away from their mother, little children play with dolls just as they like; but as soon as the mother comes in, they throw aside the dolls and run to her, crying, “mamma, mamma.” You also are now playing in this world, deeply absorbed in the dolls of wealth, honor and fame, without caring for anything else. But if you once see the Divine Mother in you, you will no more find pleasure in any of these, be it wealth, honor, or fame. Leaving them all away, you will run to her.
PLOTINUS refused to draw any hard and fast boundaries across the field of experience – worldly or spiritual. To him God was the container of all, the fountain through which all things flowed. God is not absent from the lower world of sensate experience, but His bliss remains hidden from us until we free ourselves from the bondage of sensual pleasure. Once released, we melt into Divine Union.
Like many of his contemporaries, Plotinus subscribed to the belief that through birth part of the soul attached itself to earthly things, although its real place was with God. For, he says, “not the whole of our soul sinks into our body; some part of her ever remains in the Divine Sphere.” Thus, when the soul finally recognizes its true divinity – its oneness – will it repose triumphant, like a victorious huntsman, in joyful reunion with the Divine.
An anecdote related by a contemporary of Aristotle, Aristoxenos of Tarentum, illustrates the friendship that Plotinus unknowingly shared with Indian philosophy. At the same time it suggests his argument with some aspects of Platonic idealism. “Socrates,” Aristoxenos relates, “met an Indian in Athens who asked him what philosophy he was practicing. When Socrates replied that his inquiries dealt with human life, the Indian began to laugh and said that one could not contemplate human things if one knew nothing about divine things.”
These “divine things” were the ultimate concern of Plotinus. The dialectic groundwork performed by Plato seven centuries earlier provided him with a philosophic foundation, but he used the materials of his mystical experiences to complete the structure of his religious life.
With a remarkable clarity, he describes this experience:
The one who has experienced understands what I mean: how the soul takes on another life as it approaches God. Having come into His presence, it rests in Him, it merges in Him. It knows Him as the Dispenser of the only true life. Everything earthly is stripped away; bonds that fetter us are loosened so that we may ad here to Him, no part remaining in us, but with it we may cleave to God. Then shall we be worthy to behold Him and ourselves in a single light; but it will be a self-lifted into splendor, radiant with spiritual light, nay, itself become a light, pure, buoyant, incandescent, identical with Godhead.
Time and again he reminds us “the Supreme is near at hand … “and exhorts us to “seek God with assurance, for He is not far away and you will attain unto Him … ” To Plotinus, union with God was the natural, ascending aspiration of the Soul, a momentary embrace of the Absolute. And how is this to be accomplished? His answer is terse and direct: “Let all else go!”
by Clive Johnson
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