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The Gospel of Matthew Chapter 6, Verses 19-23 reads


Permanent Things

Jesus opens this passage by telling us to "lay up our treasures in Heaven." As we often discuss here, Heaven isn't another place, and we don't go there when we die. Heaven is a condition of being, and our goal is to attain that condition here and now, while we sojourn on the Earth.

We are reminded here, that the things of the Earth are impermanent. Here moth and rust corrupt, thieves break and steal. Heaven is permanent, because Heaven is Eternal-- and this is a critical point. To the modern mind, "Eternity" means "for a very very very long time." In fact, that is not what it means at all. Eternity is not a long time, or the longest time; it isn't even forever. Eternity is outside of time.

As Plotinus writes,


Can we fully achieve Eternity in Time, Heaven on Earth? No, not quite-- otherwise there would be no Earth, only Heaven. But we can live our live our lives in such a way that we carry Heaven with us. When we do this, we will find death to be as simple as putting off a garment.

But how?

Take No Thought of the Morrow

In Platonic thought, Time is only a moving image of eternity. All the forms of physical things in this world are themselves only the shadows and traces of higher things, the eternal ideas which shape the living world.

Since everything eternal has its reflection in time, so eternity itself has its reflection in time. What is this reflection?

Well, we only have three options, since time consists only of three parts. These are, of course, the Past, the Present, and the Future.

Now, remember that Eternity is not the same as forever, or for a very long time. Since Time extends into the Past either forever, or for a very long time; and into the Future either forever for a very long time, neither Past nor Future can have anything to do with Eternity.

But the Present-- What is its duration? In a real sense, it has none. No matter how much you subdivide the moment, you never come to a length of time which is small enough to be the present-- by the very fact of having length, it isn't the present. In this way, the Present is the image of Eternity within Time-- Like Eternity, it has no duration, and no interval.

Plotinus again:


That point of contact is the present moment itself; this is what Jesus is teaching us in these verses.

Becoming Present

Plotinus asks,


Let's remind ourselves of a few things.

Jesus has taught us that we must change our nous. He has taught us that the Heaven is within us. He has taught us that by purity of heart, we will see God.

Here, he teaches us that we must focus on Eternity, not Time, using the metaphor of "laying up treasure." He tells us that if we do so, our hearts will be open to Heaven-- "where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." And he tells us to give no thought to tomorrow-- which implies that we should also give no thought to yesterday, either.

This tells me that we must make a spiritual practice of presence. And that means meditation. 

Meditation

Many readers here are probably familiar with the practice of discursive meditation, which is the form of meditation taught by John Michael Greer. Rather than stilling the mind, as Eastern systems of quiescent meditation systems do, discursive meditation consists of actively focusing and using the mind, usually through the contemplation of a spiritual text. 

Discursive meditation is a wonderful practice and I strongly recommend it. I practice it myself; most mornings I begin my day by sitting down with The Complete Works of Plato, reading 5-10 pages, and then meditating on what I've read. If you're a Christian, you can practice discursive meditation using the Gospels or other part of the Bible or a spiritual text like The Imitation of Christ or True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. I have several books on my shelf of meditations meant specifically for clergy that I plundered from a defunct Catholic seminary. If you've never tried it, I strongly encourage it; you will find both the texts and your relationship with the subject of those texts coming alive as never before.

In my view, though, and it's a view derived from my experience, discursive meditation is not enough. Mr. Greer tends to deride Eastern forms of quiescent meditation, particularly the forms of "mindfulness meditation" that have become popular in recent years, as mere "mindlessness meditation." I strongly disagree. I believe that active meditation and passive meditation-- or meditation and contemplation, to give them their older and more proper names-- are like two wheels of a cart. Both are necessary. My experience is that if I practice only discursive meditation, I come up with extraordinary insights, but at other times of the day I'm unable to stop my mind from brooding over past mistakes or injuries or worrying about the future. My experience of people who only practice quiescent meditation, on the other hand, is that they often appear unable to think at all-- and so find themselves at the mercy of whatever thought forms and mental currents are passing through the popular culture. 

In the modern world, with most of our traditions in disarray, we often have to cobble a spiritual practice together out of pieces drawn from different sources. Zazen, transcendental meditation, or Taoist zuowang are forms of quiescent meditation that pair well with discursive meditation. It's worth noting, though, that the Western tradition has its own form of quiescent meditation. The traditional meditation practice called lectio divina, or "divine reading," has 4 stages:

1. Lectio, or reading, in which a passage of scripture or a spiritual text is read;
2. Meditatio, or meditation, in which the passage is turned over in the mind;
3. Oratio, or prayer, in which the meditator turns to God for additional insight; and finally
4. Contemplatio, or contemplation, in which thought is released and the meditator rests in the stillness and presence that is the active presence of God. 

In this way of doing things, active meditation and passive meditation both have a part to play-- and notice that it is God that acts as the bridge between the two. 

Our problem is that our minds are out of control. It's as if we're born with a severe case of restless leg syndrome. No matter what we do, our legs are constantly spasming, flipping and flopping us all over the place. Discursive meditation teaches us how to get our legs under control, so that we can go somewhere. Quiescent meditation-- or contemplation, to give it its proper name-- teaches us how to still our legs, so that we can rest. 

Consider the Lilies

Most of what I've written here so far is within the bounds of Christian orthodoxy, supplemented by Plotinus and Plato. Now I want to step outside that orthodoxy, just a bit. 

Occult Philosophy holds that the essence of every human soul is a kind of kernel of existence called the divine spark. This is the basic seed of existence around which our expanded capacities for action and mental representation are built. In theory, the sparks are eternal, and they begin their existence at the level of spiritual reality, in the presence of the Divine. That sounds great, doesn't it? And it is. The trouble is that it's a sort of trance-state; the sparks exist in the presence of God, but they live as if they were in a dream, unable to experience reality as an objective structure extending beyond themselves.

In order to become the sorts of beings that can not just experience but will and choose and understand, they need more. They go forth from the divine, and descent down the planes of existence, through the noetic level, the astral and etheric levels, until they finally descend to the level of physical reality....

And become a rock.

Yes, according to this way of looking at things, you were once a rock. A rock has physical existence, but nothing else. But because of its origin in the Spiritual Plane, it has the potential to become something else.

Ever so slowly, over long ages, the being that was once a rock takes on more complex capacities. It exists for a time as a crystal-- a rock, that is, in which the elementary form of growth has begun to evolve. 

And after a time-- how long, who knows?-- the crystal is destroyed, and the spark within it is released. The spark can now take on a more complex form. It becomes a simple plant: A being in which the capacity to eat and grow is added to the capacity for physical existence. Over time, the plant too evolves more complex capacitis. It becomes a tree-- a kind of plant in which the rudiments of conscious experience are awakening. 

And then the tree is cut down, and the spark is born again as an animal. Now the spark begins to gain the capacities of more complex mental representation, and above all, movement. 

But there is a price: When existing as a plant, the divine spark was able to live off of sunlight and nutrients drawn from the soil. Now, it must eat other forms of life. It must kill in order to exist. Before, it only suffered evil. Now it commits evil. 

On and on, through the long ages of animal existence, the soul is forced to do appalling, unimaginable things. As a hawk it tears babies out of their mother's arms and devours them. As a lion it destroys entire families. As a mouse, it eats its own young.

And so, ever so slowly, the soul gains the knowledge of good and evil. It gains this through experience-- it suffers both evil and good, and it does both evil and good. 

Now, all this must sound familiar at this point. The state of original, blissful but trance-like presence of God is the Garden of Eden. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is material existence. When Adam and Eve eat of the Tree, they descend into matter. Then they hear God coming, and they are ashamed, because they are naked. Their nudity isn't physical nudity; it's existence as naked souls. And so they weave clothes for themselves: That is to say, they clothe themselves in matter, taking on material existence for the first time. 

The soul at the animal level has suffered evil and good, and has done evil and good. It still lacks one thing, which it can only gain at the human level of existence. And that is the capacity not merely to act, but to choose its actions. 

The work of the human soul is to become capable of commiting acts of both good and evil, from a place of knowledge and deliberate action, not mere reaction. 

What? We should learn to be evil? That sounds terrible, doesn't it?

But consider: When a wolf eats a deer, it is evil for the deer-- but it's good for the wolf. But it's also good for the plants, because if the deer population grows to excess, the local plantlife will be destroyed. And the next thing that will happen after that is that the deer will starve to death. And so when a wolf eats a deer, it's evil for the deer, but it's good for the wolf, the plants, and, ultimately-- for the deer as a whole. 

The wolf does this unknowingly. In the human, the capacity for knowledge has awakened-- but it is not complete. The complete knowledge of good and evil is held by the beings that create and sustain the system of life that contains the wolf, the deer, and the plants-- that is to say, the gods. The work of the human level is the work of awakening to both the knowledge and the use of good and evil in the governance of the universe. That is what is meant by becoming divine. 

This is also why Plato writes that humans who do evil are reborn as the animals they resemble. Such people have not sufficiently integrated the lessons of the animal level of existence, and so, like bad students sent back a grade, they need to go back and try again. 


When Jesus calls to mind the lilies, and the birds, he is reminding us of our stages of existence as animals and plants. Like the lilies, like teh birds, we should let go of our concern for the future and focus on the present only. In the present moment we find the image of eternity which is the image of God and the presence of God within ourselves. And so we can turn ourselves, our wills and our actions entirely over to God, the Eternal Reality within us. 

This work of contemplation-- stilling the mind, focusing only on the present moment, and resting in stillness and divine presence-- creates in us the capacity to choose. 

Isn't that a contradiction? We're enjoined on the one hand to trust ourselves entirely to the care of God, and on the other hand to develop in ourselves the capacity to choose our actions, and even become gods! 

This is not a contradiction at all, and, indeed, the two things are consequences of each other. How this is so should be clear, if you've been following up to this point. 

Welcome back to the Plotinus read-through! 

Today we're going to look at Ennead 1, Tractate 2, Chapter 5. You can read along here. The previous post in this series is here.


In this chapter, Plotinus is going to continue to discuss purification. And this, if I may be forgiven the vulgarity, is where shit gets real.

The question is substantially this: how far does purification dispel the two orders of passion- anger, desire and the like, with grief and its kin- and in what degree the disengagement from the body is possible.

Our goal in Purification is to totally liberate ourselves from the passions. The passions, now, are all the involuntary movements of the soul by the body. Some are fiery, like anger and lust, others watery, like grief and sorrow. We seek, on this account, to transcend all of them.

As a note to myself, I feel certain that all of this can be profitably compared with the notion of "separating yang from yin" in the internal alchemy and meditative methods of the Quan Zhen (Complete Reality) school of Chinese Taoism. That comparison is going to have to wait until I can get the rest of my library out of storage, though!

Let's go on and see just how far, for Plotinus, this all goes.

Disengagement means simply that the soul withdraws to its own place.

That sounds simple enough. Plotinus now describes what it looks like in practice, and this is important enough that I'm going to break it up into sections.
 

• It will hold itself above all passions and affections.

• Necessary pleasures and all the activity of the senses it will employ only for medicament and assuagement lets its work be impeded.

• Pain it may combat, but, failing the cure, it will bear meekly and ease it by refusing assent to it.

• All passionate action it will check: the suppression will be complete if that is possible, but at worst the Soul will never itself take fire but will keep the involuntary and uncontrolled outside its own precincts and rare and weak at that.

• The Soul has nothing to dread, though no doubt the involuntary has some power here too: fear therefore must cease, except insofar as it is purely monitory.

• What desire there may be can never be for the vile; even the food and drink necessary for restoration will lie outside of the Soul's attention, and not less the sexual appetite;

• or if such desire there must be, it will turn upon the actual needs of nature and be entirely under control; or if any uncontrolled motion takes place, it will reach no further than the imagination, be no more than a fleeting fancy.

Are you following all of this?

The follower of Plotinus is entirely unmoved by any of the ordinary affairs of human life. He eats and drinks only to calm his body. He is unmoved by fear, grief, or desire. He is either unaffected by pain or, if this is impossible, he refuses to allow it to have any power over him. He indulges his sexual desires only insofar as they pass fleetingly through his imagination. He is entirely free from "uncontrolled motion," but instead is a man entirely self-possessed:

The Soul itself will be inviolately free and will be working to set the irrational part of the nature above all attack, or if that may not be, then at least to preserve it from violent assault, so that any wound it takes may be slight and be healed at once by virtue of the Soul's presence, just as a man living next door to a Sage would profit by the neighbourhood, either in becoming wise and good himself or, for sheer shame, never venturing any act which the nobler mind would disapprove.
 

Nor is it correct, though, to see this as a constant battle between the Intellect and the passions. Instead,

There will be no battling in the Soul: the mere intervention of Reason is enough: the lower nature will stand in such awe of Reason that for any slightest movement it has made it will grieve, and censure its own weakness, in not having kept low and still in the presence of its lord.

 

 

Welcome back!

When we last left Plotinus, he had established that the Soul does not, in fact, descend into the body, but remains in the world beyond. Instead it emits a kind of light which animates that body; the combination of light and body is called the Couplement. It is in the Couplement that we find many of our daily experiences, but not all of them. We ourselves are thus composite beings, and it is our task over the course of our lives to turn our attention away from this world, and toward the Higher.

But how shall we do that?

Let's see if we can find out!


Today we'll begin looking at the second tractate of the First Ennead. 

From here on out, our tractates become quite a bit longer. This is a good thing, because it will force me to do more summarizing, and less direct quoting. This may force me to think more, and even make this little blog a bit more readable. (Oh Steve, do you really think anybody's still reading this?) (Shut up, Brain. Back to typing!)

Anyway, Ennead 1, Tractate 2: On Virtue

Since Evil is here, "haunting this world by necessary law," and it is the Soul's design to escape from Evil, we must escape hence. 

But what is this escape?

"In attaining likeness to God," we read. And this is explained as "becoming just and holy, living by wisdom," the entire nature grounded in Virtue. 

From now on, all Plotinus's words are going to be indented, as above.

Now we're learning more about just what Plotinus's project is. As we learned previously, our Souls don't really descend into this material world. But they seem to, illuminating the material world from above. He doesn't tell us that this world is evil-- but Evil is here. And so to escape evil, we must escape the world?

But how?

Three things:

1. By becoming like God
2. Which means being just and holy, living by wisdom
3. Our entire nature grounded in virtue.

At this point, the Christian doctrine of Theosis comes forcefully to mind. This is the process-- little discussed in the West in recent centuries, but kept alive in the East, and recently coming back into prominence through the spread of Eastern Chrsitianity-- whereby human beings, through ascetic devotional practice, become participants in the divine nature. As St. Athanasius put it, "God became man, that men might become gods." You can read more here. 

Returning to Plotinus, though, what we're learning is that we need to get out of this world by becoming divine, and we do so by the practice of Virtue. What is Virtue, though? This is another word worse meaning has been corrupted in recent years, having come to mean something like "Girls shouldn't have sex" in the 19th century, and been abandoned entirely in the 20th century. But in Plotinus's day, Virtue had a more straightforward meaning. The virtues, plural, are particular excellences, the cultivation of which leads toward a particular good. In the Republic, Plato drew out 4 virtues as particularly important: Justice, Wisdom, Temperance and Courage. More on this in a moment.

Plotinus then discusses two different issue: To which divine being should we desire to attain likeness? And, does that being possess the virtues in question?

The answer to the first question:

But there's an issue, and it confused me at first. For Plotinus, how can the ruler of the universe possess courage, when he has nothing to fear, or temperance, when he isn't subject to temptation? But he answers the issue:

...

Huh.

Okay, let's try and understand this. The capitalized word "Intelligible" is important here. The "Intelligible" relates to the objects of Intellect. Intellect, in a Platonic context-- and, as always, this is my understanding, subject to refinement, change, and being altogether wrong-- does not mean what it does in common language. It is, instead, a translation of the Greek word nous. This is the highest part of our mind-- higher, actually, than our souls. It is the level of the Platonic Forms, which we've discussed before. The Intelligible is everything that we can grasp with Intellect. And-- this is important, and also very confusing at first-- at the level of Intellect, knowledge is automatic, because there is no distinction between the knower and the known. 

Now, going further, here is my understanding of Theology in Plato's world. The Demiurge-- that is, the creator God-- creates the world by first coming up with an idea of it. Think of the way that you'd create a painting; first you'd imagine it, then you'd put brush to paper. Well, the Idea of the World in the Mind of God is so big that it is, itself, a God. In that Idea are all the forms of which the material things on this world are only copies. I think we can call it Divine Mind, Intellect Itself, or Logos. That is the Divine Being to which Plotinus wants us to attain likeness, by means of the practice of Virtue. And since we have the aspiration toward that likeness, we know that it must come from the God himself-- what else could be its source?

But it's important for Plotinus to note that the God does not possess the virtues as we know them:

Our Translator, in his usual delightful way, has given us Prudence, Fortitude, Sophrosyne, and Rectitude where we might otherwise have had Wisdom, Courage, Temperance and Justice. In either case, Plotinus makes an interesting point: Why would God need courage, when he has nothing to fear? Why would he need a concord between Passion and Reason, when he is above the passions that move us? And so on.

Plotinus offers the suggestion that, perhaps, we can't attain Likeness to God by these virtues, but by "those greater qualities known by the same general name". This suggests that there are higher versions of each of the virtues, which are applicable to the spiritual life, rather than to the civic life. He reconsiders, though, telling us that


That is to say: The lesser manifestations of the virtues share in the power of the greater. It's worth remembering that for the Platonists, everything proceeds by Likeness. Nothing causes something altogether different from itself; there is always a middle term which unites the two. So if you have a lesser, civic-oriented Wisdom, it can't exist without a higher, spiritually-oriented Wisdom. The higher in some sense causes the lower, and therefore, is always present to the lower. Therefore, if the higher Wisdom leads to Likeness to the divine, the lower must also be able to affect this: "On both levels there is virtue for us, though not the same virtue." 


Plotinus next considers whether it is really possible for God to be without virtue-- as he's already shown must be the case. If a fire is warm-- he tells us-- must there be something else to warm the fire? Of course not. The fire is the source of warmth. God is the source of virtue. 

It is important for Plotinus that "virtue is one thing, the source of virtue another." He gives the following example, which helps to further illustrate what I think are some key aspects of Platonic thinking:

All of this seems to me to be completely counter-intuitive from a Modern perspective. I think that there is a lot packed into these two little sentences-- most of it counterintuitive from a Modern perspective, all of it critical to understanding Plotinus's worldview. So let's wrap up by working through it.

Recall what I said above about the idea that precedes the object. The Demiurge conceives an Idea of the world; that Idea becomes the model of the world. A builder conceives an Idea for a house, and it becomes the model for the house. But there are qualities that the built house possesses-- virtues-- which are not in the idea of the house. These are the qualities of order, distribution and harmony-- the things that produce beauty here in the material world. The idea of the house doesn't need these things. And yet, the house, insofar as it has them, attains likeness to the idea, and manifests the idea here in the world. 

How can the civic virtues be similar to this? That's what we're asked-- I think-- to contemplate.

I think we're being given a Path of Ascent to the Divine, and I think it looks like this:

All of us have an Intellectual component to our being. That's the nous that I described above. It's above our Souls, or, to put it differently, it's the highest level of the Soul. 

That component is part of the Intelligible realm. That is to say, it's the eternal Idea of us that exists in the mind of the Creator. 

Remember that Ideas aren't passive objects. Ideas, which exist together on the Intelligible Plane, which can be understood both as a world unto itself, and as the Mind of God, and as itself a God, actively shape the world of our experience.

Now, suppose a builder, working on a house. In his mind he conceives of the best, most beautiful house he can imagine. In order to be beautiful in the material world, it will have to have the qualities of order, symmetry, harmony among its parts. 

But the house in the material world falls short of the Ideal house. It's disorderly; its parts don't fit together.

What if the house could change that? What if it could cultivate the qualities of order, harmony, symmetry?

In so doing, it would become more like the Idea of itself in the mind of its builder.

And remember what we said about about likeness. Likeness is not a chance resemblance among two separate things. Likeness is a type of causation, and things which are Like one another are present to one another.

By cultivating the virtues, we become Like ourselves as we exist in the Intelligible Realm. The Intelligible Realm is itself God and the Mind of God. Thus by cultivating the virtues, we attain Likeness and presence to God.

Is that what you're telling us, Plotinus?

Tune in next time, when maybe we'll find out!

Welcome back! Today, we look at the final section of the First Tractate of the First Ennead. As always, you can follow along here. The first post in this series is here.

Plotinus's words are in boldface; my comments in plain script. All that said, let's jump right in!

And the principle that reasons out these matters? Is it We or the Soul?

In other words, is it us down here below doing all this thinking, or is it the Soul itself?

We, but by the Soul.

How is that, then?

But how, "by the Soul"? Does this mean that the Soul reasons by possession [by contact with the matters of enquiry]?

Why not? I suppose: Insofar as those matters are things of the material world, the Soul cannot come into contact with them.

No; by the fact of being Soul. Its Act subsists without movement; or any movement that can be ascribed to it must be utterly distinct from all corporal movement and be simply the Soul's own life.

So.

We are illuminated by the Soul, as we have seen.

The Soul acts without movement, being beyond the material world. Reasoning, then, is something inherent in it. As we possess the Soul, so we possess reason. We do it, but without the Soul, we couldn't do it.

And Intellection in us is twofold: since the Soul is intellective, and Intellection is the highest phase of life, we have Intellection both by the characteristic Act of our Soul and by the Act of the Intellectual Principle upon us-- for this Intellectual-Principle is part of us no less than the Soul, and towards it we are ever rising.

...This is much easier to understand if you can visualize it.

As individuals, we have Souls, and we also have something higher than the Soul; we have the Intellect.

Do you remember way back in the day, when we said that a multitude of red objects all have the one thing in common-- the color red?

In the same way, a multitude of Souls all have in common Soul Itself. And a multitude of Intellects have in common Intellect Itself.

The intellectual Principle in an individual is to his personal Soul, as the Intellect Itself is to Soul Itself.

Thus, we have Intellect in two ways. First, we have our own Intellect, which acts upon our Soul directly. Second, we have Intellect Itself as it acts upon Soul Itself, and through Soul Itself, upon our individual Soul

...At least that's what I think Plotinus is saying. I'm basing this upon the fact that his much later intellectual descendant Proclus makes a big deal about this two-fold participation. (See Proclus, Elements of Theology, Propositions 108 and 109.)

It's worth noting, here, that Intellect in ancient Greek thought means something different than what it does for us. Intellect is the respository of the forms; in us, it is the highest aspect of the mind, which allows for contact with higher things and sudden leaps of insight.

(Anyway, that's how I understand it).

....And there you have it, folks!

We've made it through one tractate of one of Plotinus's Enneads!

Next, I'll post a summary of Tractate One, and we'll move on to Tractate Two. See you then!

 Welcome back! Last time we worked through the 10th section of the first tractate of the first of Plotinus's Enneads. Today we'll move on to Section 11. 

Let's jump right back in.

In childhood the main activity is in the Couplement and there is but little irradiation from the higher principles of our being: but when these higher principles act but feebly or rarely upon us their action is directed towards the Supreme; they work upon us only when they stand at the mid-point.

Last time, we saw that, for Plotinus, the Soul is not identical with the experiencing self. The Soul is an eternal principle, beyond material incarnation. The total person-- the human system, if you like-- is like a series of beads on a string. The highest bead is the Soul. The lowest represents the faculties of generation. Our experience is able to range up and down the string, connected to this bead or that bead according to circumstances.

Here, Plotinus is telling us that, in the early part of our life, most of our experience is centered here below, in the life of the body. I think that this is something anyone would agree with, and it certainly fits my own experience of childhood through roughly age 30.

The last section appears to be another victim of this garbled and half-comprehensible translation. We are told that "when these higher principles act but feebly or rarely upon us their action is directed towards the Supreme" and also that "they work upon us only when they stand at the mid-point." 

But does not the We include that phase of our being which stands above the mid-point?

(The word "We" in this sentence is missing in the link I provided.)

Okay, this clarifies the previous sentence a bit. It appears that he means that the higher principles of our being are acting above the mid-point. When we ourselves are experiencing life below that mid-point-- the mean between Soul and Body-- we are unaware of them. And here he responds to the objection, but isn't that higher part of us, well, part of us? 

It does, but on the condition that we lay hold of it: our entire nature is not ours at all times but only as we direct the mid-point upwards or downwards, or lead some particular phase of our nature from potentiality or native character into act.

Are you following this? This is, it seems to me, a critical idea. Parts of us only exist in potential, and parts of us are beyond manifestation in the material world. They are, indeed, part of us. But our talents are only real insofar as we manifest them as skills. And our higher spirit is only a part of us insofar as we turn our attention towards it, and unite ourselves to it, through spiritual practice, rather than to our lower self, through obeying our bodily urges, passions and impulses. 

This next part is neat:

And the animals, in what way or degree do they possess the Animate?

If there be in them, as the opinion goes, human Souls that have sinned, then the Animating-Principle in its separable phase does not enter directly into the brute; it is there but not there to them; they are aware only of the image of the Soul [only of the lower Soul] and of that only by being aware of the body organised and determined by that image.

If there be no human Soul in them, the Animate is constituted for them by a radiation from the All-Soul.

In the Timaeus, Plato has it that we are first born into the bodies of men. If we mess up, we're reborn as women. If we mess up a second time, we are reborn as animals. 

This idea is clearly reflective of the prejudices of its age, and is unacceptable to the modern reader. (In the same way, many of our prejudices will not be revealed as such for 1, 2, 5 or 10 centuries; then they will appear cruel and nonsensical in just the same way.) However, it is interesting to note that, for Plotinus, only those animals who were previously human beings have individualized souls-- with which they are unable to make contact in this life. For the rest, their soul is actually a group soul-- the Universal Soul. 

To my mind, it makes more sense to view animals as possessing individual souls as do we, though they are far more removed from them than we are. Some animals would indeed be human beings that have failed to make it at the human level, and were sent back a grade, so to speak. Others would be our younger brothers and sisters, on the journey with us.

It's also fun to consider that at least some animals are at the same level we are. This may be incorrect, but I like to think that dolphins and whales, and also parrots or crows, are at the same level as human beings. This allows for there to People of the Earth, Sea and Sky. 

Now, it's also worth taking a minute to view the world the way Plotinus would have, on his own terms. What would it mean to think of animals as participants in the Universal Soul? What would it mean to think of ourselves the way that he does?

 ...In an irritating turn of events, Dreamwidth decided to delete this post, which was halfway completed. But let's not let that get us down, let's jump right back into the Enneads! As always, you can follow along here; the last post in this series can be read here.

Last time, Plotinus elaborated on his view of the Soul as existing apart from the body, and uniting with the body only be emitting a kind of light (this is a metaphor) which animates the body, like a wall illuminated by the lantern. 

That Soul, then, in us, will in its nature stand apart from all that can cause any of the evils which man does or suffers; for all such evil, as we have seen, belongs only to the Animate, the Couplement.

Have you got that? The Soul is not affected by the actions of the Couplement-- that is, the animated body-- anymore than the lantern is affected by what happens on the wall. 

But there is a difficulty in understanding how the Soul can go guiltless if our mentation and reasoning are vested in it: for all this lower kind of knowledge is delusion and is the cause of much of what is evil.

That is-- if the Soul is responsible for thinking, and most of our thinking is evil, how can it be blameless of evil?

When we have done evil it is because we have been worsted by our baser side-- for a man is many-- by desire or rage or some evil image: the false, in reality fancy, has not stayed for the judgement of the Reasoning-Principle: we have acted at the call of the less worthy, just as in matters of the sense-sphere we sometimes see falsely because we credit only the lower perception, that of the Couplement, without applying the tests of the Reasoning-Faculty.

The image that keeps coming to mind is of the human person as a kind of center of gravity, suspended between two poles. At the one extreme is our Higher Soul, united with the Divine Mind; at the other is the lower passions, moving us toward rage or lust. We have a choice in any given instance as to which direction to go. Which of course returns us to the question of which part of us really is the "us." And it suggests that the answer is: We have a choice. We can remember our higher nature, that is, the lantern, removed from the wall; or we can take the things on the wall-- spiders or dust or whatever-- as our reality, and go toward them.

The Intellectual-Principle has held aloof from the act and so is guiltless; or, as we may state it, all depends on whether we ourselves have or have not put ourselves in touch with the Intellectual-Realm either in the Intellectual-principle or within oruselves; for it is possible at once to possess it and not to use it.

"For a man is many." I wonder, though-- if a part of us is innocent, another part guilty, and yet we can choose between the two, is not that part of us that makes the choice-- the will, call it-- the true man? Would that not then be prior either to Soul or to Couplement or to Body?

Thus we have marked off what belongs to the Couplement from what stands by itself: the one group has the character of body and never exists apart from body, while all that has no need of body for its manifestation belongs peculiarly to Soul: and the Understanding, as passing judgement upon Sense-Impressions, is at the point of the vision of Ideal-Forms, seeing them as it were with an answering sensation (i.e., with consciousness) this last is at any rate true of the Understanding in the Veritable Soul. For Understanding, the true, is the Act of the Intellections: in many of its manifestations it is the assimilation and reconciliation of the outer to the inner.

I really, really like how our translator just kinds of tosses out brand new Capitalized Terms that we've never seen before, without any explanatory notes, as though the mere fact of Using Capital Letters was enough to point them out as Important and in that way to Explain Their Meaning.

I also love how grammatical the English here is. 

Well, anyway, let's give this one a go. This one giant sentence of a paragraph is ridiculously long, so let's take it clause by clause.

Thus we have marked off what belongs to the Couplement from what stands by itself: the one group has the character of body and never exists apart from body

Everything that we experience that belongs to the Couplement is characterized by being bodily, and not existing apart from the body. We experience hunger, it's a real thing, but we can't experience it without our body. On the other hand...

all that has no need of body for its manifestation belongs peculiarly to Soul

Simple enough...

and the Understanding, as passing judgement upon Sense-Impressions, is at the point of the vision of the Ideal-Forms

Have we met a capital-U Understanding before? I can't remember. Either way, whatever it is, its job is to pass judgment upon sense impressions. Because of this it is at the point of the vision of the Ideal-Forms. How is that? It must be-- I see an object with my eyes. My Understanding says "A red balloon." Both "red" and "balloon" exists as ideal forms, apart from this specific red thing, this specific balloon. Therefore, the Understanding is at the point of contact with the Forms-- looking up at them from below, as it were. Or, to say it another way,

seeing them with an answering sensation

Right.

this last is true, at any rate, of the Understanding in the Veritable Soul.

So it is our true, or our higher, Soul that has the faculty of the Understanding.

For Understanding, the true, is the Act of the Intellections: in many of its manifestations it is the assimilation and reconciliation of the outer to the inner.

We have nothing to explain or contextualize this statement, and thus nothing but guesswork to go on when trying to understand it. Still, it's a fascinating thing to say. Understanding-- What did we just learn that is? The faculty of judgement in the Soul. It works with the Intellections-- that connects us both to the eternal Forms and the idea of Divine Mind. And he tells us that it is often "the assimilation and reconciliation of the outer to the inner." In other words...

What?

I see an object. 

My Understanding judge: It's a red balloon. I have experience of red, and of balloons. Is that what this is? Yes, it is. Or, no-- I'm wrong, it's a red plane, or an orange balloon, or a cloud. Now I revise my judgment. Is this how it works? 

I suspect so. Because, remember what he said earlier about the Soul going blameless in our misdeeds? And he used the image of a sense object misunderstood. We see something and react immediately-- Say, we are hiking in the woods, see a snake, and immediately jump. But then we apply our Understanding-- it's not a snake at all, it's just a stick! The Understanding, seated in the Soul, was absent from our original action, and thus we made a mistake. 

If that's so, we can conclude this section with Plotinus:

Thus in spite of all, the Soul is at peace as to itself and within itself: all the changes and all the turmoil we experience are the issue of what is subjoined to the Soul, and are, as we have said, the states and experiences of this elusive Couplement.

Have you heard of the Watcher at the Threshold? That's the thing that turns up every time you start a new project-- running or meditating every day, finally writing that book, drinking less coffee, whatever it is. At some point, you make it one day, the next, the third day, and then, there he is. He's the thing that says, "Maybe I just won't do it today. I'll get to it tomorrow." And then tomorrow comes and you're like, "But I already didn't do it yesterday, so why today?" Eventually it's a week later, and you say to yourself, "I guess I don't do it after all," and so you stop.

This is a new project for me, so it's not surprising that the Watcher turned up. Of course, he was greatly assisted by the unbelievable level of busy-ness of my life lately. But these little posts don't take that long, and so, with all due respect to Mr. Watcher, let's jump right back in.



 In this section, Plotinus begins to wind up his argument about the soul. He starts by telling us what's really going on here:

The truth lies in the Consideration that the Couplement subsists by virtue of the Soul's presence.

This, however, is not to say that the Soul gives itself as it is in itself to form either the Couplement or the body.

No; from the organized body and something else, let us say a light, which the Soul gives forth by itself, it forms a distinct Principle, the Animate; and in this principle are vested Sense-Perception and all other experiences found to belong to the Animate.

Are you following, so far? In Plotinus's view, the Soul remains beyond physical incarnation, in the way (I think) that redness remains beyond a specific red object. So the Soul isn't present to the body the way that it is all by itself-- instead it's like something comes forth from it. He uses the metaphor of a light-- in this case, it would be as if a wall were illuminated by a lantern. The illuminated wall is the "Couplement" of wall and light. The lantern remains a separate thing, in a separate place, but the light on the wall is only possible through it. 

Are you reminded of those modern thinkers who describe consciousness as akin to a radio signal that is received by the brain?

More:

But the "We"? How have We Sense Perception?

By the fact that We are not separate from the Animate so constituted, even though certanily other and nobler elements go to make up the entire many-sided nature of Man.

In the same way that the lantern is not separate from the wall it illuminates, we are not separate from the body, or, rather, the complex of body and Soul. But:

The faculty of perception in the Soul cannot act by the immediate grasping of sensible objects, but only by the discerning of impressions printed upon the Animate by sensation: these impressions are already Intelligibles while the outer sensation is a mere phantom of the other [of that in the Soul] which is nearer to Authentic-Existence as being an impassive reading of Ideal-Forms.

....And this is one of those moments where I wish either that I read ancient Greek, or else that the editor of this volume had bothered to include notes to explain his choice of English words, including Capitalizations. In the absence of these, much of this is gobbledy-gook. That said, let's unpack what we can.

Since the Soul is beyond embodiment, it can't grasp the objects of perception directly. Light enters the eye, and you see an image of a computer screen. In the material world, that's all that is happening; the image produced is something else, and is not material. For Plotinus, the image that is created in the mind (as we would say) is more real than the light entering the brain. After all, in the mind the image becomes an image of a computer screen, or the color red-- and this is touches on the world of permanent forms. 

And by means of these Ideal-Forms, by which the Soul wields single lordship of the Animate, we have Discursive-Reasoning, Sense-Knowledge and Intellection. From this moment we have peculiarly the We: before this there was only the "ours"; but at this stage stands to WE (the authentic human-principle] loftily presiding over the Animate.

I've got to tell you, I am not at all sure why this should be so.

Let's accept it as a premise for now. It's worth keeping in mind that Plotinus was writing in an era that was utterly sick of living in the material world. He was only slightly less extreme than the Gnostics, and only because he didn't believe that the Creator God was actually an evil demon. For now, we have the idea that the Soul, because it is outside of embodiment and capable of reason, and of perceiving Ideal-Forms (in part by means of sense-objects), presides loftily over the body.

There is no reason why the entire compound entity should not be described as the Animate or Living-Being-- mingled in a lower phase, but above that point the beginning of the veritable man, distinct from all that is kin to the lion, all that is of the order of the multiple brute. And since The Man, so understood, is essentially the associate of the reasoning Soul, in our reasoning it is this "we" that reasons, in that the use and act of reason is a characteristic act of the Soul.

At its highest, the Soul of man is above embodiment, and above both sense perceptions and the urges of nature that govern "the multiple brute." Indeed, it is the task of philosophy to raise human beings to the level of true human beings, not mere beasts in clothes. As our later author from the same tradition writes, "He alone is perfect who attains the highest level of knowledge, and delights in and loves that level of knowledge. They were called 'philosophers' in Greek, and in Latin this word is properly interpreted 'lovers of knowledge.' Whoever does not strive for knowledge is defective and weak in authority, and therefore ought not to be called human, despire having the name, form, and figure of a human being."*



*Picatrix Bk 1 Ch 6, Greer and Warnock trans.

Welcome back to my attempt to make sense of that most difficult works of classical philosophy, the Enneads of Plotinus, with no formal training nor facility in the original language!

Today we're going to be looking at the 5th chapter, of the first tractate, of the first Ennead. As always you can follow along here. 

I wrote about 80% of this blog post yesterday, then foolishly left my computer unattended overnight. In the meantime it appears to have restarted itself and, in the process, deleted everything I wrote. So this post might be abbreviated-- which might be for the beter.

Last time, Plotinus concluded that the Soul does not experience affectations-- particularly, it seems, negative ones such as suffering-- but that these are, rather, experienced by something called "the Animate." Again, I am assuming that "Animate" is our translator's way of rendering a Greek word meaning "ensouled being" or "living being." I am also assuming, or provisionally concluding, that Plotinus's reasoning is similar to the following:

Red is a concept or quality shared by red objects in general, such as a red book, a red candle, or a red bulb on a Christmas tree. 
The Soul is similar to red, as a non-physical form.
Just as the color red as a whole is unaffected by the burning out of a red candle or by a red book being covered by a green dust jacket, so the soul is not affected by the experiences of the body.
Those experiences, instead, are had by something called "the Animate," which is the body-that-has-a-soul, in the same way that the candle is a candle-that-has-redness.

Plotinus has given other examples of non-corporeal forms which are united with matter to create something. For example, an axe is the union of iron and the form of an axe. I once broke two separate axes attempting to chop down a tree. The specific axes were affected, but the form-of-an-axe, being a concept that exists outside of embodiment, was not. 



Now Plotinus is going to discuss the nature of this thing called "the Animate." As always, he gives us several possibilities:

 
Now this Animate might be merely the body as having life: it might be the Couplement of Soul and body: it might be a third and different entity formed from both.

The Animate could simply be the living body, or it could be the union or "Couplement" of Soul and Body, or it could be some third thing formed from both. Clear enough? The rest of the chapter is dedicated to considering the second two possibilities, starting with the "Couplement" of soul and body.

How could suffering, for example, be seated in this Couplement?

It may be suggested that some unwelcome state of the body produces a distress which reaches to a Sensitive-Faculty which in turn merges into Soul. But this account still leaves the origin of the sensation unexplained.




In other words, sensation may affect the soul. But we still haven't accounted for the existence of sensation.

Another suggestion might be that all is due to an opinion or judgement: some evil seems to have befallen the man or his belongings and this conviction sets up a state of trouble in the body and in the entire Animate. But this account leaves still a question as to the source and seat of the judgement: does it belong to the Soul or to the Couplement? Besides, the judgement that evil is present does not involve the feeling of grief: the judgement might very well arise and the grief by no means follow: one may think oneself slighted and yet not be angry; and the appetite is not necessarily excited by the thought of a pleasure. We are, thus, no nearer than before to any warrant for assigning these affections to the Couplement.

Is that clear? He's saying that we could suggest that "grief" or "pain" are just judgements. But who is it that has the judgment? Is it the Couplement or the Soul? And, furthermore, just the opinion that something is bad doesn't entail the actual feeling of the bad thing. I can read about a natural disaster on social media and judge, "That is bad," but that doesn't mean I actually have any experience of suffering over it. Therefore, the idea of suffering (or pleasure?) as a judgment doesn't allow us to say that it is the Couplement of Soul and body that actually experiences suffering or pleasure. 


Is it any explanation to say that desire is vested in a Faculty-of-desire and anger in the Irascible-Faculty, and, collectively, that all tendency is seated in the Appetitive-Faculty? Such a statement of the facts does not help towards making the affections common to the Couplement; they might still be seated either in the Soul alone or in the body alone. On the one hand if the appetite is to be stirred, as in the carnal passion, there must be a heating of the blood and the bile, a well-defined state of the body; on the other hand, the impulse towards The Good cannot be a joint affection, but, like certain others, too, it would necessarily belong to the Soul alone.

That is, certain affections are definitely bodily-- you can't have sex, or even want to have sex, without your body doing serious work. Therefore, some affections are bodily at least in part. On the other hand, "the impulse toward The Good" must belong only to the Soul. 

Now, why is that? Is this simply the prejudice of an era that was increasingly hostile toward physical matter? It's worth noting that at the time Plotinus is writing, virtually every religious system aims at getting away from embodiment in some way or another. Or is it a logical consequence of a metaphysical system in which concepts and ideals are seen as necessarily outside of physical embodiment? 

It's both getting ahead of ourselves and stretching my knowledge of this stuff almost to the breaking point to talk about The One, but it may help. In the same way that red objects participate in a higher principle called red or red-ness, everything that exists as a unity must receive its unity from an eternal principle called Unity, Oneness, or The One. A later author in the same tradition writes that the One "is truly the first, and it lacks nothing, nor does it need anything else with it except itself; it is the cause of all other things, and does not receive its qualities from another. It is not a material body, nor is it compounded of material bodies, nor is it mixed with anything other than itself, but rather is all things in itself. Therefore it may not be called anything except the One."*

Now, Plotinus and other Platonic thinkers identified The One with The Good. The One, as you can see from the description above, is not a body and it is not made up of bodies. Therefore, to seek the One is to go beyond the body. If the Good is identical with the One, then to seek the Good is to go beyond the body. Therefore, the impulse toward the Good is an affection which is not bodily, while the impulse to have sex is an affection which is bodily. Plotinus's conclusion follows:

Reason, then, does not permit us to assign all the affections to the Couplement.



And he elaborates on the complications:

In the case of carnal desire, it will certainly be the Man that desires, and yet, on the other-hand, there must be desire in the Desiring-Faculty as well. How can this be? Are we to suppose that, when the man originates the desire, the Desiring-Faculty moves to order? How could the Man have come to desire at all unless through a prior activity in the Desiring-Faculty? Then it is the Desiring-Faculty that takes the lead? Yet how, unless the body be first in the appropriate condition?

The question, then, is one commonly asked to this day. Are your experiences simply responses to bodily states? But if so, where do the impulses to move the body come from? 

Tune in next time, when maybe we'll find the answer!



*Picatrix Book 1 Ch 1, Greer and Warnock translation

 Welcome back, and notice my handy new numbering system! This post will focus on the second chapter (if chapter is even the right term) of the  first tractate of the first Ennead.

As a reminder, when we last left Plotinus he told us that we were inquiring into just what it is that experiences "pleasure and distress, fear and courage, desire and aversion." Our options, remember, are "Soul," "Body," or a third thing which is either a blend of these two, or a real third thing arising from the blending. Firstly, said the man himself, we're going to have to figure out just what is the seat of sense-perception. As a reminder, the translation I'm working with is online here. In this translation, everything in [brackets] is a note added for clarity by the translator.

With that said, let's move on to Chapter 2...

....

"This first enquiry obliges us to consider at the outset the nature of the Soul-- that is whether a distinction is to be made between Soul and Essential Soul [between an individual soul and the Soul-Kind in itself.]"

(All Plotinus quotes in red... like how Jesus quotes are red in the Bible.)

Okay. Reading that, did you to think to yourself something like, "Well, I'm lost" or "Maybe it was insane to start with Plotinus" or "Do you think anyone will notice if I quietly close this book and run away"? 

If so, welcome to the club! 

At this point, it becomes clear (if it hasn't already) that Plotinus is living in a different mental universe from the one you and I inhabit. If I were to make my own inquiry into the nature of my consciousness (a word which is itself loaded with all kinds of presuppositions), it would never occur to me to ask whether my mind is distinguishable from mind-stuff in general, or mind-kind as a whole. But as near as I can tell, that's exactly what Plotinus wants to ask about the thing he's calling "soul." 

(A note in another translation that I looked at references a couple of chapters of Aristotle's Metaphysics here. I've looked at the relevant chapters, and decided that to jump right into the middle of Aristotle at the same time as I'm working on Plotinus will probably make me insane, so I'm going to leave it aside for right now.) 

Next:

If such a distinction holds, then the soul [in man] is some sort of a composite and at once we may agree that it is a recipient and-- if only reason allows--- that all the affections and experiences really have their seat in the Soul, and with the affections every state and mood, good and bad alike.

This is one sentence, and yet there is so much here. Okay, to break this down, I'm going to have to take a stab at explaining ancient Greek metaphysics, which is a subject I half understand at best. As I understand it, the theory of forms is as follows:

The quotes from Plotinus are in red. The book on my shelf is red. The bulbs on the Christmas tree are red. The candle next to the tree is red.

In order for all these disparate things to share the quality "red," there must be some thing called "red" which exists prior to the tree, the book, and the candle being red. (This is part of what leads to the idea of the One-- in order for anything to have unity, Unity itself must have existence.)

If I understand Plotinus correctly, then, he's asking the question, whether you and I have souls in the same way that my book, my Christmas tree and my candle have redness-- or whether our souls are essential forms, like redness itself. So, do you have a soul, or do you have Soul?

If you have a soul, he says, then it is necessarily a composite. Why would that be? I suppose, because if this is the case, then "You have a soul" is the same sort of sentence as "The candle is red." The candle is red because it is a composite of different sorts of things, including redness, candle-ness, and so on.

And, if that's the case, then the soul can have affections and experiences. Why? Here the answer, I think, is this: The red candle can change. It can be lit, be burnt out, be broken or thrown in the trash. But the essential thing, "Red," never changes. It is a permanent quality or essence, existing beyond time. If your soul is also a permanent essence, existing beyond time, then it can't change-- and so it can't have experiences.

What do you think, Plotinus? Did I get that one right?

But if Soul [in man] and Essential Soul are one and the same, then the Soul will be an Ideal-Form unperceptive of all those activities which it imparts to another Kind but possessing within itself that native Act of its own which Reason manifests.

I think the answer is "Yes." If the Soul is the same as Essential Soul, then it won't be changed by experiences and affections, anymore than Redness is changed by burning a red candle. 

I want to set this clause aside for right now:  "but possessing within itself that native Act of its own which Reason manifests." ...and come back to it in a bit. 

If this be so, then, indeed, we may think of the Soul as an immortal-- if the immortal, the imperishable, must be impassive, giving out something of itself but taking nothing from without except for what it receives from the Existents prior to itself from which Existents, in that they are nobler, it cannot be sundered.

So: If the soul is a quality like redness, it is immortal, in the same way that redness is immortal. And it will be incapable of experience or change. Instead, those things which participate in it will receive it as a quality. And, interestingly, it can receive-- but only from "Existents" prior to it. What does that mean? Prior to "red," there is "color." Red, Blue, Purple, and Magenta all possess Color, which is an "Existent" prior to them all. What Existents are prior to Soul?

Plotinus goes on:

This is what we've been saying: If the soul is the same as Essential Soul, then it doesn't experience change in time.

And how could the Soul lend itself to any admixture? An essential is not mixed. Or of the intrusion of anything alien? If it did, it would be seeking the destruction of its own nature. Pain must be equally far from it. And Grief-- how or for what could it grieve? Whatever possesses Existence is supremely free, dwelling, unchangeable, within its own peculiar nature. And can any increase bring joy, where nothing, not even anything good, can accrue? What such an Existent is, it is, unchangeably.

More of the same, but notice that the translator chose to capitalize the word "Existence." This emphasizes that, in the Platonic tradition as I understand it, permanent qualities like red, like Plotinus seems to be assuming the Soul to be, have more reality than the changing phenomena of everyday life.

Thus assuredly Sense-Perception, Discursive-Reasoning and all our ordinary mentation are foreign to the Soul: for senseation is a receiving-- whether of an Ideal-Form or of an impassive body-- and reasoning and all ordinary mental action deal with sensation.

Okay. All of this follows from the premise, "Soul in man is an Ideal Form." But did you see the part where he demonstrated that to be the case? Or is he simply working with it as an assumption? 

Coming up: 

The question still remains to be examined in the matter of the intellections-- whether these are to be assigned to the Soul-- and as to Pure-Pleasure, whether this belongs to the Soul in its solitary state."