Plotinus regularly attained the unio mystica, not just "four times"

 Q. We had a conversation about the experiences that Plotinus had of ultimacy.  There is a passage in Porphyry's biography that suggests that Plotinus had such complete experiences four times, or roughly four times, in Plotinus's life.  As I recall you argued against that kind of reading and suggested a more steady and complete realization.  I hope I remember your views correctly.

 

Apropos this discussion, Ennead 4.8 begins with a rare autobiographical comment by Plotinus on just this topic (Gerson translation, page 512):

 

"Often, after waking up to myself from the body, that is, externalizing myself in relation to all other things, while entering into myself, I behold a beauty of wondrous quality, and believe then that I am most to be identified with my better part, that I enjoy the best quality of life, and have become united with the divine and situated within it, actualizing myself at that level, and situating myself above all else in the intelligible world.  Following on this repose within the divine, and descending from Intellect into acts of calculative reasoning, I ask myself in bewilderment, how on earth did I ever come down here, and how ever did my soul come to be enclosed in a body, being such as it has revealed itself to be, even while in a body?"

 

I looked up the MacKenna translation (page 410) and I think it brings out some points with different emphases:

 

"Many times it has happened: lifted out of the body into myself; becoming external to all other things and self-encentred; beholding a marvelous beauty; then, more than ever, assured of community with the loftiest order; enacting the noblest life, acquiring identity with the divine; stationing within It by having attained that activity; poised above whatsoever within the Intellectual is less than the Supreme: yet, there comes the moment of descent from intellection to reasoning, and after that sojourn in the divine, I ask myself how it happens that I can now be descending, and how did the soul ever enter into my body, the Soul which, even within the body, is the high thing it has shown itself to be."

 

I think this passage gives definitive evidence that, at the very least, Plotinus entered into supreme union 'many times' or 'often'.  And the implication is that Plotinus did this regularly, not haphazardly.  I would infer that contemplation was likely a daily practice for Plotinus.

 

The differences between MacKenna and Gerson are intriguing; particularly in the opening passage.  MacKenna speaks of a process of 'lifting up' 'out of the body', and this seems consistent with the path of 'ascent' to the divine.  In contrast, Gerson's translation speaks of 'externalizing myself' and 'waking up to myself'.  Gerson's translation is, I think, a little more opaque; but I would be interested in your own understanding of this opening passage -- perhaps it is difficult to interpret though the general gist seems clear.

 

 

A. Yes, I mentioned that the usual and oft repeated interpretation of Porphyry's statement in the Life is absurd from a practitioner's standpoint and simply reflects the ignorance of the usual translators and scholars.  I also cited that very opening passage of Ennead 4.8 as direct contrary evidence that the more common interpretation is incorrect.  I did also say that I had no doubt that Plotinus entered into union with the One, into the Good/One samadhi, so to speak, regularly and daily each time he sat down to his regular contemplation practice.

 

First of all, Porphyry's statement simply says (in my own rough, quick, off the cuff rendering):  "But he attained four times, I suppose, when I was with him, this goal in unspeakable actuality and not in potentiality."  There is nothing at all in it to suggest that Plotinus only attained it four times in his life--I don't know where the silly interpreters got that idea from.  Further, while it is possible to take the Greek as meaning 'with him' in the sense of the years in which Porphyry was with Plotinus in Rome, it certainly doesn't have to be, and can just mean while he was literally 'with him', i.e., happened to be in the same room with him when he was or went into contemplation.  So really all it tells us is that Porphyry observed his union four times--nothing more about Plotinus' number of times or frequency of union or his regular contemplation practice.  Besides, how would the unaccomplished and relatively unperceptive Porphyry know if Plotinus was in union or not?  It is hardly likely or even proper that Plotinus would tell him every time he entered into the divine union!

 

As regards the Ennead 4.8 passage itself, I'm afraid that neither the Gerson et al. nor the MacKenna translations that you cite are very good or faithful.  (Armstrong's is a bit better.)  I would give, again, a quick, rough, off the cuff rendering as follows:

"Often (/many times) waking to myself from the body and becoming outside of the other things, but inside of myself, seeing a beauty marvelous how great, and trusting then especially (myself) to be of the better part, and effecting the best life and having become the same thing with the Divine and being seated in it coming to that actuality beyond all the other noetical seating myself (therein), after this state in the Divine coming down to discursive reasoning from Nous, I am at a loss how I ever even came down now, and how ever for me the soul has become within the body being this, of such a sort as it has appeared in itself, even though being in a body."  I have rendered it as it is in the Greek, as one long sentence with lots of participles and clauses, and pretty literally, but hopefully it is clear enough.  I don't think the differences in the translations reflect difficulty in interpreting and rendering the Greek, but rather just the lack of skill of the translators and the usual refusal to literally and faithfully render what the original actually says.  In any case, I think it is completely clear, especially in the original, that Plotinus is stating clearly that he frequently and regularly attained the contemplative union with the One, and that this was his regular contemplation practice.  In fact, I would tend to read it as indicating that his attainment of the unio mystica, as it were, in contemplation was such a regular daily occurrence that he didn't even need to mention or specify it per se, but just say that often afterwards he would wonder what he was doing here having fallen into individuated sensate existence in space-time in the first place.  In other words, the "often/many times" might refer to the wondering, rather than to the contemplative union that was so regular and invariable an occurrence in his practice as to be taken for granted, that happened every day, every time he sat in contemplation, it just being that often he would later wonder or think about it, but not always, just practicing it and assuming it the other times.  Further, a statement of Porphyry's in the Life just before the "four times"sentence supports and, in fact, makes obvious my interpretation of the latter, contra the professors and as confirmed by the beginning of 4.8.  (I don’t know why this statement is usually ignored in the interpretation of the “four times” sentence.)  Here is a quick, rough, off the cuff rendering of my own:  

"And thus most of all to this godlike man many times/often bringing himself to the first and transcendent God in reflection and according to the ways having been expounded in the Symposium by Plato, that God appeared who has neither shape nor any aspect, but is seated above nous and all the noetical."

This seems to me at least to clearly say that Porphyry himself thought that Plotinus regularly realized the One/Good in contemplation and that this was a regular practice of his, not just something attained only "four times", and supports my interpretation of the Greek of the "four times" statement that Porphyry is only saying there that he happened to be physically in the same room, for whatever reason, with Plotinus four time when this happened, not at all that it was restricted to just those four times and was not a regular occurence and practice for Plotinus.  Presumably, Plotinus did his daily contemplation alone by himself, as is only to be expected and is only proper, but Porphyry happened to barge in on him in contemplation those four times.

 

An Extremely Brief Introduction to Platonism

Platonism is a spiritual or religious or soteriological system that offers a path to release from the endless cycle of reincarnation and its concomitant misery. It belongs to a family of such systems, comprising Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Orphism, Pythagoreanism, and Platonism, that all accept the facts of reincarnation, the cycle of repeated birth and death, that this works by karma, that this state is wretched and painful and unsatisfactory and a fallen and mistaken condition, and that it is possible through great and correctly directed effort to be released permanently from this state. All these systems consider that the path to this release consists of renunciation, asceticism, detachment, celibacy, vegetarianism and non-harming, abstinence from alcohol and intoxicants, study, and meditation or spiritual exercises. Platonism differs from the others, as they do from each other, in its metaphysics, its description of reality and how it relates to the spiritual path, the nature of release or the condition of having attained the freedom of the goal of the path, the texts that it takes for study, its exact method of implementing the required behavioral and ascetic practices, and its methods of meditation and spiritual exercises. It also differs from the other systems in never having been or become an organized institutional religion or church for the many, in never having had an institutionalized monastic order, in not having devotional or ritual or magical practices to accommodate the non-philosophical many, in not having costumes or ceremonies or holidays and so forth, and in never allowing its ascetic practitioners to become priests/mediators for the populace. In other words, Platonism has never developed a popular religion in addition to or as its central message. It always has been, and remains, a narrow way limited to a philosophical, intellectual, and spiritual elite, for those few who are able and willing to follow its highly morally, spiritually, ascetically, contemplatively, and mentally demanding path and practice.

The texts that Platonism studies, that form the Platonist ‘scriptures’, so to speak, are the Dialogues of Plato and the Enneads of Plotinus. It implements its most stringent moral and ascetic standards and practices purely, with discernment, and without legalism, extensive legal codes, extensive lists of rules devolving down to the level of manners and customs, and trying to exhaustively catalog specific regulations for every particular circumstance that could be encountered in a given relative environment, and, of course, without the extensive prescriptions for ritual and ceremonial practice that preoccupy many other systems. Its meditation and contemplation practices consist in coming to understand the workings of things at the level of soul, ascending to contemplation of the actual Platonic Forms and the Divine Mind, and finally ascending to contemplation of and union with the One or the Good, which is the final release and goal.

The Platonist system or description of reality consists of three existential or experiential levels or degrees of reality that are called the three hypostases. In descending order, from first to last, and from most real to least real, these are the One or the Good, the Divine Mind and the Platonic Forms, and Soul. The One or the Good is the Absolute, the utterly Transcendent, the Unity, the Source, the purest noumenon, “God”, the source and origin and fount of all things, from which all things come but which Itself comes from nothing else, and which remains always unchanged as all else emanates from It. The Divine Mind-Thought, Nous, emanates from the One and is the second most real and perfect thing. It is one unitary divine mind with its objects with which it is neither different nor identical. The objects or thoughts of the single divine mind are the Platonic Ideas or Forms or Archetypes or Things-in-themselves, which, again, are not different or outside the one Mind. This level is a one-many, not a pure unity like the One. Though dynamic and active, it is still unchanging and still transcends, is beyond, time and space. The third level of existence is that of soul, both the World Soul or Soul of the All and all the individual souls of individual sentient beings both human and non-human. This is the level of changing, impermanent, differentiated sensory experience, of space and time, of separate individuals, of cyclic individuated sensate spatio-temporal existence, of the cycle of reincarnation, and of karma. Though still divinely ordered by the World Soul, it is the level of suffering, misery, unsatisfactoriness, and endless rebirth in time and space and change for individual souls. This is the level at which we find ourselves now, and that we must transcend and escape from back to the higher hypostases from which we have fallen. To ordinary people and animals, this seems to be the only real and true level (especially now in the naturalist modern world where so many deny transcendence altogether or have never even heard or conceived of it and think that the sensory world is all that there is), but actually it is the least true and least real. It is the level of mere opinion, not of true knowledge, which is of the higher levels.

The Platonist practitioner and ascetic works to transcend this lowest level of individual soul and escape from it and the cycle of reincarnation dictated by karma and return to and re-become the higher hypostases. Since the soul is imprisoned in the body and sensory existence and takes these things as real, he or she renounces all sensory things and things and activities of this world as much as possible and devotes him- or herself solely to transcendent and divine things alone, to things of the soul, not things of the body and its desires and emotions. Thus, he is celibate and teetotaling (not deliberately dulling his divine soul with intoxicants) and abstains from worldly pleasures as much as possible, is a true ascetic and renunciant. He aims at conforming to the true paradigmatic virtues in the noetic realm (the second hypostasis) and so cultivates all moral virtue and non-harming. He is vegan, completely honest, doesn’t obtain the necessities of life in a way that harms any beings, is kind and gentle, etc. Through study of the Dialogues of Plato and the Enneads of Plotinus, and ancillary works, and reflection, he gains an understanding of the nature of things here at the level of soul and how they work, an idea of what the higher hypostases must be like and of their utter transcendence, of how to live virtuously and ascetically, and of the nature of the Path and what it entails and how to practice it. Then, with all this as a base, he devotes himself to contemplation practice to attain direct noetic apprehension of the Platonic Forms and transfer his soul to the level of and unity with the second hypostasis, the Divine Mind-Thought. Finally, established here at the second level, he devotes himself even further and vigorously to contemplation practice to directly touch and apprehend the One, the Good, and eventually attain complete and permanent re-union with and re-identification with It. This is the release from the cycle of birth and death and the final goal. All this is most difficult and is likely to take many lifetimes and rebirths, with many years of hard work to make some progress in any given birth.

Given the non-institutional, individual, transcendent, and transhistorical nature of the Platonist system and practice, and its lack of dependence on particular worldly structures, the Platonist ascetics, the philosophoi, are rather less likely to leave traces in the historical record. We are most fortunate that the Dialogues and Enneads have been preserved, but if many other Platonist ascetics left any written records, many things were lost or destroyed when Christianity and Islam came to power with their intolerance of anything else and their attempt to destroy all other writings. There has never been a time when the Dialogues and Enneads were not being read, even in the original Greek, from antiquity, through Byzantium, into the Renaissance and modernity, and there couldn’t have been actual Platonist contemplatives, but once Christianity and Islam took over, any such would have had to remain hidden at the cost of their lives. Nonetheless, Platonism has greatly influenced the Abrahamic systems, and the Jewish, Islamic, and, especially, Christian mystical systems owe a great deal to and and in some cases are even largely based on Platonism. After Plotinus, but before the final suppression of all non-Abrahamic practices, some teachers and people, such as Iamblichus and Proclus, who considered themselves Platonists, but departed thoroughly from the actual Platonic system, attempted to incorporate polytheistic, ritual, theurgic, and magical practices and thought into Platonism and make it more like the other popular religions. Unfortunately, most of the few modern people who have attempted to revive some sort of Platonist practice have fallen in with and follow these later ideas or those of the conscious incorporation of into or blending with Judaism, Christianity, or Islam.



Ⓒ 2020 Eric S. Fallick

A Note Regarding the 'Historical Socrates'

I personally have little interest in a supposed 'historical' Socrates, whatever meaning such an idea may even really have. The Socrates of the dialogs is just, to my mind, an allegorical symbol, in accordance with the overall nature of the dialogs as a whole. You will note that in the Enneads, although Plotinus quotes Plato a number of times, the only times he ever refers to Socrates is when he uses the name 'Socrates' as a generic example name for an arbitrary person, i.e., as "John Smith" or "John Doe"! I know that most people look to the dialogs as historical documents or records to whatever extent and, in accordance with their (exclusive) preoccupation with the sense world try to understand them as realist historical documents, but I take them just as spiritual documents. The purpose of great true spiritual texts like the dialogs and Enneads is not to provide sensory/sense world information relating to alleged past occurrences in some supposed realist past physical world, but to remind our souls of the spiritual truths they have forgotten (the Platonist teaching of learning as recollection solves a multitude of difficulties) and to practice them and leave and renounce this least real sense world and return to their true home. They are teaching us how to get out of the cave and reminding us what things look like in the light, not giving us information about shadows on the cave wall that are the exclusive concern of worldlings. Ultimately, all spiritual texts that we perceive are, like everything else, just experiences according to our karma with no philosophically realist referent--in this case, experiences of our karma lightening up so that the Absolute is beginning to shine through the sense world and leading us to remember and helping us to practice to get free. All that is real is the higher hypostases, their darkened trace manifesting as this world and the world soul, the underlying spiritual structure of Reality, and the movement of individual souls closer to or farther from the One in their long journey and revolution through countless births in samsara/genesis. Though we must, in our circumstances, of course, deal extensively and honestly with 'history', ultimately all so-called historical records and artifacts are just present manifestations and appearances and experiences in our sense fields with no actually realistic existing physical past referents. Almost no one seems to understand what I am talking about when I say such things, but perhaps even a little glimpse of the One Itself and regular contemplative experience of Nous may show one that this whole sense world of becoming is just a shadow or projection of the higher hypostases, with the least reality, and that all manner of possible combinations of projections or traces of the Forms form all sorts of different relative realities of experience of souls according to their karma.

The Ontological Status of Deities

Q. For some time I have been wanting to ask you your thoughts about the status of deities in Platonism. Because of my long history with Buddhism my tendency is to regard deities in the way traditional Buddhism does. That is to say that I think of deities as beings, subject to karma, and still trapped in genesis / samsara. Though deities are long-lived, they are not necessarily wise.

Platonism appears to take a different view. It seems that Platonism views deities as embodied emanations of a higher status than those beings in the material realm. And some passages suggest that they are immortal (rather like angels in monotheism). This comes in the dialogues when Plato argues against the accounts of the bad behavior of deities, saying that deities could not behave in such nefarious ways because they are close to the One and the Good. This seems to be the dominant view of deities in the dialogues.

It might be possible to integrate the two views: some deities are still in genesis while others are of a higher status. Although technically possible, such a solution strikes me as forced and ad hoc.

Any insights?


A. I also tend to think about deities in what you describe as the traditional Buddhist manner (of course, I have a similar long history with it as you do), and I think that Platonism, as I will further explain, has the same perspective, in fact, actually even more so, and there is actually no contradiction, unless in the opposite way that Platonism accords even less status and importance to deities than Buddhism does, particularly because of its situation as an institutionalized religion for the many, which Platonism happily avoids. There is only experience, mind, consciousness, as Plotinus says, all is contemplation, there is only contemplation. There is no physical, fixed, or enumerated particular structure or cosmology for the alleged universe 'out there', as in the six (or otherwise numbered) realms of Buddhism, for the range of possible relative individuated spatio-temporal phenomenal experiences at the lowest level of the third hypostasis of soul that individual souls may experience according to their karma and which together comprise 'the world' as experienced by the world soul. Individual souls may, for a time, experience rebirths in such conditions as we might describe as deities of various sorts, but they are no more than that and, as you say, still karmic beings, subject to karma, and still trapped in samsara/genesis, and not of importance or spiritual significance, unless, I suppose, they manage somehow to practice as philosophoi in that state. Not only would any deities be incapable of possessing and transmitting true wisdom, which comes only from the higher hypostases of Nous and the One, and the higher soul in direct contact with them, but it seems that we happen at the moment to live in a relative reality system where such deities are not likely to appear, which is not to say that they couldn't in other relative reality systems, and, in any case, even if they do, they are not important and are just to be ignored, while one just directs one's attention solely to transcendent spiritual practice aimed at the higher hypostases. (And I think that this is clearly Plato and Plotinus' view.)

In discussing the position of Platonism, note first that I am not at all talking about the silly theists and theurgists like Iamblichus, Proclus, Thomas Taylor, etc. and their followers both ancient and modern, whom I don't consider to even be real Platonists at all and don't need to be at all taken into account, anymore than, for example, Hindu tantric theists need to be. Rather, I am only referring to Plato/the dialogs and Plotinus/the Enneads (and any following them), whom I consider to be the only real Platonists. Remember that the dialogs are to a large extent and in many places and in their overall dramatic frame allegorical and symbolic and anagogical and expressed in a different language and vocabulary and terminology and mode of expression than we are usually accustomed to. When Plato refers to the gods throughout the dialogs, and in the sort of positive way that you mention, he is referring to/means, not individuated sensory (in the broadest sense that would include even the formless/without sensation deities of Buddhist cosmology) deities such as we are talking about, but the divine principles of, at the lowest level, divine necessity, karma, and providence as mediated by the world soul, and, at the higher levels, of Nous and the Good. One of the things that makes this clear is that he refers to gods plural and god singular alternatingly and indiscriminately, sometimes mixing them even in the same passage, if I recall correctly, indicating 'god(s)' and divinity as an abstract principle, and rarely by name as if he is concerned with the specific Greek pantheon. Even when he does give some by name, note that, for example, that in the Phaedo when Socrates, who symbolizes the higher divine soul and individual nous, not any actual individual named Socrates, says that he is consecrated like the swans to Apollo, that 'Apollo' in Greek is a pun on 'a-polla' meaning 'not-many', i.e., that Socrates as nous is consecrated to the One as non-multiplicity (nisprapanca in Sanskrit). Similarly, when he says that the accomplished philosphos when the soul is released from the body goes to be among the gods or his soul will go to the good and wise god (note again the indiscriminate use of singular and plural) he means that the individual nous and higher soul released from the lower soul and the experience of the body re-merges with Nous and the One. In the discussion of the fact that the gods can only do good and be good, such as in the earlier books of the Republic, which I gather you are referring to, he is not talking about the Homeric/Hesiodic, etc. 'gods', though they and quotations from the poets are used in the discussion, especially since he concerned to counter popular misconceptions of divinity, but showing that the three hypostases as divine principles are wholly good (evil coming from the darkness of non-being) and that the law of necessity/karma/justice operative inexorably throughout the level of soul and becoming/samsara/genesis is wholly just and righteous and divine and always works, so that good is always rewarded and evil always punished. It would be a big project to go through all the instances in the dialogs referring to god/gods and show their actual or undermeaning, but I hope this is enough to give you the idea for now. I want to at least add that in the Enneads Plotinus generally uses god or gods to refer to one or another of the three hypostases, usually the higher two, and even when he may refer to, for example, the sun as a deity is referring to the fact that all is only mind/contemplation/soul and the ordering of even lowest soul level reality is according to divine spiritual principles mediated through the world soul so that one needs to respect this higher spiritual reality and not disparage it or disregard the divine necessity and law. When he does mention conventional lower deities in the sense that you are asking about, just following along with the conventional phenomenal relative consensus reality that he happens to be functioning in in his time and place, and in regard to 'magic', physical cosmology, 'prayers', astrology, etc., he treats them all as unimportant and irrelevant to spirituality and spiritual and philosophic practice and as inferior or irrelevant to the true philosophos, the true renunciant contemplative ascetic.

I hope that this may be enough to resolve the 'aporia' that you raised about deities in Platonism and show that there is no contradiction with the Platonist view as expressed in the dialogs and Enneads and the Buddhist attaching no profundity to deities that we have both held to over the past years. In fact, as I pointed out, Buddhism is really much more concerned with deities, at the popular and institutionalized monastic level at least, with Dharma protector gods and etc., etc., even if they are irrelevant to attaining release from samsara and are inferior to the Buddhist ascetic yogin. Platonism of and in the dialogs and Enneads is, as I have attempted very briefly to show with I hope some success, actually much more purely concerned only with transcendence and dismissive of deities as unimportant, unwise, and irrelevant since it has no need of deities at all, even as protectors of the faith, but is content with the really divine principles of the actual divine underlying structure of reality and of the hypostases and the aspiration for genuine transcendence and release from all relative realities, including any which may include deities, and any seeming reference to a higher ontological status of deities is actually a reference to the higher ontological status of the higher hypostases.