1
Whoever I am, I am not an object that I can look upon, separate from the consciousness doing the looking. In Plotinus’s philosophy, the highest aspect of psyche, or soul, is identical with nous, or spirit, the universal consciousness that contains the essential forms of everything in creation.
This is a special sort of containment because spirit is the objects contained within itself. By contrast, ordinarily we are not the objects contained within our minds—all those thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and whatnot that ceaselessly occupy our attention. This is why we can forget what we once knew and not know the entire truth about anything external to ourselves.
Sara Rappe notes that when a person stops identifying with the contents of consciousness and tries to experience consciousness apart from its usual contents, his or her customary identity begins to erode. When we aren’t thinking, feeling, or perceiving, we are who we really are, pure souls.
Speaking of the unspeakable
I AM HOPEFUL that this discussion has helped the reader better understand that, as a philosopher, Plotinus has much to say. Yet, as a mystic, Plotinus has nothing to say. So how does he resolve the tension that results from having to say what can’t be said, to speak of the unspeakable? By using words to point toward what is beyond words, the mystery of the One. The pointing is not the goal; the One is. This largely explains why it is so difficult for scholars to agree about what Plotinus means.
Often Plotinus’s goal is to produce in the reader what Michael Sells calls a “meaning event.” This event, Sells says, is “the semantic analogue to the experience of mystical union. It does not describe or refer to mystical union but effects a semantic union that re-creates or imitates the mystical union…. We might call the event, then, the evocation of a sense of mystery.” 2
I don’t know if I really understand what a meaning event is, or if I’ve ever truly experienced one while reading the Enneads. However, I do know that there have been times, many times, when I would read a passage and be left with an ineffable realization that I could only vaguely express as, “Ah, yes; just so.” Plotinus’s words would lead me to intuit, however dimly, that there is One, lying just beyond my conscious awareness; and I cannot lay hold of it, for it is the very ground of my consciousness, that which makes me aware.
But when the soul wishes to see [ the One ] by itself, it is just by being with it that it sees, and by being one with that it is one, and it is not capable of thinking that it possesses what it seeks, because it is not other than that which is being known. [VI-9-3] 3
Knowledge is one, not many
T HE ENNEADS are a paradox through and through since all the thoughts Plotinus expresses are ultimately intended to lead the reader to stop thinking. The wisdom the mystic philosopher seeks can’t be found with the discursive mind, which thinks one thought after another.
Rather, wisdom is part and parcel of the intuitive intelligence that is spirit. We as souls participate in spirit—and indeed are virtually identical with spirit—when we stop participating in lower activities such as reasoning, emoting, and perceiving sense objects.
In the Enneads, Plotinus points us toward the only way of unmasking the deepest mysteries of life: become the mystery you wish to unmask and be nothing else. If you want to know what the essence of life is, simply be alive. If you want to know what the essence of consciousness is, simply be conscious. If you want to know what the essence of the One is, simply be the One.
Sara Rappe says, “What characterizes the faculty of insight is unitive knowing, non-separation of subject and object, or complete assimilation to and identification with the object of knowledge.” 4
Obviously, our everyday lives are far removed from this sort of unitive knowledge. We don’t know everything about anything, including
Whoever I am, I am not an object that I can look upon, separate from the consciousness doing the looking. In Plotinus’s philosophy, the highest aspect of psyche, or soul, is identical with nous, or spirit, the universal consciousness that contains the essential forms of everything in creation.
This is a special sort of containment because spirit is the objects contained within itself. By contrast, ordinarily we are not the objects contained within our minds—all those thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and whatnot that ceaselessly occupy our attention. This is why we can forget what we once knew and not know the entire truth about anything external to ourselves.
Sara Rappe notes that when a person stops identifying with the contents of consciousness and tries to experience consciousness apart from its usual contents, his or her customary identity begins to erode. When we aren’t thinking, feeling, or perceiving, we are who we really are, pure souls.
Speaking of the unspeakable
I AM HOPEFUL that this discussion has helped the reader better understand that, as a philosopher, Plotinus has much to say. Yet, as a mystic, Plotinus has nothing to say. So how does he resolve the tension that results from having to say what can’t be said, to speak of the unspeakable? By using words to point toward what is beyond words, the mystery of the One. The pointing is not the goal; the One is. This largely explains why it is so difficult for scholars to agree about what Plotinus means.
Often Plotinus’s goal is to produce in the reader what Michael Sells calls a “meaning event.” This event, Sells says, is “the semantic analogue to the experience of mystical union. It does not describe or refer to mystical union but effects a semantic union that re-creates or imitates the mystical union…. We might call the event, then, the evocation of a sense of mystery.” 2
I don’t know if I really understand what a meaning event is, or if I’ve ever truly experienced one while reading the Enneads. However, I do know that there have been times, many times, when I would read a passage and be left with an ineffable realization that I could only vaguely express as, “Ah, yes; just so.” Plotinus’s words would lead me to intuit, however dimly, that there is One, lying just beyond my conscious awareness; and I cannot lay hold of it, for it is the very ground of my consciousness, that which makes me aware.
But when the soul wishes to see [ the One ] by itself, it is just by being with it that it sees, and by being one with that it is one, and it is not capable of thinking that it possesses what it seeks, because it is not other than that which is being known. [VI-9-3] 3
Knowledge is one, not many
T HE ENNEADS are a paradox through and through since all the thoughts Plotinus expresses are ultimately intended to lead the reader to stop thinking. The wisdom the mystic philosopher seeks can’t be found with the discursive mind, which thinks one thought after another.
Rather, wisdom is part and parcel of the intuitive intelligence that is spirit. We as souls participate in spirit—and indeed are virtually identical with spirit—when we stop participating in lower activities such as reasoning, emoting, and perceiving sense objects.
In the Enneads, Plotinus points us toward the only way of unmasking the deepest mysteries of life: become the mystery you wish to unmask and be nothing else. If you want to know what the essence of life is, simply be alive. If you want to know what the essence of consciousness is, simply be conscious. If you want to know what the essence of the One is, simply be the One.
Sara Rappe says, “What characterizes the faculty of insight is unitive knowing, non-separation of subject and object, or complete assimilation to and identification with the object of knowledge.” 4
Obviously, our everyday lives are far removed from this sort of unitive knowledge. We don’t know everything about anything, including
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