29 September 2022

Contemplating Eternity 

“But now, whenever, concentrating the attention of my soul on something, I am able to say this about it, or rather to see it as a thing of such a kind that nothing at all about it has ever come into being – for if it has, it is not always existing, or not always existing as a whole – is it, therefore, already eternal, if there is  not also in it a nature of such a kind as to give an assurance about it that it will stay as it is and never become different, so that, if you look attentively at it again, you will find it as it was?  What then, if one does not depart at all from one’s contemplation of it but stays in its company, wondering at its nature, and able to do so by a natural power which never fails?  Surely one would be (would one not?), oneself on the move towards eternity and never falling away from it at all, that one might be like it and eternal, contemplating eternity and the eternal by the eternal in oneself.”

Plotinus, Ennead III.7.5, On Eternity and Time, translated by A. H. Armstrong, Loeb Classical Library, page 311.

When I ponder this passage, I am reminded that Platonism is a mystical path.  And I see mysticism as a shifting of attention from the ephemeral to the eternal, a shifting from the sensory to the non-sensory. 

The understanding of Platonism is that ultimacy is beyond name and form, beyond words and concepts.  However, when speaking about the ultimate the Platonic tradition relies on three terms: The Good, The One, and The Beautiful. Inspired by passages like this one, I would add a fourth term: The Eternal.  All of these names assist practitioners on the mystic path by disclosing an aspect of reality that pulls them beyond that which is transitory. 

In my personal journey The Eternal has had a big impact for me, helping me to shift my attention, the attention of my soul, to that which resides beyond the shadows of sensory experience.  This process I call ‘distinguishing eternity’ and it is a gradual dawn of clarity as to the reality of the presence of eternity within and spread out over all of the cosmos.