The Way Within

25 March 2023

The Way Within

“A man has not failed if he fails to win beauty of colours or bodies, or power or office or kingship even, but if he fails to win this and only this.  For this he should give up the attainment of kingship and of rule over all earth and sea and sky, if only by leaving and overlooking them he can turn to That and see.

“But how shall we find the way?  What method can we devise?  How can one see the ‘inconceivable beauty’ which stays within the holy sanctuary and does not come out where the profane may see it?  Let him who can, follow and come within, and leave outside the sight of his eyes and not turn back to the bodily splendours which he saw before.  When he sees the beauty in bodies he must not run after them; we must know that they are images, traces, shadows, and hurry away to that which they image.  For if a man runs to the image and wants to seize it as if it was the reality (like a beautiful reflection playing on the water, which some story somewhere, I think, said riddlingly a man wanted to catch and sank down into the stream and disappeared) then this man who clings to beautiful bodies and will not let them go, will, like the man in the story, but in soul, not in body, sink down into the dark depths where intellect has no delight and stay blind in Hades, consorting with shadows there and here.”

(Plotinus, Ennead I.6, On Beauty, translated by A. H. Armstrong, Plotinus, Porphyry on Plotinus, Ennead I, Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1966, page 255-257, 7.30-8.15, ISBN: 9780674994843)

“For not he that has failed of the joy that is in colour or in visible forms, not he that has failed of power or of honours or of kingdom has failed, but only he that has failed of only This, for Whose winning he should renounce kingdoms and command over earth and ocean and sky, if only, spurning the world of sense from beneath his feet, and straining to This, he may see.

“But what must we do?  How lies the path?  How come to vision of the inaccessible Beauty, dwelling as if in consecrated precincts, apart from the common ways where all may see, even the profane?

“He that has the strength, let him arise and withdraw into himself, foregoing all that is known by the eyes, turning away for ever from the material beauty that once made his joy.  When he perceives those shapes of grace that show in body, let him not pursue: he must know them for copies, vestiges, shadows, and hasten away towards That they tell of.  For if anyone follow what is like a beautiful shape playing over water – is there not a myth telling in symbol of such a dupe, how he sank into the depths of the current and was swept away to nothingness?  So too, one that is held by material beauty and will not break free shall be precipitated, not in body but in Soul, down to the dark depths loathed of the Intellective-Being, where, blind even in the Lower-World, he shall have commerce only with shades, there as here.”

(Plotinus, The Enneads, translated by Stephen MacKenna, Plotinus: The Enneads, Larson Publications, Burdett, New York, 1992, pages 70-71, I.6.7-I.6.8, ISBN: 9780943914558)

1.  The path of Platonic contemplation is found by turning away from sensory phenomena and instead turning within to the source of those phenomena.  In this Ennead on Beauty, the path is described as turning away from sensory beauty to the source of beauty that is found within.

2.  It is natural that human beings, when seeing, or otherwise sensing, something beautiful tend to reach out in an attempt to grasp, own, or control, that which is beautiful.  It seems obvious that this impulse to reach out makes sense.  The problem is that beauty in the sensory/material world is unstable; such beauty will soon vanish.  Even if someone is in a position to purchase a thing of beauty, that thing of beauty is changing in every moment, losing its unity, headed to the harbor of impermanence where it will vanish under the tides of becoming and begoning. 

3.  But the experience of Beauty as such, of noetic Beauty, surpasses, according to this quote, all worldly accomplishments, even kingship over earth, sea, and sky.  This is because the experience of Beauty as such means experiencing the transcendental, that which participates in eternity.

4.  This turning away is part of what I mean by the ‘ascetic ideal’.  There is a connection between the asceticism that Plato and Plotinus refer to and speak about, and the way to access Beauty as such.  

5.  One of the difficulties in understanding Plotinus is how Plotinus will use a word, such as ‘beautiful’, but the meaning changes depending on the context; in particular what hypostasis is being referred to.  Sensory beauty is found in the third hypostasis, the realm of the senses, materiality, and becoming and begoning.  Noetic beauty is found in the second hypostasis, the realm of nous.  Noetic beauty and material beauty are connected in the sense that all material beauty participates in noetic beauty and depends upon noetic beauty for its existence.  

There is a third, and higher, manifestation of beauty that is mentioned only rarely; I call it ‘transcendental beauty’ and in this instance it is the beauty of the One, it is the beauty of that which is beyond mind and being.  While noetic beauty is beauty as such, transcendental beauty is beauty that transcends itself in its unity with the One, the Good, and the Eternal.

Transcendental beauty is the beauty of eternity.

6.  I learned recently that it was this Ennead that Stephen MacKenna first translated and published.  MacKenna was kind of testing the waters to see if there was any interest.  A man of means read it and offered to finance a full translation of the Enneads, but MacKenna balked at being dependent upon this individual.  So the man of means brought the idea to the attention of a publisher who gave MacKenna a stipend in order to work on the translation; and that’s how the MacKenna translation emerged.  I think this story points to the power of this Ennead; it has always been one of my favorites.  It is clear, direct, and offers the reader instruction on the metaphysical ascent that is accessible.  At the same time the Ennead is uncompromising in its commitment to a spiritual life and the value Plotinus sees in such a life.  I always find reading it inspiring.