Brief Notes on Various Topics -- 79

5 January 2026

Brief Notes on Various Topics -- 79

1.  Happy New Year Everyone!

Wishing you a prosperous and contemplative 2026!

2.  Grace, Again

I think one reason why some contemporary Platonists dislike the idea of grace, and in some cases reject the idea that grace is a significant aspect of Platonism, is that in the West grace is thought of as a kind of personal gift.  What I mean is that if the source of grace is God then the way grace is configured in the West implies that the God who grants grace is a person who has a personal relationship with the one receiving the grace.  This kind of understanding of grace is consistent with monotheism so it doesn’t cause any friction in a monotheistic context.

But in other philosophical and spiritual contexts it does cause friction and in these other contexts grace is understood differently; grace is still a gift, but it is not a gift given to us as individual persons.

In a Pure Land Buddhist context, I once heard impersonal grace explained as follows:  Suppose a man is very hungry.  This man recently lost his job and is alienated from his family.  He moved to the city just a few months before and doesn’t really know anyone.  He is sitting on a bench at a bus stop when he notices that someone forgot to take a bag of food with them onto the bus.  The bag is sitting against the bench.  The man waits for several hours but no one shows up.  The man decides to take the bag of food with him and this tides him over for the better part of a week.

The story was offered as a metaphor for grace.  The hungry man didn’t deserve the food and therefore what happened was not an exchange of goods.  But reality, or causation, unfolded in such a way as to prevent the man from going hungry. 

Switching back to a Platonist perspective, the presence of the Good and the One is a gift that people can receive and the gift nourishes the return to the One.  But it isn’t because we deserve the gift of this presence, and it isn’t because the One decides that I, as an individual will receive this gift of presence.  Rather it is that reality is structured that way; and by reality I mean the structure of metaphysical reality.  The gift of grace is a consequence of the everywhere nature of the Good and the One.  The gift of grace is a consequence of the everywhen nature of the Transcendental.  The gift of grace is a consequence of the everything nature of the Presence of Eternity.

The man sitting on the bench at the bus stop might not have noticed the bag of food.  Or he might have decided not to take it even after waiting hours for someone to claim it.  The working of grace is not mechanical, it does not follow material sequences of causation.  But without grace I don’t think the spiritual ascent would be possible.

3.  Modern Stoicism

For about 15 to 20 years there has been a popular interest in Stoicism.  Before I retired, about three years ago, I worked at a spiritual bookstore and I can remember when books on Stoicism started becoming popular.  They became so popular that I created a subsection within the philosophy shelf just for Stoicism.  And the books sold well.  It appears to me that books on Stoicism are still selling well.

I have observed that there is some pushback about these books on Stoicism on the grounds that they are very selective about the teachings of Stoicism that they bring forth and talk about.  This criticism comes almost entirely from academics, particularly those who have a specialty in the Classical Period or Roman Philosophy.  I have read and listened to a number of these critiques and I have noticed that many of them note that popular Stoicism rarely mentions Stoic Cosmology, to pick one example.  Almost all popular Stoicism today is focused on ethics and/or self-help.

The point critics make about popular Stoicism not teaching about cosmology is, I think, misguided.  For example, contemporary Aristotelians drop Aristotle’s cosmology, I mean his material cosmology, because the cosmos that science has uncovered has displaced it.  The same could be said for Stoicism.  I suspect that the focus modern Stoics have on ethics is there because in our society there is little offered in terms of ethical guidance; nihilism is rampant and a completely subjective, hyperindividualistic approach to ethics dominates.  Stoic ethical teachings offer people a different perspective on ethics, one that is practical, one that people can actually access and use.  (As an aside, I should mention that some academics, like Pierre Hadot, had a very positive view of the ethics of Stoicism and I suspect this group is not critical of popular Stoicism.)

I wonder if Platonists today can learn from the success of popular Stoicism?  If contemporary Platonists used popular Stoicism as a model it would generate, for example, books on the ethical teachings of Platonism as opposed to an emphasis on metaphysical cosmology.  This would be a way of introducing Platonism to people by emphasizing the way of life aspects of Platonism.

A few posts back I suggested that the first step in living a Platonist life was to become a vegetarian.  A second step might be to simplify one’s life, that is to say to reduce possessions to essentials.  These kinds of teachings do have a metaphysical foundation in the Platonist tradition, but they also can function as a mode of access to Platonism that is not overly intellectual or overly analytical. 

4.  Afterlife Histories

There is an interesting process whereby the negative reputation of someone gets transformed after they have passed away; and this transformation almost always happens in a shift towards a positive assessment.  This has been observed by historians and sociologists for a long time.  An historical figure might have been enormously destructive and received a lot of condemnation during their lifetime; yet, as time passes, the assessment changes and people start thinking of them as, to pick one example, a ‘great military leader’ and the specifics of the negative assessment fade from social awareness; the negative assessment becomes something that only dedicated historians, and a few people who might be interested in the topic for random reasons, even know about.  An example of this is Alexander the Great; but there are many others.  If you are attentive you can watch this process happen in real time to figures of political and military importance who die during one’s lifetime. 

Part of it, I think, is a kind of general feeling that ‘one should not speak ill of the dead.’  And this sentiment aligns with the tendency for us to reconfigure the past in general in a more positive direction than may be warranted.  This seems to be a feature of most people’s minds, with the exception of dedicated pessimists.

I was thinking about this because late in 2025 I saw two posts on Youtube that were overviews of the life of Julian the Apostate.  In both cases the presenters lauded Julian as a hero who risked everything to bring back the position of Paganism in the Roman world.  Neither of the presentations mention the huge amounts of animals Julian sacrificed during his brief reign.  Well, I take that back; one of them said that under Julian the Pagan altars once again ‘ran red with blood.’  He said this as if it was a good thing.  And it was just a passing comment.

One of the presentations was by a Pagan Platonist, or Neo-Pagan Platonist, or perhaps a Neo-Pagan Neo-Platonist.  It makes sense that a Neo-Pagan would have a positive feeling about Julian, especially if he has a strong anti-Christian bias.

Still, I find it troubling that the zealous, I would say fanatic, devotion to animal sacrifice, which was a signature feature of Julian’s Paganism, goes unmentioned.  Consider, for example, that many countries have laws against animal cruelty; and this applies to the nations in which these presenters live.  This indicates that as a society we think of animals as lying within our ethical concerns.  It’s true that laws against animal cruelty are rarely enforced, but in principle the existence of such laws indicates a general ethical concern regarding how animals are treated.  But this kind of concern was absent from both presentations on Julian; not that this is unusual.  Books I’ve read about Julian don’t bring it up either.

From a Platonist perspective, any animal sacrifice, let alone the elaborate and relentless sacrifices of Julian, means you have not come to terms with Platonist ethics or, I would argue, the ethics of the community in which the presenters reside.  I say this about Platonism because the foundation of Platonist ethics is non-harming and the application of that foundation is found first in ways of life that include animals in the embrace of non-harming. 

5.  Breaking Free

The material world is a kind of trap because the material world is a region of suffering and sorrow.  Platonism offers us a way of breaking free from the trap of material existence; that is the purpose and the meaning of Platonic Teachings, the Platonic Way, the Platonic Dharma.

6.  Solitude in Platonism

The pursuit of solitude, or understanding solitude as a spiritual practice, is not prominent in Classical Platonist literature like the Dialogues and the Enneads.  But there is a kind of reference to solitude in what I might call the ‘penumbra’ of Platonism.  For example, Plotinus famously refers to the ultimate ascent to the ineffable One as a journey of the ‘alone to the alone.’  In addition, Plato mentions in several Dialogues how the Philosopher will be seen as marginal to the society in which the Philosopher dwells because the Philosopher is focused on the immaterial transcendental while almost all people are focused on the material world.  This implies a kind of solitude; it might not be actual solitude in the sense of a hermitage, but these representations of the Philosopher indicate a psychic and social distance, even a separation from most people.

I’m not aware of the topic of solitude being discussed within a Platonist context.  For example, I don’t find it in the Handbook by Alicnous and I don’t recall solitude being a topic in the Orations of Maximus. 

But there are hints, now and then, of Platonists who have given up material possessions and live a life that is withdrawn from material concerns.  I find these examples inspiring and uplifting.  Perhaps it is time for contemporary Platonists to incorporate an explicit commitment to solitude as part of the ascent to the transcendental.

7.  Does the Soul Have Parts?

I was reading what Alicnous has to say about the soul in his Handbook (discussion of the soul is found on pages 31-34 and consists of three sections; 23, 24, and 25, in Dillon’s translation).  Section 24 is titled ‘The Soul and Its Parts’.  It is a very clear presentation of the idea that the soul has parts (an affective part, a part that reasons, and so forth).  And it is consistent with writings on the soul found in Classical Platonist literature both before Alcinous and after him.

Nevertheless, I lean towards viewing the soul as partless, as having no parts.  First because the soul is immaterial and I don’t see how it is possible for that which is immaterial to have parts.  On what basis would the parts be distinguished?

Second, I think of the soul as the presence of the One (and the Good) in the ephemeral individual.  The One is the source of unity in material things; the One is why a thing is a thing and not nothing.  But it seems to me that unity implies a partless reality.  Without a partless immaterial reality individual material things could not even emerge in the material world.

Third, I think of functions like reason as a part of mind rather than soul.  My interpretation is that the main function of mind is differentiation and reason is a tool of differentiation.  I think of mind as the presence of the noetic in the material individual because it is in nous where differentiation first appears. 

In other words, the soul does not reason, nor is soul irrational.  Because the soul is prior to differentiation it is neither rational nor irrational.

Fourth, I think of the affective aspect of the individual to have its origin in the body (and the mind’s relationship to the affective body is to either work to actualize affective desires or to curb them through the cultivation of virtues and other types of purification).  I understand ‘affective’ to mean primarily emotions and desires.  Emotions and desires appear regularly in a manner that is cyclic; the material world is the world of cyclic existence and for this reason the affective aspect originates in the body rather than the soul.

I realize that viewing the soul as a partless unity is different from the standard presentation of the soul as having higher and lower parts and functions.  Nevertheless, these are my current thoughts on the nature of the soul which I offer for your consideration.

  

Dimensions of Beauty

19 January 2024

Dimensions of Beauty

“So the soul when it is purified becomes form and formative power, altogether bodiless and intellectual [noetic] and entirely belonging to the divine, whence beauty springs and all that is akin to it.  Soul, then, when it is raised to the level of intellect [nous] increases in beauty.  Intellect and the things of intellect are its beauty, its own beauty and not another’s, since only then is it truly soul.  For this reason it is right to say that the soul’s becoming something good and beautiful is its being made like to God, because from Him come beauty and all else which falls to the lot of real beings.  Or rather, beautifulness is reality, and the other kind of thing is the ugly, and this same is the primary evil; so for God the qualities of goodness and beauty are the same, or the realities, the good and beauty.  So we must follow the same line of enquiry to discover beauty and goodness, and ugliness and evil.  And first we must posit beauty which is also the good; from this immediately comes intellect [nous], which is beauty; and soul is given beauty by intellect.  Everything else is beautiful by the shaping of soul, the beauties in actions and in ways of life.  And soul makes beautiful the bodies which are spoken of as beautiful; for since it is a divine thing and a kind of part of beauty, it makes everything it grasps and masters beautiful, as far as they are capable of participation.

“So we must ascend again to the good, which every soul desires.  Anyone who has seen it knows what I mean when I say it is beautiful.”

(Plotinus, Ennead I.6, On Beauty, translated by A. H. Armstrong, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1966, pages 251-253, ISBN: 9780674994843.  Note: words in brackets are mine.)

“The Soul thus cleansed is all Idea and Reason, wholly free of body, intellective, entirely of that divine order from which the wellspring of Beauty rises and all the race of Beauty.

“Hence the Soul heightened to the Intellectual-Principle is beautiful to all its power.  For Intellection and all that proceeds from Intellection are the Soul’s beauty, a graciousness native to it and not foreign, for only with these is it truly Soul.  And it is just to say that in the Soul’s becoming a good and beautiful thing is its becoming like to God, for from the Divine comes all the Beauty and all the Good in beings.

“We may even say the Beauty is the Authentic-Existents and Ugliness is the Principle contrary to Existence: and the Ugly is also the primal evil; therefore its contrary is at once good and beautiful, or is Good and Beauty: and hence the one method will discover to us the Beauty-Good and the Ugliness-Evil.

“And Beauty, this Beauty which is also The Good, must be posed as The First: directly deriving from this First is the Intellectual-Principle which is preeminently the manifestation of Beauty; through the Intellectual-Principle Soul is beautiful.  The beauty in things of a lower order – actions and pursuits for instance – comes by operation of the shaping Soul which is also the author of the beauty found in the world of sense.  For the Soul, a divine thing, a fragment as it were of the Primal Beauty, makes beautiful to the fullness of their capacity all things whatsoever that it grasps and moulds.

“Therefore we must ascend again towards the Good, the desired of every Soul.  Anyone that has seen This, knows what I intend when I say that it is beautiful.”

(Plotinus, The Enneads, Ennead I.6, Beauty, translated by Stephen MacKenna, Larson Publications, Burdett, New York, 1992, pages 69 and 70, ISBN: 9780943914558)

1.  This passage is an example of how key terms in Platonism shift in meaning and implications depending on what hypostasis the term is located in.  In this essay On Beauty the term is ‘beauty’ or ‘the beautiful’; beauty is treated in the soul, in a noetic context, and in the context of God, or the One, or ultimate reality.  The way beauty manifests in each context, and how beauty is linked from context to context, is presented with great skill.

2.  “ . . . the soul’s becoming something good and beautiful is its being made like to God, because from Him come beauty and all else which falls to the lot of real beings.”

Plotinus links the good and the beautiful in this quote.  The foundation for this way of looking at beauty is established early in the essay when Plotinus refers to the beauty of ‘virtue’; “ . . . and for those who are advancing upwards from sense-perception ways of life and actions and characters and intellectual activities are beautiful, and there is the beauty of virtue.” (Ibid, Armstrong, page 233)  I find this linking of the good and the beautiful in God, where presumably they are not separate, helpful in understanding the place of beauty in the presentation of Plotinus overall.  In some Platonic writings that I have read it is suggested that beauty is something that appears in the noetic, but in this passage Plotinus is saying that the source of beauty is the One and the Good, that beauty is ultimately at the same level as the One and the Good.  I have found it helpful to keep that in mind because in other passages where Plotinus discusses beauty, knowing that beauty ultimately resides in the fully transcendental, clarifies the nature of beauty and how it works.

3.  The One is the source for all unity in the world, including the world of the senses.  To the extent that a thing is a thing, it participates in the One.  The farther something is from the One, the less unified it is.  The same applies to the Good.  To the degree that something exhibits virtue is the degree to which something participates in the Good.  The farther something is from the Good itself, the less capacity something has for virtue based behavior and this inability to act in accordance with the virtues is what Plotinus refers to as ‘evil.’ 

And the same applies to Beauty.  To the extent that something displays beauty is the extent that it participates in Beauty.  The more distant something is from Beauty the more it manifests the ugly; from this perspective, then, ugliness is the absence of Beauty.

4.  Contemplation on Beauty is a major teaching of Plotinus.  Because the source of Beauty is, ultimately, the One, Beauty can uplift and transform us; first leading us to the noetic, and then past the noetic to the One.  This is done by shifting our attention from a sensory instance of beauty to Beauty as such.  Because the soul receives Beauty from the noetic, this contemplation on Beauty, meaning this shift of attention from sensory beauty to Beauty as such, takes us to the noetic.  From the noetic we can shift our attention from the Beauty of forms to the source of formal beauty, which is the One.

5.  In McKenna’s translation he writes, “And Beauty, this Beauty which is also the Good, must be posed as The First.”  This is what I mean when I say that ultimately Beauty and Unity and Goodness are a single transcendental reality in the first hypostasis.

6.  This way of talking about ultimate nature may have implications for the idea that Plotinus is committed to an apophatic mysticism.  There are passages, especially in Ennead V, where Plotinus speaks of the ultimate, the fully transcendental, using apophatic language.  But in an essay like this one, Plotinus seems to use a term like The Beautiful in cataphatic ways.  I think it is possible to say the same for The Good and The One.  Plotinus seems to be saying that Unity, Goodness, and Beauty are qualities of God; these qualities are not isolated in God, but they are separable in the world of sense experience. 

My feeling is that Plotinus is using terms like The Beautiful and The Good and The One as tools to lead us to God; and that ‘God’ is also such a term. 

7.  Beauty in the world of sense experience is the way that The One reminds us of its presence.  If it were not for Beauty we might not be able to access higher realities at all.  But because there is Beauty in the world we can, by following Beauty to its source which is The Good and The One, ascend to the transcendental. 

8.  The presence of Beauty in the world is the presence of the grace of The One.

 

 

The Complexity of the Soul

The Complexity of the Soul 

9 May 2023

“. . . if a man is able to follow the spirit which is above him, he comes to be himself above, living that spirit’s life, and giving the pre-eminence to that better part of himself to which he is being led; and after that spirit he rises to another, until he reaches the heights.  For the soul is many things, and all things, both the things above and the things below down to the limits of all life, and we are each one of us an intelligible universe, making contact with the lower world by the powers of soul below, but with the intelligible world [nous] by its powers above and the powers of the universe; and we remain with all the rest of our intelligible part above, but by its ultimate fringe we are tied to the world below, giving a kind of outflow from it to what is below or rather an activity, by which that intelligible part is not itself lessened.

(Footnote by the translator A. H. Armstrong: “This sentence shows very clearly how Plotinus thinks of soul as a rich, complex unity capable of existing on many levels and operating in many ways, which can be distinguished but must not be separated.  This was a way of thinking which was quite unacceptable to the later Neoplatonists, with their passion for sharp distinction and separation, and desire to put and keep man in his proper place low down in the elaborate hierarchy of being.  Proclus sharply criticizes this passage of Plotinus in his Commentary on Parmenides . . .”)

“Is this lower part, then, always in body?  No; if we turn, this, too, turns with us to the upper world.  What, then, about the soul of the universe?  Will its (lower) part leave the body when it turns?  No; it has not even inclined with its lower part to the last depth; for it did not come or come down but as it abides the body of the universe attaches itself to it and is, as it were, illumined, not annoying the soul or causing it any worries, for the universe lies in safety.  What, has it then no kind of perception?  Plato says that it has no sight, because it has no eyes either; nor ears nor nostrils either, obviously, nor tongue. [Timaeus]  Well, then, has it an immanent sensation as we have of what goes on inside us?  No, for things which are uniformly in accord with nature are quiet.”

(Plotinus, Ennead III.4: On Our Allotted Guardian Spirit, Translated by A. H. Armstrong, Loeb Classical Library, Plotinus: Ennead III, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1967, pages 149-151, 3.15-5.10, ISBN: 9780674994874)

“If. . . the Man is able to follow the leading of his higher spirit, he rises: he lives that spirit; that noblest part of himself to which he is being led becomes sovereign in his life; this made his own, he works for the next above until he has attained the height.

“For the soul is many things, is all, is the Above and the Beneath to the totality of life: and each of us is an Intellectual Cosmos [a nous], linked to this world by what is lowest in us, but, by what is highest, to the Divine Intellect [nous]: by all that is intellective we are permanently in that higher realm, but at the fringe of the intellectual we are fettered to the lower; it is as if we gave forth from it some emanation towards that lower, or rather some Act, which however leaves our diviner part not in itself diminished.

“But is this lower extremity of our intellective phase fettered to body for ever?  No: if we turn, this turns by the same act.  And the soul of the All – are we to think that when it turns from this sphere its lower phase similarly withdraws?  No: for it never accompanied that lower phase of itself; it never knew any coming, and therefore never came down; it remains unmoved above, and the material frame of the Universe draws close to it, and, as it were, takes light from it, no hindrance to it, in no way troubling it, simply lying unmoved before it.  But has the Universe, then, no sensation?  ‘It has no sight’, we read, since it has no eyes, and obviously it has not ears, nostrils, nor tongue.  Then has it perhaps such a consciousness as we have of our own inner conditions?  No: where all is the working out of one nature, there is nothing but still rest . . .”

(Plotinus, The Enneads, Translated by Sephen MacKenna, Ennead III.4, Our Tutelary Spirit, Larson Publications, 1992, pages 211 and 212, ISBN: 9780943914558)

1.  The complexity of the soul is beautifully elaborated in this Ennead, as Armstrong points out in his footnote.  My understanding of how Plotinus views the soul is that the soul is always intimately connected with higher hypostases, but is distracted and tempted by material experiences and sensations.  These distractions keep the soul in the material domain, until there is a ‘turning’ in the soul to higher, non-material, regions of existence.

2.  You could say that the soul resembles still water that reflects what is passing over it.  However, the soul is animate; but as long as the soul is intoxicated by sensory experience it is, in a sense, passively unable to enter into the turning towards higher hypostases.

3.  It has been said by many that you become what you place your attention on.  We could say that the soul is the capacity for attention or, perhaps, attention as such.  If the soul is attentive to material domains it will be consumed by material concerns.  If the soul turns its attention to higher hypostases such as Being and the One, the soul begins the long journey of many lives to the source of all things, the Good and the One.

4.  The turning itself happens, I think, through the operation of grace.  If it were up to individual effort alone, the attractions of the material realm are simply too overwhelming for a turn to take place.  Even if the chains were removed from the prisoners in the Cave, very, very few would understand the opportunity they were given.  

However, the operation of grace upon the soul does not mean that the individual has no part in the ascent to the One.  Having received the grace of turning, the individual needs to enter the spiritual practices that are foundational for the realization of that grace.  These spiritual practices are the ascetic ways that are presented in dialogues like Phaedo; asceticism is the embodiment of the turning that is received by grace.

5.  Plotinus states that when we enter into the turning, the ‘lower part’ of the soul, that which is attracted to sensory experience, is pulled into the ‘upper world’.  What is intriguing here is that though the soul is ‘many things’ it is also a unified presence within us who are not unified in any sense.  This is because the soul is an emanation of the One (it participates in the One) and the soul is always seeking the One as the soul’s true home.

6.  I included the footnote by A. H. Armstrong because I thought it illuminated the difficulty passages like this have presented for people down through the centuries.  The presentation of the soul (both human as well as the world soul) found in passages like this is not easy to understand (and I am not claiming special insight).  In some ways the soul is simple and unified, and in other ways it is complex in its tendencies and potentialities.  Plotinus deftly handles this complexity, answering many questions that naturally arise about the topic.  It is very impressive, but it will likely take more than a few readings for the view Plotinus holds to become part of our own understanding.

7.  Armstrong’s point is that some later Platonists, such as Proclus, sought to make the human soul less complex; they accomplished this by simplifying the soul’s nature so that the soul was innately separate from the One.  My response to this is that the One has three aspects: the everywhere, the everywhen, and the everything.  In other words the One, by its nature, cannot be separated from the human soul because separation is not a part of the nature of the One.  If the human soul is separate from the One, that means the One is a distinct metaphysical territory rather than the ineffable Unity that permeates all of existence.

8.  This quote concludes with a discussion about the world soul and its nature.  The World Soul is the third hypostasis and it is the Platonic understanding that the World, or Cosmos, is a living being (because Being and Life are essential noetic hypostases and therefore all that comes metaphysically after them participate in Being and Life and Mind.  But the World Soul, as the first presence in the material realm of differentiation, has its own characteristics that differ from that of the human soul.  Plotinus clarifies those differences and their meanings.

9.  I find this passage, like so many other passages in Plotinus, inspiring.  It means that the One is everpresent to the soul, it means that eternity is everpresent to the soul, it means that Being, Life, and Mind, are everpresent to the soul.  And this means that it is possible to overcome our attachment to this realm of sorrow, this material dimension, to transcend it, and to find our way on the path of the Ascetic Ideal, to the Good and the One.  

The Spiritual Sun

30 March 2023

The Spiritual Sun

1.  In Platonism the metaphysical description of the cosmos is that everything emanates from a primal source that is beyond predication, beyond name and form.  It is most often referred to as the One, because it is pure unity and the source of the thingness of things.  It is often called the Good, because it is the source of all that is good in the cosmos, it is the reason that there anything that is good.  I often refer to it as the Eternal, because it is the reason that things endure, even if they last for only a brief moment in time.

2.  This way of sketching the metaphysical layout of existence can lead to the feeling that the One, the source of all that exists, is very far away.  Sometimes the material realm is spoken of as metaphysically distant from the transcendental One; and although the modifier ‘metaphysical’ helps us to understand that ‘distant’ is not meant in terms of miles or light years, the metaphor of distance naturally leans to a kind of geographical understanding.

3.  At the same time the human soul is said to be, in some sense, connected to the One, that an aspect of the One is also an aspect of the human soul.  In this sense the soul is very close to the One.

4.  How does this work?  It has helped me to use the metaphor of the sun to clarify the metaphysical icon which Platonism uses to teach its understanding of spirituality and the Way to Return to the One.  We can look at it this way: all life on earth is connected to the sun, depends upon the sun for its existence.  It is the sun that provides the energy, warmth, and light that are necessary for life to exist on earth.  And this is true even when we cannot see the sun; I mean that this is true even at night, after the sun has set.  Even when we cannot perceive the sun with our senses the sun nevertheless pours its life-giving energy on the earth; I think of this as a kind of grace. 

5.  In a similar way, the One is a spiritual sun that is the source for all things in the cosmos, as well as those things in the realm of mind (nous) that are transcendental to the material realm in which we dwell.  And like the material sun, the spiritual sun, the Good and the One, does this even when we are unable to perceive the spiritual sun.  The spiritual sun continuously nourishes all things just as the physical sun nourishes all things on earth.

6.  The physical sun’s presence on earth is everywhere.  Similarly, the spiritual sun’s presence is everywhere; both in the world around us and when we turn within to find it in our souls.

7.  The physical sun’s presence on earth nourishes everything.  Similarly, the spiritual sun’s presence nourishes all things.  Nothing would exist without the spiritual sun’s permeating presence.

8.  The physical sun’s presence is everywhen, it is felt at all times of our lives; past, present, and future.  Similarly, the spiritual sun’s presence is felt at all times and beyond time.  The spiritual sun’s presence is the everywhen of eternity. 

9.  Everywhere, everything, and everywhen; the One is located everywhere in particular.

10.  This means that the spiritual sun’s presence is always near, never far.  Our inability to perceive the spiritual sun is due to our limitations.  During the day we cannot look directly at the sun for it will blind us.  During the night the sun is absent from the sky and so we cannot find it or perceive its presence.  It is only at sunrise and sunset, a few minutes each day, that we can perceive the sun.

The presence of the spiritual sun within resembles the material sun at sunrise or sunset.  It is beautiful.  But unlike the material sun, the spiritual sun within, is available to us at all times.  We simply need to turn to it, to turn to the heart of our soul, and we find its light guiding us to the Good, and the One.

However, if we are distracted by material manifestations, this distraction functions to keep us unaware of the spiritual sun within.  Most of us miss both sunrise and sunset because we have other concerns.  In a similar way, most of us, most of the time, are unaware of the spiritual sun within because we have other concerns.  This is where asceticism assists us by limiting our material involvements and concerns.  When these concerns diminish, through our ascetic practices, it is easier to turn to the spiritual sun within and allow it to guide us on the spiritual path.

 

Some Further Comments on Platonic Grace

11 January 2023

Some Further Comments on Platonic Grace

1.  A few days ago I quoted a passage from Plotinus that mentions grace.  Such explicit references to grace are rare in a Platonic context; but I think they have some importance.  And the appearance of the idea of grace in the Enneads has inspired me to gather a few observations on grace in Platonism.

2.  As I have mentioned before, I tend to understand grace in line with the way grace is understood in the Pure Land tradition of East Asian, Mahayana, Buddhism.  In Japan there is a type of guided contemplation called ‘naikan’ that arose in a Pure Land context.  The purpose of naikan is to lead the practitioner to an awareness of how much has been done for them that they are not normally aware of.  Naikan is kind of the opposite of Western therapy with its emphasis on uncovering the wrongs that have been done to the client.  Instead, naikan seeks to uncover the good that has been done for its practitioners.

The view of naikan is that it is natural for people to focus on problems, difficulties, and obstacles in life because we need to focus on them in order to overcome them.  The problem that arises with this focus is that we begin to think of life as nothing but a series of obstacles and miss the countless things that have done for us.

A story from a naikan teacher illustrates this: Someone is walking through a government park.  There was a storm the previous night and a fallen tree blocks the path.  The hiker gets irritated and wonders why things like this ‘always happen’, as well as wondering why the park staff can’t ‘get their act together’.  That same someone two weeks later goes to the same park which now has no fallen trees across its paths; but this person simply accepts the clear path as normal and doesn’t consider that the park staff has worked steadily to allow for this person’s visit to the park to be enjoyable and obstacle-free.

3.  Another naikan teacher I heard said that often we miss what has been done for us because it has not been done specifically for us, that is to say the benefits we receive have not been done with us in mind.  Consider the case of someone who is down on his luck and needs some food.  In one case he receives food from a charity that serves meals to those in need.  In another case, he runs across a bag of groceries that have been accidentally left at a bus stop.  He waits patiently for an hour next to the groceries, and when no one comes by to claim them, he walks away with the groceries which satisfy his hunger.

In the first case it was the specific intention of the charity to feed people like him.  In the second case his hunger was satisfied through a set of unlikely circumstances, but in both cases the hunger is relieved.  From the perspective of naikan, both instances are the same in that they are both instances of the granting of assistance; in both cases the person’s hunger is alleviated.

I see Platonic grace as like the second example of assistance.

4.  The One constantly, ceaselessly, assists us, but not because it has a ‘will’ to do so or because the One is concerned with us as individuals.  The assistance of the One is simply the inevitable consequence of its presence. 

Light, Grace, and the Ascetic Ideal

7 January 2023

Light, Grace, and The Ascetic Ideal -- 4

“But there comes to be the intense kind of love for them [the forms in the second hypostasis: Intellect, Spirit, Mind, or Nous] not when they are what they are but when, being already what they are, they receive something else from there beyond.   For just as with bodies, though light is mixed into them, all the same there is need of another light for the light, the colour, in them to appear, so with the things there in the intelligible, though they possess much light, there is need of another greater light that they may be seen both by themselves and by another.

“When anyone, therefore, sees this light, then truly he is also moved to the Forms, and longs for the light which plays upon them and delights in it, just as with the bodies here below our desire is not for the underlying material things but for the beauty imaged upon them.  For each is what it is by itself; but it becomes desirable when the Good colours it, giving a kind of grace to them and passionate love to the desirers.  Then the soul, receiving into itself an outflow from thence, is moved and dances wildly and is all stung with longing and becomes love.  Before this it is not moved even towards Intellect, for all its beauty; the beauty of Intellect is inactive till it catches a light from the Good, and the soul by itself ‘falls flat on its back’ and is completely inactive and, though Intellect is present, is unenthusiastic about it.  But when a kind of warmth from thence comes upon it, it gains strength and wakes and is truly winged; and though it is moved with passion for that which lies close by it, yet all the same it rises higher, to something greater which it seems to remember.  And as long as there is anything higher than that which is present to it, it naturally goes on upwards, lifted by the giver of its love.  It rises above Intellect, but cannot run on above the Good, for there is nothing above.”

(Plotinus, Ennead VI.7.21 and 22, Plotinus: Ennead VI6.9, translated by A. H. Armstrong, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1988, pages 155-157, ISBN: 9780674995154)

 

“The intense love called forth by Life and Intellectual-Principle is due not to what they are but to the consideration of their nature as something apart, received from above themselves.

“Material forms, containing light incorporated in them, need still a light apart from them that their own light may be manifest; just so the Beings of that sphere, all lightsome, need another and lordlier light or even they would not be visible to themselves and beyond.

“That light known, then indeed we are stirred towards those beings in longing and rejoicing over the radiance about them, just as earthly love is not for the material form but for the Beauty manifested upon it.  Every one of those Beings exists for itself but becomes an object of desire by the colour cast upon it from the Good, source of those graces and of the love they evoke.  The soul taking the outflow from the divine is stirred; seized with a Bacchic passion, goaded by these goads, it becomes Love.  Before that, even Intellectual-Principle with all its loveliness did not stir the soul; for that beauty is dead until it take the light of The Good, and the soul lies supine, cold to all, unquickened even to Intellectual-Principle there before it.  But when there enters into it a glow from the divine, it gathers strength, awakens, spreads true wings, and however urged by its nearer environing, speeds its buoyant way elsewhere, to something greater to its memory: so long as there remains anything loftier than the near, its very nature bears it upwards, lifted by the giver of that love.  Beyond Intellectual-Principal it passes but beyond The Good it cannot, for nothing stands above That.”

(Stephen MacKenna and B. S. Page, various editions 1917 – 1930, online edition at sacred-texts.com)

 

Brian Hines, in his book Return to the One, comments on a portion of the quote above (Hines uses the Armstrong translation but slightly modifies it):

“Once, however, a ‘warmth’ from the Good has reached her, she [the soul – Hine’s insertion] is strengthened and awakened, she becomes truly ‘winged,’ and although she is seized with passion for what is close to her, nevertheless she is lifted up, as if by memory, towards another, better object.

“As long as there is an object higher up than the current one, she keeps rising, by a natural movement, raised up the giver of love.  She rises up beyond the Spirit, ye she cannot run beyond the Good, since there is nothing lying above it.”

Brian Hines comment on this quote: “The soul’s memory (albeit largely unconscious) of her long-lost love, the One, keeps her soaring upward through the spiritual planes of consciousness even though the wonders within the World of Forms are more glorious than anything she has experienced in the physical world.  Discarding all that can be discarded, including the beauty of spiritual sights and sounds, she reaches the source from which all else has emanated, the Good.

“And there, she is satisfied.  Fully.  Indescribably.  Eternally.  Pierre Hadot says, ‘Once the soul has no more possessions, and has stripped herself of all form, she is at one with the object of her love, and becomes the Good.  She is the Good.’”

(Brian Hines, Return to the One: Plotinus’s Guide to God-Realization, Adrasteia Publishing, Salem, Oregon, 2004, page 187, ISBN: 9780977735211)

 

1.  I find that this passage transmits to me an exalted feeling.  Plotinus, who is perhaps the clearest writer and guide on the divine assent to the formless foundation of all existing things, points to how the soul, by turning away from the radiant, and sublime, beauty of the forms, finally merges with, ascends to, the One, the beyond beyond. 

2.  One of the reasons I am so attracted to this passage is that it is one of the few that directly touches on the nature of Platonic grace.  As I understand it, the grace of the One is that the beauty which is the inherent signal of the presence of the One, beckons those on the path and at the same time this beauty of the One is the path itself; I mean it is the beauty of the light shining on the path and the light of beauty the is the path.  Follow the beauty and you will arrive at the One.  Become attached to beauty, sensory beauty or the transcendent beauty of the forms, and the practitioner will, through this attachment, miss the opportunity to ascend to the One itself. 

This beauty is freely given by the One; but ‘given’ isn’t exactly right.  It is ‘given’ in the sense that the sun gives us light.  The sun’s light shines on all and nourishes all.  And the light and beauty of the One shines on all, and unceasingly guides all.  It is not a transaction.  It is the grace of the One without which the mystical assent would not be possible.

3.  I see this section as a kind of extended gloss on Ennead V.3 which ends, ‘Take away everything!”  (Armstrong translation of Ennead V.3, page 135)  In this passage Plotinus unpacks the meaning of ‘everything’.

4.  Pierre Hadot writes, “In mystical ecstasy, the soul leaves behind all forms, including her own, and becomes this formless reality, this pure presence which is the center of the soul, as it is of everything else.”

(Pierre Hadot, Plotinus: The Simplicity of Vision, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1989, page 58, ISBN: 9780226311945)

5.  In some ways this is a difficult teaching to act on.  In many spiritual practices the basic idea is to reject that which is negative, destructive, etc., and to cultivate that which is positive and helpful.  The forms are radiantly beautiful and are filled with the light of the Good.  But they are not the Good itself.  What Plotinus wants us to do is to remove ourselves from transcendental visions such as that of the forms, and through transcending these transcendental visions enter into the ultimate, the Good which is essentially good, the One which is inherently unity, the Beautiful which is by its nature inseparable from beauty, the Eternal which is beyond time and timelessness, beyond the ephemeral and the everlasting.

6.  The way to do this is through the practice of the Ascetic Ideal.  The Ascetic Ideal refers to a life that is not based on seeking sensory stimulation whether it is gross or subtle.  The process of transcending forms is the same as the process of transcending the seductions of sensations in the material realm.  That is why it is important to stabilize the Ascetic Ideal by cultivating this mental and spiritual attitude early.  It is not easy to do.  It takes a long time for the Ascetic Ideal to become a regular companion in one’s life; but eventually that is what happens.  And when that happens one is on the path that culminates in the One.