This book is a modest introduction to the inner teachings of the Neoplatonist Plotinus through selected passages from the Enneads. Plotinus approaches the mystical union of our Soul with the Divine through the analogy of the development of our Vision and guides us how to to claim our birth-right: to move from being mere spectators to our life to perceiving fully with Soul and Being.
Through a training process of purification we move from looking, seeing, and attentive watching (through our physical eyes), to develop an inner Vision and connect to Presence of the Soul. Moving beyond perception, circumspection, introspection, and insight, to ultimately preparing for the Soul's fullest awareness of what Plotinus calls "The One" of which our Soul partakes. Encompassing inner Self-Vision and Self-Knowledge, the Soul takes flight:
Many times it has happened:
Lifted out of the body into myself;
Becoming external to all other things
And self-centered;
Beholding a marvelous beauty;
Then, more than ever,
Assured of community with the loftiest order;
Enacting the noblest life,
Acquiring identity with the divine...
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He has risen beyond beauty;
He has overpassed even the choir of the virtues;
He is like one who,
Having penetrated the inner sanctuary,
Leaves the temple images behind him.
Plotinus instructs in a precision technology--a dual process of Looking Back and Within, in addition to, and beyond our ocular function, where that we approach that which is before us (and this can be material or immaterial, external or internal) not just with our senses, mind, and our erstwhile only one-directional and most always dissipating attention.
Plotinus, in the excerpts from the Enneads in this selection, teaches us to discern, garner, hold and feed our spark of attention. This is also called the "kindling" of our Divine or Celestial Fire-a theme he found in Heraclitus' writings.
We cherish its gifts, despite the weariness always having to start over and over again (as Heraclitus says and Plotinus reminds us) and turn our awareness inward, within, as well.
This is sometimes phrased as a "turning back on itself"-a conscious effort that creates the needed inner tension and harmony, like the string of a bow or lyre (yet again Plotinus harkening back to Heraclitus)-and so nurtures our beginning awareness eventually with arduous practice into full bloom: Presence of and to the Soul.
Vision itself is present to the dual process of inner and outer seeing, an infinite state of Being-an ecstasy.
Yet words, no matter how lofty and inspiring, ultimately fall short as the state we aim to achieve is without words-we have to leave the temple images behind:
What then is our course,
what the manner of our flight?
This is not a journey for the feet.
The feet bring us only from land to land;
Nor need you think of coach or ship to carry you away;
All this order of things you must set aside and refuse to see:
You must close the eyes
And call instead upon another vision
Which is to be waked within you,
A vision, the birth-right of all, which few turn to use.
