Adding Notes to Plotinus
As I'm reading Plotinus, I will add, paragraph by paragraph, a reworded, more readable version of what he says, as his ideas are very clear, but the original translation seems unnecessarily cumbersome.
4. Let us consider, then, the hypothesis of a coalescence.
Now if there is a coalescence, the lower is ennobled, the nobler degraded; the body is raised in the scale of being as made participant in life; the Soul, as associated with death and unreason, is brought lower. How can a lessening of the life-quality produce an increase such as Sense-Perception?
Reworded by the Agora:
"If such a merging happens, the lower thing (body) is elevated, while the higher thing (Soul) is lowered. The body gains value by sharing in life, but the Soul loses dignity by being tied to death and irrationality. How could reducing the Soul’s purity result in something greater, like the ability to sense things?"
No: the body has acquired life, it is the body that will acquire, with life, sensation and the affections coming by sensation. Desire, then, will belong to the body, as the objects of desire are to be enjoyed by the body. And fear, too, will belong to the body alone; for it is the body's doom to fail of its joys and to perish.
Reworded by the Agora:
"No: the body gains life, and with life, it gains senses and the feelings that come from sensing. Therefore, desire belongs to the body, since what is desired is experienced by the body. Fear also belongs only to the body, because the body is the one that loses pleasures and faces destruction."
Then again we should have to examine how such a coalescence could be conceived: we might find it impossible: perhaps all this is like announcing the coalescence of things utterly incongruous in kind, let us say of a line and whiteness.
Reworded by the Agora:
"Next, we should ask how such a merging could even happen—it might be impossible. It could be like trying to combine two completely different things, like a line and the color white."
Next for the suggestion that the Soul is interwoven through the body: such a relation would not give woof and warp community of sensation: the interwoven element might very well suffer no change: the permeating soul might remain entirely untouched by what affects the body- as light goes always free of all it floods- and all the more so, since, precisely, we are asked to consider it as diffused throughout the entire frame.
Reworded by the Agora:
"Now, take the idea that the Soul is woven into the body: this wouldn’t automatically mean they share sensations. The Soul, even if interwoven, might stay unchanged by the body’s experiences, just as light remains unaffected by whatever it shines upon. This is especially true if we imagine the Soul spread evenly throughout the whole body."
Under such an interweaving, then, the Soul would not be subjected to the body's affections and experiences: it would be present rather as Ideal-Form in Matter.
Let us then suppose Soul to be in body as Ideal-Form in Matter. Now if- the first possibility- the Soul is an essence, a self-existent, it can be present only as separable form and will therefore all the more decidedly be the Using-Principle [and therefore unaffected].
Reworded by the Agora:
"Let’s imagine the Soul in the body like a perfect form within matter. If the Soul is truly independent and self-existing, it can only be present as a separate, unchanging principle, meaning it wouldn’t be affected by the body."
Suppose, next, the Soul to be present like axe-form on iron: here, no doubt, the form is all important but it is still the axe, the complement of iron and form, that effects whatever is effected by the iron thus modified: on this analogy, therefore, we are even more strictly compelled to assign all the experiences of the combination to the body: their natural seat is the material member, the instrument, the potential recipient of life.
Reworded by the Agora:
"Now, think of the Soul like the shape of an axe imposed on iron. While the shape matters, it’s the whole axe (iron + shape) that does the cutting. Similarly, all experiences must belong to the body: the physical part that actually receives life and acts."
Compare the passage where we read* that "it is absurd to suppose that the Soul weaves"; equally absurd to think of it as desiring, grieving. All this is rather in the province of something which we may call the Animate.
Reworded by the Agora:
"As Plato says, it’s ridiculous to say the Soul ‘weaves’; just as it’s absurd to say it desires or grieves. These things belong to what we might call the ‘living being’ (the body-soul combination), not the Soul itself."
* "We read" translates "he says" of the text, and always indicates a reference to Plato, whose name does not appear in the translation except where it was written by Plotinus. S.M.
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Philosophical positions rejected by Plato
Nominalism:
Plato disagreed with the nominalist view that general terms (universals) are merely names or labels for collections of individual, unrelated things. He believed that universals, like "beauty" or "justice," represent real, objective Forms that exist independently of our minds and the physical world.
Materialism:
Plato rejected the idea that only physical matter exists. He proposed a dualistic view, arguing for the existence of both a material world and an immaterial realm of Forms, which he considered more real and fundamental.
Skepticism:
Plato did not believe that knowledge is impossible or unattainable. He argued that while our senses can be deceptive, reason and intellect can lead us to true knowledge of the Forms.
Relativism:
Plato opposed the idea that truth and morality are subjective and vary from person to person. He believed in objective, universal truths and moral standards grounded in the Forms.
Mechanism:
Plato rejected the idea that the universe operates solely on mechanical principles, like a machine. He believed that purpose and design, guided by the Forms, play a crucial role in the cosmos.
Sense-perception as the primary source of knowledge:
Plato argued that our senses can only provide us with imperfect copies of reality, not true knowledge of the Forms. He believed that true knowledge comes from reason and intellectual insight into the Forms.
AndreasPlotinus, founder of Neoplatonism
Why don't you do a little deep dive into Plotinus, in our library?
AndreasOn intuition and different ways of knowing
We live in an overly materialistic world that is currently obsessed with the illusion that reality could be reduced to that which can be proven.
After decades of scientific stagnation, nobody really wants to admit that scientism has turned into a religion and not into a particularly appealing one. The average person literally understands science as an authoritarian system where truth trickles down a hierarchical system and where lack of evidence for something is equal to disproving something. “Trust the experts” and “Do you have a source for that?” are nothing more than an expression of the fact that the current order is ruled by anti-spiritual midwits.
Reality, however, is something that is deeply obscure, and most of what is real will simply never be proven in a materialistic way. It’s simply not possible, and it’s a foolish assumption.
In order to delve into topics like the nature of reality and the origin of consciousness, we MUST accept that there are different ways of knowing than simply looking at evidence and deductive reasoning. Evidence and deductive reasoning will never conflict with the truth, but neither will they bring to light any new aspects of reality. Materialistic reasoning has reached its limits with what it can accomplish, and anyone who is not satisfied with what it has delivered in the last couple of decades must either turn back to knowledge that was lost in the past or develop new forms of knowing altogether.
Intuition is one of these forms of knowing.
When you know something but you don’t know how you know it. It’s a form of knowing that is more powerful than evidence-based knowing, because when you know something as a function of data, there’s always a chance that your data was wrong and you therefore drew the wrong conclusion. When you know something intuitively, there can be no doubt about it.
However, intuition works very differently than evidence-based knowing. In order to increase the amount of evidential knowledge, you simply increase the amount of evidence you look at. Intuition cannot be invoked in a similarly mechanistic fashion. In order to increase the amount of intuitive knowledge you have, you must train yourself to trust your intuition. You don’t increase the amount of intuitive inspiration, but you decrease the number of times when you fail to recognize your intuition.
Becoming a more intuitive person is a deeply spiritual journey that will necessarily lead you on a path of synchronicities and mysticism. You will not see things that you didn’t see before, but you will see what they mean, when before you thought they wouldn’t mean anything.
It’s not like seeing a tree for the first time, but it’s like looking at a forest and, for the first time, realizing it’s made up of trees.
If you’re trying to find the divine in your life, it’s not like invoking something new that wasn’t there before. It’s understanding how it was always there, but you missed it.
To learn to experience and to trust your own intuition is to strengthen your spirit both in perception and in manifestation. It’s a deeply alchemical and transformative process that will lead you to understanding the true meaning of the word gnosis.
Gnosis will never conflict with more simple forms of knowing, but it’s a form of superset of knowing. It is not a form of learning something new but a form of integrating what you already knew the whole time.
If that’s what you’re looking for, then you are who I built this place for, but I am not here to tell you what I know. I am here so you can discover what this place can do for you and attain that goal on your own.
Andreas