AD reads Paper:
Our Venerable Guide reveals that he has penetrated into the mysteries of the Soul, its greatness and wonder, a Unity-Being integrally present in all its graded powers. And this is not a knowledge by acquaintance, that is, the Intellect's capacity for creating concepts from the remembrance of previous bodily modifications. No, this is a knowledge that goes beyond such formulation. This is that principle which illuminates the thoughts and is itself not one of the thoughts. This unobjectifiable and immaterial principle which is illuminating the ego's functioning is to be differentiated from it and isolated. After that is done, we can begin the investigation or inquiry into the nature of the Soul, or this principle. We are now speaking of Plotinus's intimacy with his innermost core of his being which is an offspring from the Absolute Soul.
`Formed from the undivided essence and the essence divided among bodies': this description of Soul must therefore mean that it has phases above and below, that it is attached to the Supreme and yet reaches down to this sphere, like a radius from a centre.
Thus it is that, entering this realm, it possesses still the vision inherent to that superior phase in virtue of which it unchangingly maintains its integral nature. Even here it is not exclusively the partible soul: it is still the impartible as well: what in it knows partition is parted without partibility; undivided as giving itself to the entire body, a whole to a whole, it is divided as being effective in every part. Enneads 4.1.1
In IV.1.1 Plotinus points out that the Soul is a content of the Divine Mind included with other Divine Beings permanently stationed and resident there. Here, Soul or Mind is included in an undifferentiated Unity, and he goes on to point out that it has a tendency or desire towards secession. We may also rephrase this in accordance with many previous statements--that what is authentically real has an outward-facing hypostasis, but what is perfect, engenders--"the eternally Perfect engenders eternally." We may take this to mean that Absolute Soul eternally engenders Souls. Each and every Soul, offspring of the Absolute Soul, is similar to, but not identical with, its Prior. It is this emanation, this thought of the Mind of God-- or of our Absolute Self--that must be investigated. This Unit of Being-Life-Consciousness, which we are calling the Emanant Soul, goes forth, "formed from the undivided essence and the essence divided among bodies," and we may refer to this as the Individual Soul or Mind [or unit of life]. And this point within the Divine Mind is our Absolute Individuality and the substratum for the experience of the world, of the World-Idea. This is what must concern us here. We must try now to understand something about the nature of this Individual Mind or Soul. This, of course, requires that we review some passages from Plotinus.
In IV.2.1 he speaks of this offspring as characterized by Unity which is derived from its Prior. Each Soul, distinct from every other, and that each Soul is intermediate between the Absolute Soul and the Cosmic Circuit, i.e., the World-Idea. Furthermore, regardless with what it is occupied, the Idea of the Universe or with a body within it, Soul gives itself to either or both without abdicating its Unity.
What, in effect, he is saying is that if the Mind thinks of the head of a pin or of the continent of Australia, it is totally present in each of the items without its unity being sundered. In other words, its Omnipresence does not fragment its identity, or it is at once both divisible and indivisible -- "its divisibility lies in its presence at every point of the recipient but it is indivisible in dwelling entire in total and entire in any part."
The recitation of the words is not a guarantee that the meaning accompanies their repetition. Plotinus is referring here to the mystical experience of this illuminating Principle as egoless Being-Consciousness. In other passages, he even refers to it as "the All." So we must bear in mind the ego's intellect cannot, by the very nature of its own makeup, understand, let alone feel, the reality of such a Principle, which is in fact illuminating its, the ego's, own activities, and, in all honesty, it cannot accept such a position.
AD COMMENTS:
AD: We're attempting to zero in on the definition of the Soul -- or-- it's not a definition-- to get some idea in our mind of what he means by this Essence. Plotinus does have a few passages which are really mind-boggling. Take them into your meditations. Spend a couple of weeks meditating on them-- they're marvelous.
Plotinus IV.2.1: So far we have the primarily indivisible--supreme among the Intellectual and Authentically Existent--and [then] we have its contrary, the Kind definitely divisible in things of sense; But there is also another Kind, of earlier rank than the sensible yet near to it and resident within it--an order, not, like body, primarily a thing of part, but becoming so upon incorporation.
AD: Here of course, you notice that on the one hand you have the Absolute Soul, and on the other hand you have the World-Idea, the sensible world; and in between, you have this intermediate kind of emanation.
Plotinus IV.2.1 : But, on the other hand, that first utterly indivisible Kind must be accompanied by a subsequent Essence, engendered by it and holding indivisibility from it, but, in virtue of the necessary outgo from source, tending firmly towards the contrary, the wholly partible; This secondary Essence will take an intermediate place between the first substance, the undivided [AD adds: in other words, the Absolute Soul], and that which is divisible in material things and resides in them. Its presence, however, will differ in one respect from that of colour and quantity [etc.] . . . each several manifestation of them [AD: "these units of Soul" for them] is as distinct from every other as the mass is from the mass.
Plotinus IV.2.1: The Essence, which we place above this Kind and assert to come very near to the impartible, is at once an Essence and an entrant into body; upon embodiment, it experiences a partition unknown before it thus bestowed itself.
Plotinus IV.2.1: In whatsoever bodies it occupies--even the vastest of all, that in which the entire universe is included--it gives itself to the whole without abdicating its unity.
Plotinus IV.2.1: [This] nature, [AD adds: the nature of Soul] at once divisible and indivisible, which we affirm to be Soul, has not the unity of an extended thing: it does not consist of separate sections; its divisibility lies in its presence at every point of the recipient, but it is indivisible as dwelling entire in the total [AD adds: and entire] and entire in any part.
AD: Remember, he’s speaking about your mind. He’s speaking about YOU.
Plotinus IV.2.1: To have penetrated this idea is to know the greatness of the Soul and its power, the divinity and wonder of its being, as a nature transcending the sphere of Things.
Plotinus IV.2.2: It can be demonstrated that Soul must necessarily be of just this nature, and that there can be no other Soul than such a being, one neither wholly impartible nor ... [AD omits: wholly] partible but both at once.
Plotinus IV.2.2: There is, therefore, no escape: Soul is, in the degree indicated, one and many, parted and impartible. We cannot question the possibility of a thing being at once a unity and [a] multi-present, since to deny this would be to abolish the principle which sustains and administers the universe--
Looking into Mind Copyright 2019