Marcus Aurelius and Plotinus

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Alexandria and Rome
Presentation 13 of 14

Marcus Aurelius and Plotinus
Roman Stoicism and Alexandrian Esotericism

Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, September 23, 1982

Transcript:

I will do a special presentation on Saturday, October 30th, just before [inaudible] gets here on Chang'an and a magical Dallas city that was the capital of the Tang dynasty and three other dynasties. And we'll continue with what we've developed here. And go on to the early Middle Ages. Its sub entitled From Plotinus to The Book of Kells.

There was a time as every Irishman will tell you when culture clung by its fingernails to the rocks of Ireland. While the continent, especially England swam in darkness. I guess I've, you know, the great translator Plotinus was an Irishman. Stephan McKenna devoted his life to it and was fortunate to always have the companionship of great souls. He lived in the time of the Irish Renaissance when Joyce and Yates, Shaw, [inaudible] Gregory, [inaudible]. All of these people were around. And I guess it's infected me reading his wonderful English translation. Irish translation.

For those who like systems there are always the systematized and Plotinus has been noticeably difficult since his inception. So, there is a small book called The System of Plotinus [The Philosophical and Metaphysical System of Plotinus] for those who like diagrams system. Published by the Shrine of Wisdom, which was an outfit in Southern England in the twenties and thirties. Supported, I think by Huxley money at one time. And this is a very nice 60-page outline. And because I don't systematize, I just note that for you and you can that on your own.

We're also going to talk about Marcus Aurelius tonight. They've not systematized him.

I found a portrait of Plotinus which I like to show first off. It occurs in one of Mr. Hall's books, Journey in Truth. Mr. Hall, many times has tried every avenue of approach to make material available to our generation, plural generations. And at one time he was interested in commissioning an artist whose name was Alexander to draw portraits of individuals who we do not have portraits. So, Journey in Truth has portraits of various philosophers. The one on Plato is not very good, but the rest of them are very interesting. And this is one of Plotinus is a spiritual likeness. Mr. Hall’s had great fortune being around spiritual artists, like J Augustus Knapp and Alexander. Persons who could translate into material form the directive purposes of manifestation. And I think the character of Plotinus is really likely close to this.

Plotinus is a, as an individual, never wanted to have a portrait done. In classical times in Rome, he gave a lot of informal lectures, and they actually smuggled an artist in. And he observed Plotinus for many weeks. And under the aegis economically and inspirationally of a man named Amelius from Tuscany. This artists produced a likeness of Plotinus, but they had to keep it secret all his life because Plotinus was extraordinarily as his biographer Porphyry says ashamed of his body. Not that he was ugly, but that he was so entirely transcendentally spiritual.

I guess we should open the windows and the doors. It seems like we're going to need those. Would you roll that window. Just flip the lever up and then roll it down the bottom. [inaudible] That'll be good. And we should keep that door open a little bit.

At any rate these portraits are, are interesting. There are of course, statues and portraits of Marcus Aurelius with his great curl beard. Usually on a, on a steed as befits an Emperor. I think that the main context of what we need to look at tonight is to realize that in the century, which we'll cover tonight, between 170 A.D. and 270 A.D., from the time of the flourishing of Marcus Aurelius to the death of Plotinus. That hundred years was a monumental transformation. And it would seem from inspecting just Marcus Aurelius his Meditations and the Aeneids of Plotinus. If we limited ourselves to those two texts, we would have absolutely no external idea that there was an enormous change. We would just have two books that were roughly incommensurate with each other. Much like two decks of cards of different sizes, which would not mix. The difficulty is to be able to form some just approach in appraisal for that change, because we have to all intents and purposes become inheritors. And in our time the problems have arisen again. The same kinds of issues and problems. And as usual we're asked to make choices between elements that we rarely understand really what's at stake due to a general and universal ignorance. Not so much of education, but of the human condition.

I think with Marcus Aurelius is perhaps interesting to begin in this fashion. His position as a thinker, as a person, is always under the aegis of being a stoic philosopher. And the age-old image of the stoic is someone who is adamant in all circumstances, preserving an equanimity of inner purpose. But after that, we find just vagueness in our background.

Because of limitations of time, I can't go into the development of the stoic. I urge you, if you are interested in that aspect, to consider taking a look at Epicurus first of all, who was a Greek philosopher who lived about 300 B.C. And who was extraordinarily successful in his time. And then the mysterious Posidonius, who is almost forgotten in the standard history texts.

And then the third person, of course, that individual known to us as Epictetus. Epictetus is just the Greek word for acquired. Epictetus is a man who was a slave, and he took us his name the Greek word acquired. He was a slave of a quartier of the emperor Nero. And by some quirk of circumstance, he was allowed to attend philosophic, lectures and rose to a position of being free. And in fact, became conspicuous at one point in Rome. And under one of the purges of the last Flavian emperor, he voluntarily exiled himself to [inaudible] on the coast.

We have some chairs here. Come and be at home. Come and sit here.

And Epictetus taught for many decades in [inaudible]. He was fortunate enough to have a student by the name of Flavius Arrianus, Arrian, who was the great biographer in antiquity of Alexander the Great. He wrote a large tone called The Campaigns of Alexander. The same Arrian attended all of the lectures of Epictetus. And the discourses of Epictetus that we have are those taken down by the fabulous memory and shorthand of Arrian. And in fact, he condensed some of the lectures and produced a slender little handbook so that there are the discourses of Epictetus in eight books. And then a slender little volume by itself called in Greek just The Handbook.

Epictetus focused on the fact, and it's a central tenant of stoic philosophy, that we can frequently do for exterior circumstances. And we need not be a slave or in the Roman empire to observe this uncontrollable quality of nature that we are subjected quite often to conditions that are not only not of our own makings, but that we have not participated in their generation in any way whatsoever. But rather than styling this as a irrationality, a caprice, in nature to which man may only cringe in a puppet like contortion. “We must assert,” says Epictetus, “that we control our reaction to each and every circumstance to the point of inner artistry.” That we have ethical control over our wills. And the way in which we school, our inner self to comport to the world is the degree of our philosophic growth and sophistication.

So that Epictetus through the kindly hand of Arrian gives us. And I'll give you a few of his own words. The focus on human will and its generation and it's schooling and its cultivation and shaping as our only trustworthy and actual ethical fulcrum in the world. And book three of Epictetus, chapter eight, just a paragraph from that. “How must we exercise our self against appearances”. And Epictetus speaking in Arrian writing records this.” As we exercise ourselves against sophistical questions.” That is, as we notice that we participate in argument and discourse interchange.

So, we ought to exercise ourselves daily against appearances. For these appearances also propose questions to us. A certain person's son is dead. Answer. The thing is not within the power of the will. It is not an evil. A father has disinherited a certain son. What do you think of it? It is a thing beyond the power that will. It's not an evil.

And he would go on to declaim that its neither good, nor evil. That it has no reality and terms of an ethical measuring rod to apply to such external circumstances that such and such a thing is good or evil and that we should comport in these ways. But the only reality, and the only focus is our control of our will. So that he records,

Man, go out and do not complain here, how the Romans feel toward the philosophers, if you would like to know. [inaudible] who is the most in repute of the philosophers. Once when I was present being vexed with his own friends, and as if he were suffering something intolerable said, I cannot bear it. You are killing me. You will make me such as that man is, pointing to me. And thus, Epictetus closed that chapter.

Marcus Aurelius owes his book, The Meditations, the conception of it to Epictetus. Epictetus living several generations before him. And the book, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius was actually composed very frequently in the field of battle. Now, Marcus Aurelius was the adopted son of the great Emperor Antoninus Pius. Antoninus the devout. He had followed on the footsteps of two great emperors. Trajan who re-established the principate. Hadrian who had toured the enormity of the Roman empire and brought it into a sophisticated cosmopolitan universal state. Antoninus who founded wonderful and Antonine Age in Rome brought the sophistication to its pen ultimate. And with Marcus Aurelius, they had had some 80 or 90 years of ostensible peace and security. Ostensible, because there were still incursions of so-called barbarians. There were still domestic plights. But nothing like they had seen in the previous hundred years. And nothing like the total degeneracy of the reign of Nero.

Marcus Aurelius when he was on the field, making notes for himself, would constantly record his interior monologue with himself. In terms of trying to keep a record for himself so that he could hold this quality of the will in front of himself as a form of [inaudible].

Come in. Come and sit up in front. There are two seats up here. Be at home. If Plotinus could be informal in his lectures far, be it from me to add formality.

His, Marcus Aurelius’ capacities are interesting. Because as you go through The Meditations, there are 12 books of them and each paragraph or so has a numbered section. You realize that there is really no development in the sense of a philosophic document. There is no line of argument. There is no increasing systematic exposition. But rather what it is, is an accrual of hundreds and finally thousands of observations, daily observations. Largely in the tone of self-reminders. Not only for patience and excellence and maximums towards those regards. But the final cementing of a wall of indifference to vicissitude and yet attentiveness to the humane aspects of life. So that you have, finally, a position which is rather in our terms an emotional conundrum. That one could remain unmoved in any situation and still keep flowing a sense of humanity for any qualities that were present.

He wrote,

Epictetus said a man must discover an art or rules with respect to giving his ascent. And in respect to his movements, he must be careful that they be made with regard to circumstances that they be consistent with social interests. That they have regard to the value of the object. And as to sensual desire he should all together, keep away from it. And as to avoidance, aversion, he should not show it with respect to any of the things which are not in our power. The dispute then, he said, is not about any common matter, but about being mad or not. Socrates used to say, what do you want? Souls of rational men or irrational? Souls of rational men, of what rational men? Sound or unsound? Sound. Why then do you not seek for them? Because we have them. Well, why then do you fight and quarrel? And so, Marcus Aurelius ends a book in The Meditations.

It continues page after page and book after book in this regard. To the spiritual intercepts one has the experience with The Meditations of running across a brilliant individual who by painstaking moment by moment reconstruction of his patience in regard manages to keep himself psychologically afloat in a decaying world. There is nowhere beyond what becomes finally after several hundred pages of increasing platitudinous statements. There is no rising of the spirit above it. So that the inner sight begins to flash sizzling-ly and present to oneself a coherent picture.

At the same time as Marcus Aurelius was writing such a book at the pinnacle of power in Rome, there was at the opposite end of the human scale and at the other pole in the empire in Alexandria on the docks, a man who was perhaps the most mysterious man in all the philosophy. Our version of Lao-Tzu, Ammonius Saccas. Saccas simply means the sack bearer. The carrier of goods. And Ammonius is simply the Greek form of the name Amun. And of course, Amun-Ra, the great Egypt divine presence. So that this mysterious man of whom we know just two or three basic facts. we know that he died around 243 A.D. We know that several of his students became giants in the world at that time. One of them was Plotinus and other was Origen. That his school passed on to a man named [inaudible]. And other than that, we know absolutely nothing.

Mr. Hall, in the book Journey in Truth records the following, “It was the first rule of Ammonius Saccas that the deeper and more mystical elements of his should never be committed to writing.” And if you remember, I think it was last time that I mentioned Plato's Phaedrus, the creation of writing. Plato styles at to Thoth and having brought it to King Thomas at the time, was time was told this is a terrible invention. By writing down material you think you have it. You've recorded it. And the memory atrophies. The inner sense of reality atrophies. And finally, what you have is like a donut person. Vacuous inside and a well fried on the exterior all the way around. Winchell's forgive me. They may be delectable at the moment, but obviously not a diet that we could pursue.

Mr. Hall goes on, “His disciples were bound by oath not to discuss the concerns of the school beyond its confines.” So that this rule of secrecy very, very important. Because at this time, not only was the mentality of The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius afoot but the book Against Heresies had just come out from Irenaeus the Bishop of Lyon in France. The writings in Alexandria of the Hermetic schools, the Gnostic schools. Clement of Alexandra was writing his great Stromateis, the miscellaneous. So that we had an incredible situation in both Rome and Alexandria of dozens of schools of thoughts flourishing. Dozens of religions struggling to be born or to remain.

And in this welter Ammonius Saccas is like a thin golden thread looking for the one needle in the haystack, which could take that golden thread and bring it back into the fabric of a universal view. And that golden thread was summed up in the name of one man who made an enormous difference between what had been Ptolemaic Alexandria and what became Roman Alexandria. And that one man was Plato.

If we look, as we have looked here in this course and in that lecture on Ptolemaic Alexandria, if we look at those three centuries and the sophisticated development. The unbelievable intelligence and [inaudible] philosophic development. And then we apply the same scale and scope to Roman Alexandria. The change of the presence of the mind Plato is the telling blow. It's the sea change. And that one mysterious individual who picked up that golden thread and brought it back into manifestation was Ammonius Saccas. And the needle that he found was the mind of Plotinus.

Now Plotinus had been born about 204 B.C. We know this roughly because his death was of great moment. And he was said that his death to be 66 years old. And his death took place in 270 B.C. He was born in Lycopolis in the Delta Nile. Delta. But he was raised in Alexandria. And they tell, he tells of himself a very peculiar story. It's the only thing he ever mentioned about his childhood. And it's a peculiar event, telling, I think. He recalls the embarrassment that he suffered at the age of eight when it was drawn to his attention that he was still nursing at the breast of his nursemaid at age eight. And he was called an impudent imp by someone who saw this. This is the only star that he records of his entire childhood.

The next event in his life was at the age of 20 of being absolutely madly, passionately involved in philosophy. Desperate. That he had fallen into the same circumstances that so many of our lives seemed to find themselves at one time or another, that we suddenly discovered that there is something to know and that we could understand it, but we don't know where to find it. And we have to look. And Plotinus like all of us, I'm sure, after eight years of looking and not finding anyone who was honest, became extraordinarily depressed. Absolutely convinced that it wasn't obtainable wisdom. When a friend of his took him by the arm. They made their way down to the quais of Alexandria. And there among a very small select group he heard Ammonius Saccas. And he turned to his friend, he said, this is the man I've been looking for. And he spent 11 years with Ammonius Saccas.

And the idea in antiquity was that one did not go for an education to learn how to do a certain job. You didn't go for an education to get a degree. You didn't go to take courses. You went to affinitize your entire self, psychophysical self, with somebody who had done a job of integrating themselves well enough that you would like to at least [inaudible] and raise yourself up educationally philosophically to the perspective which they demonstrate in their own life. So that one simply didn't go to here but one lived with informed community, a school, with the teacher.

Plotinus after 11 years with Ammonius Saccas records that he became enamored of the chance to go to India and study with the [inaudible], the yogis of India, personally. Now it had been 600 years since Alexander had brought the first messages of Buddhism and The Upanishads to Alexandria. It had been 600 years since Ptolemy Philadelphus had sent Alexandrian emissaries to sit at the first Buddhist council. Plotinus was ready to go in person and take the Platonic golden thread, which had been revived. And to take it to India to find that chain of excellence, which had been wrought at one time in ancient Alexandria and had been lost in the ensuing centuries. And I rather think that Ammonius had directed him personally to go and have this experience.

Plotinus was 39. He was in many respects an extraordinary individual. In respect that he found himself in the entourage of the Emperor of the Roman empire of that year, Gordian III. This was about 242 A.D. 242. And he accompanied the Emperor Gordian III as far as the deserts of Mesopotamia where in a sudden swift move Gordian III was murdered in his tent and Phillip the Arabian became the announced, supported emperor. Plotinus fleeing for his life along with many others, I suppose, made his way across the Holy land to the coast. And there are Antioch found himself safe and on passage with a boat to Rome.

And when he arrived in Rome, about 244 A.D. He began to set up shop. He began to give some public talks and lectures. And immediately Plotinus was a sensation. In the massive million plus population of Rome an honest, brilliant intelligence like Plotinus stuck out like a flaming torch. And it wasn't long before Plotinus’ school began to attract the most incredible population of students. There were many Roman senators who would attend the lectures of Plotinus. The emperor who succeeded Phillip the Arabian, Gallienus, attended some of his lectures. His wife Salonica was a habituate of the Plotinian household and school.

And not only that but Plotinus because he was an extraordinarily trustworthy individual, a meticulously so, found himself increasingly the trustee for various properties. The trustee for various children who were given to him to raise or given under his care to have their estates handled by him and for them to receive educations. And it wasn't long before the house of Plotinus was packed as if the walls were going to burst with individuals coming in to learn. Plotinus’ lectures were always informal. There was all always the freedom for unlimited discussion. And if an issue was raised, it had to be resolved before anyone could go home or before they would, they would finish. This was one of the rules of Plotinus’ school. So, there was this enormous comradery and feeling that persons of all ilk could come together and be brought together. And that there was an [inaudible] it an honest, brilliant individual who was able to comport himself on the highest transcendental spiritual plains. And at the same time, be what we would call a regular person in the normal day to day world.

And in fact, his biographer Porphyry notes that Plotinus when he was writing would always write his tractates or his essays in one sudden burst. That it was as if he had composed it entirely in his mind. And when he sat down to paper, he wrote it all out in one setting. And if he were interrupted by someone bringing a problem in, he would handle that problem, have the conversation and go back to the paper and immediately start with the next letter and finish the word and finish the thought and finished the tractate. And he never lost his place. So that everyone felt overly comfortable I'm sure with interrupting him at any time.

There were individuals in Rome who sought to challenge Plotinus. They, they saw in this figure perhaps the founder of a new religion. There was one such individual, a great black magician, whose name was Alexandrus Olympias. If you remember Olympias was the mother of Alexander the Great. So, Alexandrus Olympias prided himself who had listened to some of Ammonius Saccas’ lectures, and he was a master of the black arts. And he thought that he would put Plotinus in his place and thus catapult himself into this position of fame and wonderment. And it was drawn to Plotinus’ attention. And Plotinus declared one day he looked up from his writings and he said, it seems as if Olympias has withdrawn himself like a purse and all of his bones are bruised together. And the next day they learned that Alexandrus had made his peace with Plotinus. That all of his conjurations had backfired upon himself. And we hear no more in history of Alexandrus Olympias.

On another occasion, Porphyry records, a high Egyptian priest came to Rome having learned that Plotinus with his occult Egyptian background was in town. Ask him if he would participate in conjuring up a guardian spirit. And Plotinus agreed. So, they looked for a consecrated place in Rome, which was difficult to find in those days. There weren't too many sacred grounds that hadn't been desecrated. But they finally found out in the edge of town, a little temple of Isis, and it was still consecrated ground. And so, they went in with a small entourage and as it were there were four or five intervals there. And one of the arts of conjuring at that time involves small birds. And one individual was holding some small bird, and you'll see what an important part of the story this plays in just a moment. So, the ancient Egyptian priests went through the diagramming and the incantation, and suddenly, as Porphyry relates, this light being demon, a guardian spirit occurred. And the Egyptian plea priest said, my goodness, it is not a guardian spirit but is a God. And it's not my guardian spirit. It's Plotinus’ and it's a God. And the man holding the birds became so petrified with fear that he squeezed the birds too hard, and they died. And of course, it broke the entire situation because spilled blood destroys the sacred moment, and the wonderful apparition disappeared. Plotinus said nothing. But it's interesting that in his later writings later on in his life, when he took to writing, one of he has tractates is called Our Tutelary Spirit. Tutelary wonderful word. He's actually talking about our guardian angel spirit. Everyone has one in the Neoplatonic thought. And he says this in the last paragraph of Our Tutelary Spirit. It's in the third book Plotinus. The fifth tractate, fourth tractate. This is Plotinus in translation.

The universal circuit is like a breeze and the voyager still or stirring is carried forward by it. He has a hundred varied experiences, fresh sights, changing circumstances. All sorts of events. The vessel itself furnishes incident tossing as it drives on. And the voyager also acts of himself in virtue of that individuality, which he retains because he is on the vessel in his own person and character. Under identical circumstances individuals answer very differently in their movements and acts. Hence it comes about that be the circumstances and conditions of life similar or dissimilar the result may differ from man to man. As on the other hand, a similar result may be produced by dissimilar conditions. And that is this that constitutes destiny. A power corresponds to this in the all soul. And it reaches down and cooperates in the life of our world. And in fact, it is that very self-same power. If the soul returns back to this fear, it finds itself under the same spirit or a new one according to the life it is to live.

In other words, we come into this world, into this time space, into this phenomenal tapestry with a spirit guide, which is [inaudible] with us by assignment. And the assignment is by capacity from an upper world, the Greek world, a word for that would be the Neuse, the intellectual principle. That spirit realm. And it manifests, it comes down. And if the soul returns this fear, it finds itself under the same spirit or a new spirit according to the life it is to live. With this spirit. It embarks in the skiff of the universe. They quote spindle of necessity. Then takes control and appoints the seat for the voyage, the seat of the lot in life. And it's this seat, it's this circumstance, is the vessel that Plotinus is talking about. That bobs in the breeze of the universal circuit in this time space.

These wonderful tales of Plotinus serve briefly just to illustrate his character in his capacity. He was, of course, a vegetarian strict. Never took baths but had daily massages and manipulations of his bones and appendages. And at one time the Roman troops returning from the East, from Parthenia, from Persia, brought an infestation of plague and diphtheria to the city of Rome. And in 262 A.D., it was so bad that they recorded more than 5,000 deaths in one day from this outbreak. And Plotinus through his masseurs contracted diphtheria. And Porphyry records how the mellifluous voice of Plotinus suddenly was horse because of the swelling of the tongue area. And that his eyes began to go bad. And the ulcerations of his hands and feet became so bad that persons began to not attend for a while. Later in life, a few years later, Plotinus much shaken by this onslaught of the disease, found himself again in similar circumstances. And this time retired to a small resort town in Campania, a province South of Rome. It was an estate owned by a certain [inaudible] a very wealthy individual. Plotinus was surrounded by wealthy individuals who always entrusted them with the use of their estates or traveling services, if he wished. It was on this estate, that he died in 270 B.C.

And he had meanwhile sent all of his disciples away. Porphyry was in Sicily in the small port that's just opposite. North Africa called [inaudible] was sent to Syria. The only person that was present at the death of Plotinus was his Alexandrian physician Eustochius. And Eustochius had been detained somewhat so that he arrived late, and he found Plotinus laying on his right side with his hand propping himself up. And Eustochius recorded the final words of Plotinus saying, I have been expecting you for a very long time. I now will return my divine part back to the universe where it flourishes freely in all parts. And with that, he died. And Eustochius recorded those words in the preface to an edition of the works of Plotinus, which we have not kept with us. It was lost in antiquity.

The only addition of the words of Plotinus that we have are those essays, which were collected by Porphyry, his disciple. And we'll take Porphyry as a person in the next lecture series. I think, is he's the first one? I think. Yeah, he's the first one. So, we'll not go into him too much tonight. In two weeks, we'll go into them in depth.

But Porphyry had experienced an uncanny situation with Plotinus. He had finally seen the light. He had seen the fact that our real natures have literally nothing to do with this time-space. That we are in fact, in the Neoplatonic designation, imprisoned in a growth vessel, which we must grow out of with all due haste. And having seen that in a flash too sudden and too soon, it didn't sit well with him. And he contemplated suicide thinking that this was the, this would be the, the jet flight out. And Plotinus caught him after a lecture and stopped him and said, Porphyry, the thought in your mind is inappropriate. Take a trip. And so, Porphyry was convinced that Plotinus could read minds, thoughts and recorded several times in his very serious biography that he felt that this capacity was present in Plotinus.

Plotinus in fact, in one of the Aeneids, I think it's, I think it's in the Third Aeneid. There are six of them. Six books of nine tractates, each making 54 as a total. And I think in one of them, he, he writes a short tractate on suicide. The rational dismissal, I think that's the phrase that he uses for it. And he says that this is absolutely not to be done. That if there are stern necessities beyond all compare, then one has to proceed. But that in fact, we are a train of re-incarnated manifestations and our condition all along is gauged by what we have done thus far. And we are to grow. And that this violent prematuring exiting of ourselves destroys the continuity and throws us into an [inaudible].

His writing letters to Porphyry fortuitously exile in Sicily is the reason that we have any books at all of Plotinus. Because Porphyry collected them, edited them, put them into the order that we have them now. And in fact, gave us really what we have of Plotinus. He was able to secure from the master bunches of essays at a time.

And it's interesting that the last two years of Plotinus’ life there were only five essays one year and four the next, and that was it. So, he was running out of steam. He was sinking a little bit. And I'll give you because it's very difficult to find a listing for these, the final nine essays. I'll give you the titles and their dates. In 268 A.D. he did the first Aeneid, the fourth book, and it was called On Felicity. And at the same time, he did the third, Aeneid tractates two and three On Providence. And the fourth Aeneid the third tractate On Gnostic Hypotheses. And then the third tractate, the fifth part On Love.

And then the following year, the last year that Plotinus wrote anything there were only four essays, the first tractate, or the first book, the eighth tractate On Evil. The second tractate, the second book, the third tractate On Stars Affecting Anything. In other words, it was a tractate on astrology. Does astrology work? Yes, it works, but we are not to be manipulated by destiny. The first tractate of the first book, What Man Is and the seventh tractate of the first book On the First Good. And these were the final writings of a Plotinus.

Now in the Aeneids we only have two really excellent translations of them. One by Stephan McKenna and one by Thomas Taylor. I think that both of them are excellent. Taylor's done in 1817, and McKenna's done in our time. But the difficulty with Plotinus is that in our comportment to him we are not ready ever without an enormous attentiveness for the level of sophistication that Plotinus simply assumes. Because he was writing these tractates Pell Mel as it were. He was not correcting his grammar. Porphyry says he often misspelled words. He left letters out. He gave little indications because he was trying in a rush just to get it out and have it said. And he never looked back and edited. He never re-read because to him once written that was it. Next case, you'll try again. But there's no sense in going back and trying to chisel fine words into a sculptural shape that will have any life into it. That if you're going to have writing, it's got to be a spontaneous and off the cuff almost like a Zen painting. Almost the same technique. Almost the same spiritual insight. Don't pause. Don't hesitate. Because you'll ruin the only spontaneity that is there.

So, in reading Plotinus I think the difficulty is generating ourselves to a level of consistent seriousness to allow what it is that is being expressed to simply penetrate. And I think the contemporary computer language word is interface. Somebody said that doesn't sound very good. The combination of what we are understanding from our spiritual antenna and the language in which Plotinus is throwing out to us in one durational lunge as it were, has a capacity for making an inner relationship. But it's [inaudible] and dangerous in this sense. And it happened historically, again and again. That those who would seek to understand Plotinus would catch the mood of what the man said but would not know how to express it intellectually to anyone else, much less themselves. So that very often the school of thought founded by Ammonius Saccas and expressed by Plotinus, Neoplatonism, became a flavor rather than the golden thread that it should be. And this is why individuals like Thomas Taylor in 1817 said it's been many centuries now, since anyone understood Plotinus at all. Even though you can find the flavor of Neoplatonism in any of the wonderful paintings of Botticelli and so forth, but you can't find an expression of understanding of exactly what it is that we feel that we know.

Well, I think we need a break. And then we'll see if we can feel this. Let's take a break for some cookies.

These currents and the direction of their development from the time of Plotinus to the time of Porphyry, it's about 140 years. Proclus, excuse me, between Plotinus and Proclus. Sort of the Athenian Neoplatonists who formed the final expression and antiquity of this development.

And a contemporary of Proclus in Alexandria was a very elegant, beautiful woman named Hypatia. And Hypatia apparently never wrote a philosophic treatise or tractate per se, but her writings were commentaries on mathematics and astronomy. Her father had been a very distinguished mathematician, Theon, not Theon of spirit, but Theon of Alexandria. And she held what was [inaudible] the chair of platonic philosophy in Alexandria. And she was very elegant excellent person. One of her great pupils was a man named [inaudible]. Very famous in ecclesiastical history. He became the metropolitan and finally, the bishop of [inaudible] a large city in Egypt. And there's a whole page on him in the Catholic encyclopedia. And all of the information that we have factually on Hypatia come from the last letters of this Bishop [inaudible] of Serene.

And I think it's a tribute to a Platonic philosopher to have numbered among her students and lifelong friends, a Christian Bishop. Because the ways that parted in the fourth century between most of these groups. The mind of the classical world was just splayed in the 4th century and opened up. They, if you recall, the Theodosia sent his troops into the Serapeum in Alexandria to destroy the statue of Serapis. And it was a remake of the ancient statue, which had been made by the old Ptolemies. And the new statue had been made out of a secret alloy and had been coated with ground jewels, actual emeralds and rubies and things ground. And that jewel dust inlaid with a special glue on the surface so that when the troops of Theodosius came in, their swords shattered, trying to smash the God Serapis. And it was weeks before he could convince them to go back in. And when they had finally crowbarred the entire Serapeum down to the bare turf, they found under the foundations the cross engraved in the rock and the very foundations of Serapeum. And they felt that some great monstrosity had been perpetrated.

But even in that time Hypatia was able to be friendly with a likes of [inaudible]. And he characterized her in one of the letters he said you have been always to me, not only a teacher, but a mother and a sister. And then of course her excellence came to an abrupt end when she was seized by a Christian mob in an Alexandrian riot and killed 415 A.D.

So, all of this, there's a wonderful novel by Charles Kingsley called Hypatia. All of this indicates that's of the time that had so been so shaken in the 1st century A.D. and had recollected itself somewhat in the 2nd century A.D. finally broke open in the 3rd century A.D. And by the 4th century, we can notice that they long-term glacial decay had set in. Not decay so much in the sense that people were no longer religious, they were. Or even philosophical. They still did that. But there was no longer the sacred tradition held together as it had been since timeless antiquity. It had been severed and disappeared, and forever after that, it was up to individuals or esoteric groups to try and goldmine back into the abandoned shaft of history to try and bring back those few threads that they could resuscitate and try to piece back together the ancient tradition.

And forever and always it's the same sort of case that nature [inaudible] by man 50 or 60,000 years ago, at least. And that finally through that unbroken continuity of life experience and spiritual oral tradition, man had reached a plateau of ritual, which had mirrored those natural processes and had been able to condense them somewhat. And bring them into a religious cycle of religiosity that when it was expressed in language became a mythology. And collected these patterns of nature into a shape of usually the annual year, the great year. So that from nature through ritual to this mythology to the intuition is the symbolic mind. That the center of this shape was not a thing, but a presence. And that, that presence enabled man to look back down through all the levels of his own creation, to the primal fact of existence. The primal experience of reality. And that had been kept intact since time immemorial. And that the whole purpose of a philosopher like Plotinus was to help you to engender that presence in yourself so that you could in your own way have an affinity and a harmonizing with the eternal. That all the rest of it, whatever issues there were philological or philosophical or logical, wherever, epistemological, none of that mattered. That was all beside the point. That's all Monday morning quarterbacking.

The only thing that mattered and Porphyry says in the biography of Plotinus that four times in the last six years of his life, that he knew about at least four times, Plotinus had this merging with the divine, this experience. And Porphyry says that, and I, myself at the age of 68 finally had my one experience in my life of this emerging with the eternal, with the divine. Knowing the truth of the matter. No longer needing to argue at all with anyone. This is what was broken and shredded and thrown away.

And what has been recovered through patience and tenacity. So that when we come to the Aeneids we find this tradition, which a core intact all the way through, which had been secret for 40 or 50,000 years finally was expressed. Because it had come to the point that it had to be committed in some way to language. And so, Plotinus took the responsibility to put the unspoken spiritual core of man into language as best he could, but conscious that one cannot dot the I's and cross the T's because that's a useless labor. So, his style in the Aeneids is cramped we would say, but it's really telescoped. Because he wants to keep the syntax in a pretzel so that the profane will not have a leg to stand on. But they will not gnaw and gnaw with the profane mind and finally give it up and say, I don't understand it. It's crazy. It doesn't mean anything. And put it back on the shelves and leave it. But there is forever and always those individuals for whom the lie can never take hold. Who somehow know that there is an understanding. They get a glimpse, and they recognize their own kind and finally make their way to see there it is. That's what I knew all along.

So, there are two places in the Aeneids that you can turn to. One place is a philosophical location to begin. One shouldn't read the Aeneids one, two, three, four, five, six. That'll get you nowhere. That's a Hermetic trap. The first book of the Aeneids is the most difficult and it's the last written, and it should be read last. Any epic begins in the middle. So, you start with the Aeneids in book four. And you read four, five, and six. And you come back, and you make another [inaudible] because there's always a second quirk in there. You read books two, three, and then one. And once the capstone, the key, and once this arch of meaning has been constructed. Once this understanding of it is held in suspension, the first book comes in and locks it into a shape. So, that the understanding, and finally see that the shape of the understanding is a sense of presence, our spiritual quality and not an argument. Not a conclusion. Not anything of that nature.

So, two places to inspect. The first one is in book six, the fourth tractate. In fact, the fourth and the fifth go together. And in English translation, the title runs On the Integral on The Presence of The Authentic Existence. Man, that's taking language and jamming it together. On the Integral on The Presence of The Authentic Existence. And that these two tractates were a separate essay written at one time when Plotinus wanted to express to Porphyry the fundamental quality. And he entitled the essay originally On True Being. So, this is the philosophic core and starting point that you could begin with.

The spiritual core, the religious core, distinct only because one brings oneself to the manuscript instead of just the discursive mind. Instead of just the differentiating consciousness. One brings the heart energy also. And in the ninth tractate of the second Aeneid, and it's entitled and generally called Against the Gnostics, but that's a, a later interpretation. His original title was Against Those That Affirm the Creator of The Cosmos. And the cosmos itself to be evil. In other words, one of the basic flaws that haunts man constantly, the ghost in the works, the skeleton in the closet, is that nagging doubt that maybe the universe is evil. Maybe nature is [inaudible]. Maybe God doesn't exist. Maybe ultimately there is something demonic which has us. And Plotinus like a great spiritual later dispersing those clouds by the method of discovery so that the light shines.

Just to give you a few paragraphs and this quality of trying to [inaudible] a sense of presence again. The language is cramped because he doesn't want just anyone to read it. And yet it has to be out in the open. Since those times wisdom has always had to have its cloak. You know the hermit card and the tarot deck. Yes, he has the Hermetic light, and he's also got cloak. Keep it covered up until the time comes.

“We have seen elsewhere that the good, the principal is simplex.”

That is, is not complex. It's simplex.

The good, the principle is simplex and correspondingly primal for the secondary can never be simplex. Anything derived is always complex. Always has a working part. And further that this primal simplex good contains nothing. That it is an integral unity. Now the same nature belongs to the principle we know as the one. Just as the goodness of the good is essential and not the outgrowth of some prior substance. So, the unity of the one is it's essential. So that unity is essential of the one and the good is a simplex. It's primal, and it contains nothing.

That is, there's nothing else in it. It is of itself. And that's it.

Therefore, when we speak of the one and when we speak of the good, we must recognize an identical nature. We must affirm that they are the same. Not it is true as venturing any prediction with regard to that unknowable context behind it all, the hypostasis, but simply as indicating it to ourselves in the best terms we find.

In other words, we have to do this in some way to express to ourselves, to hold a temporarily in mid suspension in our minds in some language way. And so, we'll say it this way, that the one in the good are identical.

Even in calling it the first, we mean no more than to express that it is the most absolutely simplex. It is the self-sufficing only in the sense that it is not of that compound nature, which would make it dependent upon any other constituent. It is the self-contained because everything contained in something alien must also exist by that [inaudible].

That is for, for any form that we have, there is a background context, which cooperates with that form and allows for it to be. And Plotinus is saying that the good and the one are self-existent. They have no context. It would be like saying that instead of there being yang and yin, that there's only an ultimate yang. There is yin. There is no receptivity, which we can also count in some mysterious way. That there is that which is containing nothing.

“Further, deriving then, since it is from nothing alien injury into nothing alien and no way on make-up thing. There can be nothing above it. We need not then go on seeking any other principles.” In other words, we are able to make a shape. We are able to make a final assessment, a judgment, if you like, a spiritual judgment, that this is the nature of reality as it is. And that there is no mysterious infinite regression on into vagueness, which we would then forever have to doubt that by our inner sense of presence and by the intellectual and spiritual capacity, which we have, we can see that, aha this is it. This is how it is.

Plotinus goes on this. “This the one and the good is our first. Next to it follows the intellectual principle, the nous.” N-o-u-s. [inaudible]. “And then there is the nous the intellectual principle. The primal thinker, there is a primal thinker, not my individual thinker, but there was a primal thinker, which I can contact with my thought that primal thinker is an intellectual principle.” That is to use philosophic language, but it is a vibrant manifest reality, which is a perfect emanation of the one and the good, which are identical and as a unity. And that in, in this nous and this intellectual principle from that emanation, because it is a perfect emanation of the divine unity. It also has the capacity to emanate and out of that comes the soul. And it is the soul that moves. That can move. The unity has nowhere to move. It has no kind of a limitation that would allow for it. And the same with the nous. But when you come to the soul and the soul [inaudible]. I don't find that offensive.

“Those who hold to fewer principles must hold the identity of either the intellectual principle and the soul or of the intellectual principle and the first. But we have abundantly shown that these are distinct.” And in fact, a lot of the Aeneids are taken up with Plotinus applying his excellence to showing how this is so. That they are distinct. That no stone, no argument, has been left unturned. Everything has been examined. Every possibility. Every variation has been looked at. And he has shown here's this case, here's this case, here's this case, here's this possibility. So, he says, by this time we have abundantly shown that these are distinct. That there are three. They have these qualities. They have this kind of a hierarchy. And they operate in this fashion.

So, he says, he writes, “It remains for us to consider whether there are more than these three.” And then he goes on into this. What are the kinds could there be? What other possibilities can we imagine? And he goes over it again and again, meticulous. Because Plotinus is that needle with the golden thread bringing that fabric of the old ancient tradition, the mystery tradition, into a language form for its final bow on the world scene for many centuries. And bring it into being.

And so finally, [inaudible] we’ll end Plotinus with this.

To increase the primals by making the Supreme mind engender the reason principle. And this again engender in the soul a distinct power to act as mediator between soul and the supreme mind. This is to delay deny intellect to the soul, which would no longer derive its reason from the intellectual principle, but from an intermediate. The soul then would possess not the reason principle, but an image of it. The soul could not know the intellectual principle then. It couldn't have no intellectual.

What Plotinus has guarding against here, and constantly excellence must differentiate and require it, is that we are habituated to illusion, to phenomenal time space, which just abounds and echoes and rebounds. And we carry that natural habit, that ritual comportment, that mythological [inaudible] description with us all the time. And it tends to reoccur without us even realizing on the highest levels of our understanding. And even on the highest level of understanding of being in this sense of presence, there is still a possibility for this echoing false imagery to occur. And for us to be led astray all over again through the entire junkyard enmasse. Don't do it. Give them up. What did Melville say? Give them up, give up, give yourself up to the, the universe at that point.

Well, this a translation of this tradition into writing almost unavailable again in our time. We check books in print the cheapest edition of Plotinus is $30. We don't have it in the bookstore here. We don't have any bookstores we could get to. It just doesn't exist. You can buy a set of the complete Aeneids for $450 from one publisher. He can get it for $30 if you just stand to have half the book. So, it happens again and again, that we find ourselves in conditions where we're forbidden to read by exclusion. Not by Fiat. Not that somebody says you can't read it. It's just that it isn't available. But I do urge you that the translations exist here and the P.R.S. library. Come and get them. They're there for you.

And I hope next week, when we round out the lecture series, you can see that the culmination of this entire development was the moving of the image of the divine city, the capital city, away from both Rome and Alexandria. That both of them had come in to certain kinds of harmonies. Both of them had come to certain kinds of impasses. And when a man of genius and vision like Constantine came along with his vision of the red cross, he simply courageously swept up all the accoutrements of authority and office and took them to another city and started all over again. Because it was the only thing that you could do given the conditions that had arisen. There was no longer any chance to stay in Rome or Alexandria. And we'll see that next week. The final page in this entire drama when the emperor of the world said, I don't want this office anymore. Let the people fight for it and see who's the toughest. They can have it. And Maximilian [inaudible] left the empire up for grabs and it was Constantine who finally got it.

Well, we'll see you next week and thanks again.

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