Plotinus (Lecture 1)

Transcript (PDF)

Hermetic Tradition: From Egypt to America, From Osiris to Benjamin Franklin Presentation 19 of 24 Plotinus Lecture 1 Presented by Roger Weir Tuesday, May 13, 1986 Transcript: The date is May 13, 1986. this is part 19 in the Hermetic tradition Osiris to Franklin series by Roger Weir. Mr. Weir will announce the title of tonight's lecture himself. Watch it's full of water. Is that better? Plotinus. Ahhhh. Okay. I will try. I will try to organize this. Let's see if we can recap a little bit. Last week was very difficult. I listened to the tape and I realized that, that it was difficult to, to follow. But let's recap just a little bit. Most of you were not here last week. And if you get curious why the tapes are available. We're breaking new ground. Not many people have ever talked about this subject matter. And as far as I know nobody's talked about it in the way that I'm talking about it since the 3rd century. And I don't, I don't particularly relish the idea that I'm, I'm the one that is actually talking about it in this way. But it seems to have fallen to my lot. So, I'm taking it in in stride and I hope you are too. The main theme last week was that there is a difference in religious experience. And that the difference in religious experience centers around a change that happened about 0 A.D. That religious experience before 0 A.D. was largely mythological in its basic structure. Or to use a term that Joseph Campbell uses sometimes, that it was mythographically. In the sense that one could understand from natural experience, eventually in a sophisticated mode, what, what God was, what the divine was. What the Gods were. that there was some way in nature building upon nature, upon natural experience, that you could understand. And thus, it was mythological in this sense. After 0 A.D. the religious experience is magical instead of mythographically. Better let them in. It sounds like. Do we have enough chairs? Oh good. Come in. We have two chairs. Great. That'll be fine. Hi, come in. Welcome. There are some chairs. Make yourselves at home. Someone in the room: Sorry we got a little bit lost No problem. No problem. And there's one chair over here for someone. Is there a cushion to put on that seat? Someone on the room: That's ok. Here. Here's a cushion because it's. thank you. Someone in the room: Thank you. Very good. Ok. So just recapping but what the gist of, of what we presented. I'm using the plural because when I'm sitting in this chair in this mode, I'm not really just a singular. What we were trying to present last week was that there was a change in the very nature of religious experience. And for those of us who have been brought up in Western civilization the fulcrum of that change is Jesus Christ. And there just doesn't seem to be any of figure who really causes the sea change. From the B.C. centuries to the A.D. centuries in the quality of religious experience. On the surface the evidence points to Augustus Caesar. To the Imperial cult of assuming divine power for a living mortal man. And we went through that in our archetypal Alexandria series last year. And we saw how the provoking of the, of the deep subconscious of the Roman individuals from about 70 B.C. until about 30 A.D., in that hundred years. Constantly the deepest levels of the Roman psyche were provoked by Titanic events in the world. Much like what are happening to us these days. The 20th century is the same sort of thing. and we are also in the same impasse that New Testament times were in. The, the whole scope of our unconscious has been provoked into activity. And so, we have these volcanic eruptions of contents and of images. Of ideas. Of symbols. of experiences. That in normal life are rarely if ever surface. Only surface for, for yogi's or mystics and so forth. But it's coming up titanically so that the man, on the street the woman on the street by the 1980's world round is suffering from catastrophic images coming up in their experience. Which there is no way to deal with in terms of paychecks or normal friendships or normal family relationships or regular psychological adjustments. There's no way to adjust to these experiences. There's no way to work them in and weave them in in terms of ordinary life. So, we're forced almost by this kind of a psychological gunpoint. We're forced to face these issues in a strategic mode. We're trying to find out therefore what's going on. What is happening to us? The same thing happened in the late Roman Republic as it became the Roman Empire. The very same thing happened. And the first individual to really grasp in an intuitive sense, in a great personal sense, what was required of someone was Julius Caesar. And Julius Caesar being the kind of character that he was. Courageous, conniving, intelligent, vastly pompous in a way but deeply insightful. began slowly to bring to his person the qualities of a God. And it was upon achieving this Godlike status that Julius Caesar became a sudden archetypal terror to his backers. People like Brutus were suddenly horrified that they had helped make this man a God. And they killed Julius Caesar for that. He was sacrificed on the steps of the Roman forum by his friends. Not by his enemies. They had become enemies not so much out of political intrigue but out of archetypal fear. And the next Roman to try and and grasp this power for himself was Mark Anthony. but Mark Anthony was not nearly the person that Julius Caesar was. And Mark Antony was electrocuted by divine fire. and in his desperation to find some balance for himself because he couldn't. He was a brave general. He was a warrior. He was beloved by his men. He was a tough guy. And he was ambitious. And he was intelligent. But psychologically he did not have the strength that Julius Caesar had. And so, he reached out to try to hold on to Cleopatra. Because Cleopatra could handle that energy. Her family for 300 years had been Gods. And she had no problem with that at all. but in Cleopatra's understanding of divinity there should be a man and a woman. And the man of the woman were not only husband and wife in a sense, but they were brother and sister also. That there was this archetypal quality. But Marc Anthony could not take it. And so Julius Caesar and Marc Anthony both failed. But the third Roman in that line succeeded and that was Augustus Caesar. And Augustus Caesar as a teenager had been taken aside by his uncle Julius Caesar. And Julius Caesar had seen into the boy's mystical nature. Augustus was a mystical character. It seems hard for us to believe that the founder of the Roman Empire was a mystical genius and yet he was. He had birthmarks on his midriff that were in the shape of the Big Dipper. Of Uruses major. And he had periodic Deja-vu' visions of, of being a divine person. And his uncle was the only one he could talk to. And Julius Caesar in order to prepare him selected out a series of four or five companions for Augustus Caesar. And then Julius Caesar picked them out. He picked out the old Etruscan wealthy man Maecenas. He picked out Agrippa. He picked out a number of individuals who then stayed with Augustus Caesar all of his long life. They were his brain trust. They never abandoned him. And with this kind of entourage of companions Augustus Caesar succeeded in becoming a God. But the Godship that he assumed was in the form of the Roman community. The Roman community mind. And that was not sufficient. The Roman psyche was not an individual psyche but was a, an army psyche. A group psyche. So, Augustus Caesar for all of his achievement, for all of his power, does not qualify. The changes that he made are changes which we would call sociological. But the changes, change, the change I'm talking about is not sociological at all. It has sociological ramifications but the change I'm talking about is what can only be described as an ontological change. The nature of the being of human consciousness changed. It went from concerning mythic veracity, the test of religious experience to rejecting mythic veracity and accepting magical veracity. And what makes magic work as opposed to myth is consciousness. But it's human consciousness that has been integrated by symbolic vision. One only has the magical flow, the magical realm, when consciousness is integrated symbolically. As long as one is an ego-based persona, myth is valid. It has veracity. But when one integrates oneself into a transpersonal self then the myths no longer can have any hold on one. Then one projects out this magical sense. And so, we have seen that in the New Testament, we read from Matthew and Mark and Luke. we've seen that that Jesus commands the demons out of people. We read that that little section in Matthew where he lands from a boat. He comes across a lake. and he comes out and there's a cemetery and there are two individuals who are who are demonically possessed. And they live in the cemetery and nobody can go near them. And they even they break the chains that people have tried to put on them because they have superhuman strength. There's, ummm, tomb wraiths. And they see Jesus coming. And they come up to him and they are trembling. Not the men but the demons inside of them are trembling. And they say what are you going to do to us? And then they see this herd of pigs. And they say you know put us in the pigs. And Jesus says go. And they go into the pigs and the pigs run into the lake and drowned themselves. And then the townspeople come and they're afraid. Everybody is afraid of Jesus. Because when he starts out his, his work he's too high powered in a sense because of his tremendous integration. He's too high powered because he flows easily in this magical realm and works it. And these other people are still slogged down in this mythological overlay. In fact, it's the mythological overlay that prevents them from understanding religious reality. Because what was the mythological basis for personality in the B.C. centuries had a sudden change where it went on top of the individual and their complications simply crushed the individual. Or, or at least provided a kind of like a jungle which the individual then had to find his way out of. And the only way that they could find their way out was through magical practices. To try and and transcend the world. Get through the destiny. And instead of dusty than being the, the basis. Instead of fate being the basis of a person, it was the series of Jeopardies that one had to go through to, to achieve fullness. And the single overriding issue by which Christianity won the day was that it worked. It was the only really effective way out of that psychological impasse. But what we have to understand and what we've been looking at is that Christianity in a peculiar way worked because it understood the mythological complications. And that the mythological complications were not Jewish. They were not Roman. They were not particularly Greek. The mythological complications were Egyptian. And it was the Egyptian netherworld that came up to the surface in the consciousness of those people and became the overriding jungle of complications. So that what used to be mythological papyri in ancient Egypt became magical papyri in the Greek language in the ad centuries. And they concerned themselves with the same issues. But instead of talking about them as after death experiences they talked about them as demonic experiences. Instead of something you have to go through after you die to be reborn, it's something you have to go through while you're alive to be reborn. So that the emphasis is on achieving salvation while you are alive. Not to chain...achieve salvation after death. So that the resurrection has to occur in life not in death. Not after life but in life. So that the mythological basis that was a netherworld understanding in ancient Egypt became the series of complications that the living individual with their consciousness had to find a way out of. And actually, if one wishes to describe him accurately, we should not say Jesus of Nazareth so much as Jesus of Alexandria. Because it was only in Alexandria that all these issues to a focus. close enough in terms of geographical area. Integrated enough in terms of psychological experience. That somebody would have a chance to find a way out of that impasse. And I think it's almost a certainty that Jesus spent many years in Alexandria. In the therapeutae community on the shores of Lake Mareotis just outside of Alexandria. As soon as one understands that way of life and, and that way of dealing with these kinds of issues, the words of Jesus light up. Very, very, very intelligible. And it also accounts for the fact that his own cousin John the Baptist didn't even recognize him at first because he hadn't seen him for eighteen years. So, I think that between the ages of 12 and 30 that Jesus was in Alexandria. And I think that he'd been taken there as a young child because of Herod's condemning all the newborn infants. Mary and Joseph couldn't take him to Jerusalem to be consecrated in the temple. He was never consecrated there. But because they were Essenes, they took him I think into Egypt and into the Alexandria Arian...area. And was there for the first three years of his life. In the Jewish religious experience at this time. And they had the same thing happened to them as everybody else did. But when the Egyptian mythology came up to the surface in the Jewish mind, they faced a peculiar kind of a problem. Because Judaism is actually basing its experience on being of, pushing against Egypt. Pushing against defining itself in terms of being non-Egyptian. A lot of the later experience, the Mosaic law and everything like this, is a denial of the whole issue of Egyptian mythology. So that in this timeframe, where everything changes, there is a kind of literature in Jewish writing called The Hakala literature. And I was quoting from Gershom Scholem book published by the Jewish Theological Seminary, 1965. Called Jewish Gnosticism Merkabah Mysticism and Talmudic Tradition. Merkabah means chariot. Merkabah mysticism is, is the mystical chariot that comes in the last ages. The, The Talmud of course is the Jewish writings that come about the 1st century A.D. Or a 1st century Common Era as they would prefer. Through the 2nd century. "The Hakala Books described at great length," writes Scholem, "The aesthetic ascent of the soul to heaven. Although the details of this ascent in the greater Hakala differ in many ways from those in the lesser Hakalas." There are two sets of these. It is difficult to decide whether either of these two texts represents an earlier stage of tradition. Or whether both are parallel versions of only slightly different groups. Still both texts together present us with such an abundance of particulars in contra distinction to the Talmudic material, that we begin to wonder about the relation of these Hakala traditions to the Talmudic injunction against precisely this kind of revelation. So, this is mystical lore. And not only mystical lore but it has great affinity with Gnosticism. So that the Hakala literature in Hellenistic Judaism he is parallel to the Gnostic literature in Christianity. They occur at the same time. But between these two groups of literature we've been following the Hermetic tradition. And the Hermetic tradition goes exactly in between the Jewish and the Christian. Between the Gnostic and the Hakala literature. And we have seen that the Hermetic tradition is the only one which we can follow in a conscientious way and make sense of the change that's happened. Because the Hermetic tradition founds itself in the ancient Egyptian religious understanding. We spent a month on the Pyramid Texts going back to 3,000 BC. And we found that in 3000 BC it was already a sophisticated understanding. The journey of the soul is, is to receive guidance from the spiritual teacher. And the spiritual teacher helps the soul as a student to complete its journey and come back to life again. And when this Egyptian tradition becomes shifted from the unconscious to the superconscious. When it no longer is something dealing with the, the afterlife netherworld but dealing with the, the heavenly aions above oneself. The Hermetic tradition is the only one that is able to work with this with any kind of intelligibility. But one emendation, it became progressively more and more difficult intellectually to follow the central thread. because of the proliferation of tangents. Because there were so many possibilities. Because the amplification of themes began to multiply so fast that by the 3rd century A.D. it was almost impossible for the human mind to be sophisticated enough in its intelligence to follow that central thread all the way through. And it was because of this condition that Plotinus taught the way that he did. And we have to turn to Plotinus now. Because he is the, he is the great man of the age in the sense of intelligence. He shows us in his work just where the reality of the spirit has come to around 250 A.D. and why its impasse needs to be solved by a new kind of spiritual experience. And of course, that spiritual experience now is so familiar to us that we just assume that it's always been around. but it hasn't been. This was the first time in Western civilization, in Plotinus, that we were encouraged to understand that there was in fact a specific training that was capable of taking us to a personal experience of God with no intermediaries whatsoever. Plotinus uses a Greek term which in translation exactly means the unitot. or unitait. It's a unitait experience. Its experience of unity. But then you have to refine it so that it's not experience of unity but that the experience itself is unity. But then you have to get rid of the is because that's kind of like an equivalency. That the religious experience of the divine occurs in a unitait condition of oneness. And so, all of Plotinus' writings are arranged this way. The only good translation of Plotinus in English is by Stephen McKenna. Who was a friend of Yates and James Joyce. And was of that, that Irish mystical group around the turn of the 20th century. And the 3rd edition revised by B.S. Paige is the is the one to have. When Plotinus died. he died in 269 A.D. he had been in Rome for a number of years. And his school was much like this. There were never more than this many people. In, in real spiritual traditions there are no vast crowds really. This is about it. and but numbering in his audience were the Roman Emperor Aurelian and his wife and many Roman senators. And so, he had the backing of the powers that be really in the Roman Empire. And he was about to establish a philosophic City down by the Bay of Naples. He was going to found it on the site, near the site of the Kuhnian civil. But then Plotinus got sick with what we supposed was diphtheria. And he died. And his writings, which were never in book form. They were just notes taken down by students who would be hearing him. And then people would make copies of these. And it was very difficult to for anyone to get a hold of Plotinus' writings. One of his students named Porphyry, who'd originally not liked Plotinus at all and had just gone to the classes to try and find ways to, to disprove him. And then finally after trying to disprove him came to understand that Plotinus was talking about using the mind to purify itself. Not to come to a logical conclusion so much as to purify itself so it no longer needed to come to logical conclusions. That the correct use of the mind religiously is to make it transparent so that one can see through the structures of the mind to the real. And if you think that it's, there's some logical conclusion you can come to the mind remains opaque. And one remains ignorant and actually are quite savage really. But Porphyry was assigned the task by Plotinus himself to put his writings in order. And when he counted up all the various little scrolls that they were. There were 54 of them. And so, Porphyry looking for a way to arrange these scrolls decided that he would take six sections. Because six is a perfect number. And that he would arrange these six sections into nine parts. So that six times nine would be 54. So that each of these six would be a nine-string lyre as it were. And that the first three of these books would form a unit. And the fourth and fifth would form the unit. And the sixth by itself would form a unit. So that one works three-two-one. So, you take the first three Aeneid together and that forms a section. And what that first section deals with is the, the basic sense of what nature is in what the world is. The first Aeneid takes the, the cosmic nature. And the second and third Aeneids talk about the world in great depth. But still about the world. The fourth and fifth Aeneids talk about the soul. And the sixth Aeneid talks about divinity. So that one moves from the world, to the soul, to God. And in this movement, there's a, there's a vast sweep that takes one increasingly away from what you used to trust. Instead of trusting the, the soma, the body, somatic experience, one learns that it's not all that trustworthy. That physical material world is not all that trustworthy. And one learns then to, to shift one's sense of trust, one's sensed an experience to the soul. And that the soul then becomes much more trustworthy than the world. But having seen the contrast between an interior intelligent soul nature and an exterior vulgar world nature, one sees in the contrast between those two that the soul itself is not the stopping place. It's not the ultimate. And one begins to get a sense of humility that there is something on the other side of the soul. That just as the soul is more sophisticated than the world there is something more sophisticated than the soul. And that is God. So that Plotinus in his work, in his Aeneids, teaches us first to set the world aside. Hold it at arm's length. And have confidence in your soul. But then to see that one has to set the soul aside and go to the divine. And that this is very, very difficult. because progressively we cut our base of, of, of nourishment of what we thought we could trust and stand on. And essentially what we're doing is we're cutting away. And Plotinus uses beautiful analogy, he says that we're, we are like a stone. A big block of marble. And the divine in us is like an artist and has to carve our real self out of this. And the only way to liberate our real self from this kind of a block of granite that we have is to do like a sculptor does. To take chips and pieces away. And us by taking away that we gain more definition. And when we gain a sense of our soul. When we have defined ourselves to that point it takes a tremendous amount of courage then to refine ourselves to the divine. This is a double operation, Plotinus says. that we have to do two things at the same time otherwise we can't do it. We have to push one thing away and attract ourselves to the other at the same time. That we can't just do it one way. If I did say it's a double operation which makes it so difficult. And this is in fact you know when you see the, the Hermetic tradition symbolized by the infinity sign. That's what it means. It means that double loop. The old Hermetic tradition code of operation was that wherever you are. In whatever world you happen to be. Whatever world condition in time-space you happen to be. You can always make a coordinate by moving in a symmetrical fashion. By moving say left and coming back to where you are and then moving right the same way and coming back to where you are. And then expanding that left movement and coming back and extending the right and coming back. And that eventually this kind of symmetrical movement will produce a coordination no matter where you are. The intelligibility of the pattern itself makes whatever realm one happens to be in intelligible. And this is one of the, this is one of the principles of contemplation. Sophisticated religious contemplation is to establish a, a form of wholeness irregardless of whatever conditions have come up. And that can be done. That can be taught. But the difficulty comes when one has to step free from that pattern. Because it's one thing to free oneself from the world to a spiritual pattern, which we would call the soul. It's another thing entirely to jump free from the confidence of that pattern into the unknown. And for that it doesn't matter how intelligent you are. It doesn't it doesn't matter any of the virtues that you have. Or have acquired. There's only one thing that matters. Do you have the spiritual courage to actually do it? And so, one has to remind oneself and inculcate and educate oneself from the very beginning that you are in fact willing to do this. It's colloquially called the sense of commitment. And you have to just decide when you begin that come rain or shine hell or high water gonna do this. I'm going to get home. Regardless. That you're actually going to do this. And this kind of spiritual commitment is exactly what we don't have in our age. We are always reserving something just in case. And to the extent that we reserve, to that extent we fail. to that exact extent we fail. And so, it's a question of spiritual courage really. and somebody can say to you. like I can say to you, you, you have to have courage and when it comes time to make that that leap jump. But it's a whole other thing to actually do that. And no one blames anyone if you don't because it is a shock to find out how difficult that is. In Porphyry's biography of Plotinus, which he put in front of Plotinus' works. He edited those 54 treatises and then he put a biography of Plotinus in the front of it. And he says that after Plotinus died a number of them went to an oracle to see where the soul of Plotinus went. And I'll just give you Porphyry's words because you may be surprised that they actually still did this to 70 A.D. These are very sophisticated people. Very. These are not superstitious people at all. And they are not quote Pagans. These are religious people. They went to Apollo. the Oracle of Apollo. "Apollo was consulted by Amelius. Who desired to learn where Plotinus' soul had gone. And Apollo who uttered of Socrates that great praise of all men Socrates was the wisest. You shall hear what a full and lofty Oracle Apollo rendered about Plotinus." And this is the full translation of the Oracle of Apollo about the soul of Plotinus. I raise an undying song to the memory of a gentle friend. A hymn of praise woven to the honey sweet tones of my lyre. Under the touch of the golden plectrum. the muses too I call to lift the voice with me. And strains of many toned exaltation. In passion ranging over all the modes of song. Even as of old they raised the famous chant to the glory of Acidities in the immortal orders of the Homeric Line. What they are talking about here is they're saying we're using spiritual language. The Oracle is saying we're; we're using this long spiritual chant because this is a very honorable situation. It's not something we're just a short two-line quip is going to do. Usually the Oracle would respond in just a very strange short couplet. An example of one of the Apollonian Oracle's "I have num, number the same and taken measured of the sea. I understand the dumb and here where there has been no speech." So, they were usually very short pithy statements. But for, for Plotinus inquiring where his soul went the Oracle went on in this beautiful language. Almost like paying homage to this this person. Come then sacred chorus. let us in tone with one great sound the utmost of all song. I Apollo, Bacchus's singing in the midst. Celestial. Man, at first but now nearing the diviner ranks. The bond...bonds of human necessity are loosed for you and strong of heart. You beat your eager way from out of the roaring tumult of the fleshly life to the shores of that wave washed coasts. Free from the thronging of the guilty. Thence to take the Grateful path of the sinless soul. Where glows the splendor of God. where right is enthroned in the stainless place. Far from the wrong that mocks at law. Often times as you strove to rise above the bitter waves of this blood drenched life. Above the sickening whirl. toiling in the mid most of the rushing flood and the unimaginable turmoil. Often times from the ever blessed that were shown to you the terms still close at hand. The term that they're talking about here is the ultimate threshold that one has to cross to get to the divine. The understanding here was that there was a shape to reality. And that one, when one got very full in one sense of it one came very close to, to the edge as if an edge of a bubble. And there was a surface tension trying to keep you there and that was the term. And one had to break free from that. One has to be born from that. And it's very tremendous. The terms still close at hand. and often times when your mind thrust out array and was like to be wrapped down unsanctioned paths. The Immortals themselves prevented and guided you straight going ways to the celestial spheres. Pouring down before you a dense shaft of light. that your eyes might see from amid the mournful gloom. Sleep never closed those eyes. High above the heavy murk of the mist you held them. Tossed in the welter you still had vision. Still you saw sights many and fair. Not granted to all that labor and wisdoms quest. But now you have cast the entire screen aside. quitted the tomb that held your lofty soul. And you enter at once the heavenly consort. where fragrant breezes play. Where all is unison and winning tenderness. And Godless joy. And the place is lavish of the nectar streams the unfailing God bestows. Turn your cassette now. Mr. Weir continues on the other side without a break in the continuity. END OF SIDE ONE Where Minos and Rhadamanthus dwell. Delicious errors and transful (?) sky. Great brethren of the golden race of mighty Zeus. which well the Justice Themis, Plato consecrated power and stately Pythagoras. And all else that formed the choir of immortal love. That share their parentage with the most blessed spirits. There where the heart has ever lifted in joyous festival. Oh, blessed one you have fought your many fights now crowned with unfading life. Your days are with the ever holy. Rejoicing muses let us stay our song. And the subtle windings of our dance. This much I could tell my golden lyre of Plotinus, the hallowed soul. And so, the Oracle of Apollo himself said that Plotinus had become immortal. Had joined the ranks of feet of the divine. One characteristic of Plotinus that has been pointed out from the beginning, from the 3rd century on until our own day. Until there are even symposiums on it now. Plotinus' thought is called Neoplatonism. And here's a series of colloquia Neoplatonism and Indian Thought. There was a great affinity between Plotinus and Indian thought. But what is curious about Plotinus is that his thought is very much like the cream of all Indian thought. There are many parallels with The Upanishads. there are many parallels with The Bhagavad-Gita. There are many parallels with Mahayana Buddhism. And with Vedanta Thought. And for those who are familiar with Indian thought realize that this bands about 2000 years of the development of Indian thought. So that actually Plotinus is the centerline cream thread of Indian thought from The Upanishads in 700-800 B.C. to the development of Advaita Vedanta around 900-1000 A.D. So that in a way Plotinus' thought is not only the cream of the Hermetic tradition in the west. From ancient Egypt on through the Greek Hellenistic developments to the Hermetic apex in Neoplatonism. But shows that there was a parallel running all the way through Indian thought. through the, the core of Hinduism into Buddhism and a back into Vedanta again. The question came up many times. And has come up many times. Was there contact along the way? And the answer is that it's not necessary for there to be physical contact. That it's yet another case of showing that when human beings are able to feel down to their deepest levels, we find that we are all similar. We're all part of a spiritual family. That we are related to each other. and that the notion that we are brothers and sisters on a very deep real level is quite true in fact. It is not just a convenient of schmaltzy sentimental designation on the surface but is in fact exactly the case in the very deepest levels. And the deeper that we go we realize that at profound levels that the differentiations even like brother and sister begin to fade away. And that we are related as in the same being. In Plotinus' thought the accounting then for why is this world here then? How come we are so different? How come we are many? When in fact we, we are essentially at the most profound level one, in the divine. Why is this all here anyway? For what purpose? And Plotinus' answer for this is that this world is a creation by a, a special kind of a process which is called emanation. Emanation. And that the emanation is not a conscious kind of a creation in the sense of one setting out to design a world and make it. But that the creation exists because the emanation comes from the very quality of the goodness of the divine. That what initially has to be seen as a nasty world that one needs to, to get away from and get into one's own soul. And then that the soul is only a midpoint and one has to get away from that and rejoin the divine. When one has done that and understood, one sees that the divine in its goodness makes all of this realm out of the various essential nature of its goodness. And that on the merit...very profound esoteric level the world is a hallowed place. That the material world is not in fact a disgusting bunch of mud. But is in fact the of, the ultimate shape of the emanation of the qualities of, of the divine. That the world is divine. And it's this recapturing, this remembering, of the essential divinity of the cosmos. After having gone through the process of rejecting it first and getting completely away from it. When one experiences the divine and understands that not by creation by design but by emanation from just the very principles of goodness. That the quality of lovingness that is there in the divine makes all this happen. And that there is no purpose in the sense of design whatsoever to reality. But that its nature occurs out of the goodness of God. And having understood that the compulsions to get somewhere. Or to have an advantage. Or, or to own or to not to own. Or to keep somebody from owning. All of that is shown to be illusion. Has no purpose, no place. So, the whole what came later to be called The Doctrine of Emanation for Plotinus. It was not a doctrine at all. It was the modus operandi of reality. Here we have a study called Plotinus the Road to Reality JME Rest published by Cambridge University Press 1967. Chapter six Emanation and Necessity. The chapter heading, Emanation and Necessity. And he writes in here, "I have suggested that a germ of Plutonian doctrine of emanation is to be found in Plato's account of Eros. And is as is more generally admitted that this germ is supplemented by Plotinus turning Plato's moral rule." And the moral rule of Plato here is, being good means doing good. Plato's moral rule was that, being good means doing good. That if you're not doing good then you're certainly not good. But he doesn't go into it here he just assumes that the readers from Cambridge University Press publication's going to know. The Plato's account of Eros takes place in The Symposium. The Symposium. Sometimes translated as The Banquet but it's a Greek name is a The Symposium. it's sometimes called The Banquet because there is a meal served in the symposium. And the symposium, if you're not if you're not following these connections. The Symposium is like Plato's Last Supper. It's a communion. There's a Eucharistic motion to the whole structure of the symposium. Not that the symposium is Christian but that the symposium and the Eucharist together partake of a basic mythological pattern. That only when we are being nourished together from the same table are, we able to understand each other in this most profound companionable way about the nature of love. Of Eros. And in The Symposium what is brought out constantly through this kind of dinner talk which progressively becomes more serious and then goes into lighter moments. And then serious and then lighter. In this kind of an ebb and flow of meaning, what finally emerges is that individual human beings are our only half. We're all only half of a complete being. And that the whole notion of erotic attraction is to find one's other half. And this in the sense is not so much a physical but a mythological 0understanding. Because in every case what comes out of the Pythagorean implications of this is that we are all fractions of the real. But that in every case we're like one over some fraction. 1 over 19. or one over a hundred. One over a million. But then in every case the number one, the unity above, well the, the fraction line is the divine. We're all related to the divine in this way. And the other half of us is ultimately and most profoundly the good, the divine. And that only by finding ourselves in terms of the divine do we ever become whole and complete. And when any of us do we realize then that that we are, we are in this unitat. Unitat as Plotinus would say, sense of the real. So, "The germ of Plotinus doctrine of emanation is found in Plato's account of Eros. And supplemented by turning Plato's moral rule, being good means doing good, into a law of the cosmos." Why does the cosmos occur? Because this is the way that its goodness happens. The philosophical problem with which we are concerned here will be to determine exactly how this good is done. And what is the nature of the doer. it will therefore be necessary not only to examine the language Plotinus uses of the actual process of emanation. But also, to inquire why the good is what it is. For if we know why the good is what it is, we shall also know why it does what it does. and we will not of course break Plotinus' own rule by separating the existence of the one from its activity. Plotinus said there are a few basic rules that in spiritual questing you have to observe. And one of them is that you can't separate the existence of God from his activity. And this is a development then of Plato's moral rule. That be being good means doing good that the existence of God is not something different from his activity. And so, keeping that in mind one can see that Plotinus theory of emanation then is that there are progressive levels of the divine that radiates out and create the realms that we know of. The first level of creation though he says is an intellectual principle that thinks. But because of the nature of the, of the divine because it can't just think of something as it thinks things occur. And it's this intellectual principle then that brings into manifestation and all soul. A basic unity soul. And it's this all soul, this world soul, then that in its emanation creates the cosmos that we inhabit. Creates the angelic beings. creates men. Creates the material universe and so forth. When we are able to withdraw from the world enough to be able to start to think silently and quietly within ourselves, we get, we begin then to participate in the very nature of that world soul. But what deceives us at first is that we're trying to think about material. We're trying to think about a subject. We're trying to think about this problem or that problem. And we need to acclimate ourselves to the sense that it's not what we think about so much but just the very process of thinking. The very intelligence which we manifest in ourselves that has a flavor. If I can use that term. and that flavor is intelligence. And that intelligence is the context in which this soul, the spiritual soul of a person, begins to glow. When we introduce that intelligence into our life, we begin to have an awareness. And that awareness is like the glowing then of the soul. And the sense of its presence begins to occur to us with, with more and more certainty. When it first starts to happen and you're not used to it, it seems like little dejà vu experiences come up. Here, there and elsewhere. Or one finds a sudden affinities in time-space. These little indications. Little Hermetic signposts along the way. But eventually these intuitions, these fleeting feelings or moods or tones begin to coalesce and come together into a sense of presence. And it's in that sense of presence, needing the context of intelligence to occur, that the recognition occurs that we in fact are a soul. We're not we're not this body. We can be this body. There's no problem with that. But we're not limited by that at all. And in fact, when we recognize our soul nature in the context of intelligence, we realize that there is no limit on the expansion of our intelligence. That the all soul, the world soul, is in fact a universal that exceeds even the cosmos in its dimensions. So, with this Plotinus tells us in the fifth Aeneid, beginning the fifth Aeneid. And this is right at the middle where he's talking about the soul. He raises the kind of questions that we would always want to raise and always did want to ask. And he says it. "What can it be that has brought the souls to forget the Father God? And though members of the Divine and entirely of that world to ignore at once themselves in it?" That when we understand that we are, we exist only really in the Divine, nowhere else. How does it come to be then that we don't know that? Or that there was a time when we didn't know that? Or that we look around and we see that most people don't know that? How does that happen? How does a part of the divine stop be cognizant of its divinity? How does it come to be ignorant? And that's what, what Plotinus then is going to talk about. And he starts off in this way. "The evil that has overtaken them has it source in self will." Self-will. In the entry into the sphere of process. And in the primal differentiation with the desire for self-ownership. They conceived a pleasure in this freedom. and largely indulge their own motion. Thus, they were hurried down the wrong path. And in the end drifting further and further they came to lose even the thought of their origin in the divine. A child wrenched young from home and brought up during many years at a distance will fail in knowledge of its father and of itself. The souls in the same way no longer discern either the divinity of their own nature. Or their own nature itself. And ignorant of their rank brings self-deprecation. They misplaced their respect, honoring everything more than themselves. All their awe and admiration is for the alien. and clinging to this they have broken apart as far as a soul may. And they make light of what they have deserted. That is, they ridicule the spirit. "Their regard for the mundane and their disregard of themselves bring about their utter ignoring of the, of the Divine." So, Plotinus is that our condition and the very nature of evil is that we have become egotistical, self-willed. And to think that that is what freedom is. And have gone long ways down this garden path. And as we have gone down this garden path because it is untruthful, because it isn't real, we have. And I'm going to use a little modern psychological jargon now. Because it's unreal we can't really have it. So, we project out on to it a sense of significance. a sense of meaning. Trying to shore it up. Trying to make it more real. Trying to give it reality. And because we are real, our souls are real, it has this capacity to project out a sense of the real. And so, the material world gains meaning from our designations. But this is not a emanation. If we're an emanation there would be no problem with that. But instead it's a fearful, egotistical, self-willed projection trying to create a world. Trying to plan and make a design. And this realm is very, very close to what the stakes call they the Demiurge. Well I can see from, from our tapes at the time probably is gone. We'll, we'll come back to this. We're gonna we're gonna stick with this. And, and when we come back to this next week. I'm going to try to start off with the parallel between The Bhagavad-Gita and the Aeneids of Plotinus. And show how spiritual teaching always is very, very careful to be complete as well as perfect. That the two motions have to go hand in hand. And that when the sense of perfection is reached at, at the same time as the sense of completion is filled out then one has this coordinates of focus. And the Greek word for what happens there is Epiclesis. That we don't learn what that focus is but that focus invites a response from the divine to occur there. And we recognize our own self in that occurrence. And, and that this, this recognition of the of the true self is what religious spirit experience is all about. What I'm trying to present is that that used to happen naturally for human beings. But that the mythological basis for that became more and more complex. And then around 0 A.D. it no longer happened naturally but was turned inside out so it only happened in a magical sense. I'm using magic in a big religious sense now. Because it could only happen with the consent of consciousness. That consciousness had become stronger than the mythological basis upon which it had been based. And so instead of just doing it naturally man now had to do it consciously. But the problem of becoming conscious became more and more difficult as the centuries went on. And by the 3rd century it became almost impossible. and we'll see after we deal with the Plotinus that for about a hundred years a few people still struggle with it. And then there is a complete collapse of the Western psyche. That in the 4th century A.D., near the latter third of the 4th century A.D. The, the pressure of the mythological jungle becomes too much. And the general psyche of Western man breaks underneath it. And literally Western civilization goes crazy. And we are still trying to climb out of that rubble. Still. We're almost out but not quite. Well we'll come to this next week. Thanks END OF RECORDING