Return to the One (35 page)

Becoming the One is the only way of knowing the One.

Wrap-Up

From Forms to the Formless

H
AVING COME
to the end of our return to the One, in concept if not in reality, it is fitting to revisit a question that has appeared in various guises throughout this book:

Is that all there is?

This question, wonderfully expressed in a song of the same name written by Mike Stoller and Jerry Lieber, lies at the heart of both the human condition and Plotinus’s spiritual teachings. For within every human soul there is indeed a longing that never lessens, a searching for satisfaction that constantly eludes us. In the song, a girl is taken by her father to a circus, “the greatest show on earth.” But the happiness it provides her isn’t so great and she asks, “Is that all there is to a circus?”

In the same vein, the question “Is the physical universe all there is to reality?” was important to Plotinus. No, he emphatically responds. Does the feeling that something is missing in our lives arise because we’ve lost touch with the spiritual side of existence and our own selves as soul? Yes, says Plotinus, equally emphatically.

Yet at this point I imagine some readers are asking themselves another question: Are Plotinus’s teachings all there is to spirituality? Indeed, I would be the first to admit that the journey of the soul described in the
Enneads
seemingly lacks a vehicle. By this I mean that the formless soul’s embrace of God’s formlessness takes place without the aid of any intervening forms normally associated with spirituality or religion.

As was noted earlier, there is an almost complete absence of any favorable mention of rituals, rites, prayers, invocations, injunctions, commandments, saviors, or the like in the
Enneads
. Further, Plotinus’s own spiritual practice is described in generalities rather than specifics. However, the historical record suggests that ancient Greek and Roman schools of philosophy always described spiritual practice in generalities. Pierre Hadot says:

No systematic treatise codifying the instructions and techniques for spiritual exercises has come down to us. However, allusions to one or the other of such inner activities are very frequent in the writings of the Roman and Hellenistic periods. It thus appears that these exercises were well known, and that it was enough to allude to them, since they were a part of daily life in the philosophical schools. They took their place within a traditional course of oral instruction.
¹

So it is likely that we will never know the exact means by which Plotinus and his students aimed to accomplish the ends set forth in the
Enneads.
Clearly, however, Plotinus’s emphasis is on dematerializing and defragmenting the contents of consciousness. We must become spiritually single, not materially multiple. Contemplation of subtle higher realities belongs to those who cease contemplating this perceptible lower reality, which means shunning not only physical sensations but also thoughts, memories and other mental images of earthly existence.

Today, there are various systems of meditation aimed at achieving a similar state and it would be conjecture to venture a guess as to which, if any, come close to the spiritual exercises of Plotinus and his students. Further, this isn’t the most important lesson we can learn from the spiritual school of Plotinus, which made up in profundity what it lacked in numbers, for A.H. Armstrong says it was simply “a small informal group of friends meeting in a private house.”
²

Echoing Marshall McLuhan, the medium by which Plotinus conveyed his teachings is itself a central message. Recall that Plotinus was reluctant to put his oral discourses in written form, and only did so after ten years of lecturing to his students. The fluidity and immediacy of the spoken word is, it seems, more akin to the intuitive intelligence of spirit to which the mystic philosopher aspires than is the rigidity and routine of writing.

Still, as formless as Plotinus tried to keep his teachings, they still possessed some form. Urging his students to surpass the limits of sense perception and discursive reason, he sat with them in his visible bodily form and put forth well-structured arguments in support of his doctrines concerning the soul, spirit, and the One.

I’m reminded of a cartoon I saw recently in which a group of people are sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of a Zen masterlike teacher. A man is raising his hand, asking “Exactly what is this ‘nothing’ I’ve been hearing so much about?”

The question belies the answer, but is necessary nonetheless. As human beings caught for now in the cave of material illusion, we can’t head directly into the bright light of the formless One without some aid, physical or conceptual forms we can lean on until our souls are able to stand on their own in the presence of God.

Plotinus speaks of the mystic philosopher returning to the One, “alone to the Alone.” But we have to keep in mind that he studied with his own teacher, Ammonius, for eleven years. And he held public classes for most of the time after he left Ammonius until his death.

So his life and his teachings speak to the desirability of a spiritual guide. For even though the soul of every person is virtually identical with the Absolute, each drop having the same essence as the ocean, we need help in learning how to cleanse ourselves of the impurities that prevent us from realizing our pristine spiritual nature.

Such is the role of the spiritual guide. Pierre Hadot points out that the Greek term for spiritual guide is literally the one who leads, who shows the way. Hadot adds, “It is the function of proof by living example that the authority of the spiritual guide has to fulfill, proof for the soundness of doctrines whose validity the student in the first phase of spiritual guidance—that is, of philosophical instruction—is not yet capable of understanding and judging.”
³

Hence, if after studying the
Enneads
we ask if this is all there is to Plotinus’s teachings, the answer must be no. For what is missing is Plotinus himself. If the reader isn’t fully persuaded by his words that what he says is true, it is only to be expected. In the Greek tradition, the presence of the spiritual guide served as an exemplar of truth until the student was able to manifest the same sublime wisdom within his or her own
psyche,
or soul.

All the same, Plotinus never implies that he is anything other than a guide to the path that leads to the divine. He points out the way but the way is separate from the pointing. Plotinus urges us to leave behind material and mental forms, including his own, of course, and return to the formless One. His urging is necessarily by means of thoughts and concepts, but these symbols are a bridge to the other side of form, a means instead of an end.

Echoing Plotinus, Huston Smith notes the spiritual limitations of reason: “Reason proceeds discursively, through language, and like a bridge, joins two banks, knower and known, without removing the river between.”
⁴

God, as ineffable unity, cannot be known or loved as an object, for knowing and loving involve two: a knower and what is known, or a lover and what is loved. There is, then, little essential difference between dualistic spiritual knowledge and dualistic spiritual love. Neither will lead to realization of the ultimate Good, the One beyond all differences. Religious thoughts are an attempt to bridge the gap between us and God, as are religious emotions. Yet so long as the bridge remains, so does the gap.

There is, then, another answer to the question about Plotinus’s mystic philosophy: “Is this all there is?” Yes. Going further, we could even say that there is less than what there seems to be. For when we focus on the heart of his spiritual practice, the outlines of which are clear even if the details are indistinct, it is all about burning bridges. The concepts Plotinus uses to intellectually convey his teachings have to be discarded from a person’s consciousness if he or she is to experience the reality these concepts point toward.

Even so, it also is true that since each of our consciousnesses presently is spread in so many directions—work, home, family, nature, pets, education, entertainment, sports, politics, science, art, and more besides—our constantly wandering attention must be confined within certain bounds so that we aren’t led even farther from God.

Thus rites, rituals, moral codes, and other forms of religious observance have a part to play in spiritual development. Even if these forms aren’t capable of taking us across the channel that separates soul and the One, they at least help keep us close to the shoreline from which the spiritual journey begins.

That beachhead lies within consciousness, not without in the world. So the less deeply we venture into the dark cave of materiality, the easier it will be to make our way to the opening that leads to the light of the One. Mental and physical forms thus are akin to a doorframe that draws our attention to an otherwise poorly-marked exit. Though spiritual liberation entails moving beyond forms, forms are able to guide us to the gateway of formlessness.

Huston Smith says, “Forms are to be transcended by fathoming their depths and discerning their universal content, not by circumventing them. One might regard them as doorways to be entered, or rather as windows, for the esoteric doesn’t leave them behind, but continues to look through them toward the Absolute. But because the symbolism of the spirit always requires that, in the end, space (distance) be transcended, even this will not do.”
⁵

This will not do because forms, whether mental or material, eventually cannot help but come between the seeker of God and the divinity with which he or she seeks to unite. The One, teaches Plotinus, is formless. So even though holy books, holy people, holy thoughts, and holy actions can aid in removing the grime from the naked purity of the soul, the cleansing power of what the
Enneads
term civic virtues is insufficient. If our
psyche
is to become truly luminous and bright, the purificatory virtues must be practiced.

These virtues, as we have learned, are a matter of stillness rather than movement; of silence rather than speech; of being rather than becoming; of inner essence rather than outer substance. Hence, Paul Henry says that, for Plotinus:

Finally, salvation is not to be achieved. It is achieved. For its realization it is enough that the individual should become conscious of what he is already in his inmost nature…. Man for him is not the center of the universe; it is rather the universe, including the transcendent One, which is the center of man.

He accepts salvation by philosophy, but has no use for a Savior who ‘comes
down
to liberate man, or even for a Supreme Being which would in any way concern itself with man or with the world except by remaining apart as the ultimate goal of man’s or the world’s desire.
⁶

Obviously, then, there are significant differences between Plotinus’s mystic philosophy and Christianity. These differences are offshoots of the more fundamental distinction between esoteric and exoteric spirituality.

If religious pursuit is viewed as akin to a trek up a mountain with God at the apex, then the various religions may be conceived as paths that attempt the ascent up different vertical divisions of the mountain.
⁷
In other words, each religion keeps to its own path of upward ascent and the spiritual climbers of different faiths do not meet each other, for they are on separate courses. This is the exoteric divide that separates religion from religion.

But there also is a horizontal division between the esoteric and exoteric side of spirituality that cuts across all faiths, just as some climbers reach a high elevation, and others do not, regardless of their paths of ascent. This is the esoteric divide that separates those who have attained an elevated state of spiritual consciousness, from those who have not.

Because the exoteric divide is founded on outward differences and the esoteric divide is founded on inward differences, every religion or spiritual philosophy has both an inner and an outer aspect, one that can be conveyed in a mental or material form and one that cannot.

Since there are degrees of esoterism, just as there are degrees of immaterial reality between this physical world and the One, the esoteric convergence toward ultimate truth usually is not complete. Mystics of different faiths do not completely agree with each other. However, they are much more in agreement than the theologians, whose province is the more widely-separated lower realm of the exoteric.

Exoteric religion promises salvation to individual souls because it assumes that souls are individual, separate and distinct from the divinity that saves. Exoteric religions ask us to love God, or an incarnation of God, because it assumes that union with God is an impossibility: the best that can be done is to love as two, not merge as one.

Exoteric religion thus distrusts, and often even actively tries to suppress, those who aspire to know God directly and completely through a knowledge in which there is little or no difference between the knower and the known, the individual soul and the universal spirit.

Meister Eckhart and Mansur al-Hallâj may be offered as two examples, among many, of the antipathy exoteric religion often bears to the mystic vision. Pope John XXII condemned as heresy various articles from the teachings of Eckhart, a thirteenth century Dominican theologian. This was one of the supposedly heretical statements:

We are fully transformed and converted into God; in the same way as in the sacrament the bread is converted into the body of Christ, so I am converted into Him, so that He converts me into His being as one, not as
like.
By the living God it is true that there is no difference.
⁸