Return to the One (9 page)

Love Is Limitless

P
EOPLE OFTEN SAY
“God is love.” Plotinus agrees so long as we understand that God is not only love. To ascribe any sort of quality to the One implies a limit. If it is this, then it cannot be that. So whatever words we use in our feeble attempts to describe the indescribable are reflections of our everyday human experiences. Since we are bounded, we put bounds on God. How is it possible to conceive of a love that eternally encompasses all of existence?

For love is not limited here
[with the One]
, because neither is the beloved, but the love of this would be unbounded.
[VI-7-32]

Normally, love is considered to involve some sort of relationship. A relationship by definition consists of a connection that includes some and excludes others. If I am related to members of my family it means that there are many other people in the world with whom I am not related. Having an intimate relationship with one person implies less than intimate relationships with others. There are shallow acquaintances and deep soul-mates.

It is easy then to project this sort of love onto the One. Some people believe that they have a personal relationship with God. Thinking like Plotinus, we might ask them: “Does this mean that God is a person? Or does it mean that you are a person?” Perhaps it is possible for my relationship with the One to be markedly different from the One’s relationship with me, because I am a minute part of creation and the One is the whole of creation.

There is no mention in the
Enneads
of a divine love that waxes and wanes or falls more upon some than others. It is our love that has these changeable and arbitrary qualities, not the One’s love. For universal love is founded in absolute unity. When love, the lover, and the beloved are all the same entity, where is there room for any limit or duration?

It is, at the same time, the beloved, love, and love of itself, for it is beautiful only in and for itself…. In it, being and its desire for itself are one…. It is itself that which it loves; which is to say, it brings itself into existence.
[VI-8-15]
¹

We would not be wrong to call such all-pervading and never-ending love grace. Yet this is a grace inseparable from existence and thus is present to all living and non-living beings in equal measure. Parts of creation differ only in the extent to which they are capable of discerning and making use of this grace: humans, fully; animals, partly; plants, barely; inanimate objects, not at all.

Only a soul capable of discriminating between the radiance that illuminates materiality and the source of that light is able to return to the One. It is all too easy to be enthralled by lesser and limited material delights and forget that, if the creation is lovely, the creator must be lovelier. And what lies beyond both, the creation and its creator, can only be love beyond love. The wise soul is not content with shadows; only the sun of reality will satisfy her.

Since she wants to rise up to the Good, the soul disdains the beauties of this world. When she sees the beautiful things in this universe, she mistrusts them, for she sees that they are in flesh and in bodies, and that they are polluted by their present dwelling place.

…
When the soul further sees that the beauties of this world flow away, she knows full well that the light which was shimmering upon them comes from elsewhere. Then the soul rises up to the other world, for she is clever at finding what she loves, and she does not give up before she has seized it, unless her love were somehow torn away from her.
[VI-7-31]
²

Whomever or whatever we may love in this world will die or disappear one day. And this naturally includes ourselves. Species become extinct. Pyramids turn to dust. Stars go black. Where do the life and energy that hold these things together come from? And where do that life and energy go when they are held together no more? Wherever that place is, there is the wellspring of love.

I remember sitting by my mother’s side and holding her hand as she died in a hospital bed, eyes closed, unconscious from the stroke she had suffered. As her breathing slowed and stopped it seemed that one moment she was there and the next moment she wasn’t. My love for her did not change in the instant of her passing but I no longer felt the connection of love to anything in her body. What she truly was, her soul, was gone from it. Our love now was shared on some other plane, not physically.

Some might call it strange that I felt no sadness when my mother died, just relief that she was released from the confines of her worn-out body. I shed no tears; I might have smiled if another person had not been in the room. My reaction was, I’m quite sure, in tune with Plotinus’s teachings. Grief is for what passes away. Soul never dies nor does the soul’s love. So where is there cause for lamenting the loss of the shell of love, a body, a physical form, when the kernel remains intact? Love grows stronger with no coverings.

To those familiar with only the love of body and body, form and form, the Plotinian love of invisible things may seem like madness. Plautus, a Roman dramatist, succinctly said “Lover, lunatic”
(Amans, amens).
³
Intense love is always more than a little crazy. Reason bids us to go slow, consider pros and cons, evaluate alternatives, always leave an escape route. Love says, “jump first, think later.” It casts us headfirst into a bottomless ocean, where we are only too happy to drown in the embrace of our beloved.

Is it insane to give up all that you have for a chance to have the All? Each person must answer this question for him- or herself. But Plotinus advises that this is the most sensible thing to do.

Once the soul receives an “outflow” coming to her from the Good, she is excited and seized with Bacchic madness, and filled with stinging desires: thus love is born.
[VI-7-22]
⁴

Plenitude Is Power

I
T SEEMS DIFFICULT
to disagree with the popular adage, “use it or lose it.” On the face of it this principle appears universally applicable. Won’t intelligence decline when thinking stops? Isn’t morality strengthened by doing virtuous deeds? Can one remain artistic without ever creating works of art? Don’t we need to exercise our bodies to stay physically fit?

We also tend to believe that more is better. Not just in the sense of quantity, we’d prefer a million dollars to a thousand, but also in the sense of differentiation. Few of us would be content to simply gaze fondly at a bankbook balance that reads “$1,000,000.” We’d want to convert that single accounting entry into much other stuff: TVs, clothes, books, donations, however we felt the money could be best put to use.

Similarly, if a skilled carpenter is left alone with a stack of lumber and a set of woodworking tools, he or she would find it difficult not to build something. Or many things. One artist produces many paintings. One farmer grows many crops. One shopkeeper sells many items. It seems natural to make more out of less, complexity out of simplicity, plurality out of unity.

Talented people who remain quiescent often are told: “You aren’t living up to your potential.” To be fully alive, we assume, is to be lively. Yet Plotinus poses, and answers, this question:

And are we evil when we are multiplicity? For a thing is multiple when, unable to tend to itself, it pours out and is extended in scattering…. For everything seeks not another, but itself, and the journey to the exterior is foolish or compulsory.
[VI-6-1]

There are two grand flows in creation, teaches Plotinus. From the One proceeds a stream of ever-increasing multiplicity as unity becomes the many. This is the downward flow of emanation: expansive, outward, centrifugal. There also is a current that leads back to the One, in the course of which parts become wholes. This is the upward flow of return: concentrated, inward, centripetal.

Both flows are entirely necessary and natural, so when Plotinus calls manyness evil he doesn’t mean that it is ungodly. After all, there is nothing apart from the One, or God. But whatever leads farther away from the Good is, obviously, not desirable.

And this is why Plotinus warns of the peril of “pouring out.” It’s not so much a moral evil as a navigational evil. Whatever takes us off-course on our return to the One is a senseless distraction. This includes being excessively preoccupied with external, rather than internal, activities and knowledge.

The One is all-powerful precisely because it is perfect unity. A self-contained plenitude of power, the One expends no energy outside of itself. How could it? It is the All, beyond which is no other. Everything that comes after the One, however, is fragmented to some degree and so possesses a lesser productive capacity.

But that true All is blessed in such a way that in not making it accomplishes great works and in remaining in itself makes no small things.
[III-2-1]

If our goal is to return to the One, we must become like the One. So whenever Plotinus describes some characteristic of the highest Good, it is intended as a guide to the spiritual seeker: what the One is, we should strive to be.

Thus the One serves as the exemplar of what it means to be a true human being. Just as a person’s consciousness should become as universal and formless as possible, filled with unlimited love, so should he strive to preserve his spiritual energy within and not allow it to be drained away through excessive attention to worldly pursuits. The One creates without being affected or lessened by what it has created. So does spirit, or intellect, the initial emanation from the One.

It has been said elsewhere that there must be something
[spirit]
after the first
[the One]
, and in a general way that it is power, and overwhelming power.
[V-3-16]

Even so, Plotinus goes so far as to say that it would have been better if spirit had never become differentiated from the One. We might think to ourselves, “How is it possible to second-guess the workings of God?” I believe, though, that the message Plotinus wants us to hear is that if it was unfortunate that the absolute unity of the first became the near-unity of the second, spirit, how vastly more unfortunate is it that we fragmented souls have entered into the multiplicity of the last and lowest: physical existence.

But beginning as one it
[spirit]
did not stay as it began, but, without noticing it, became many, as if heavy [with drunken sleep], and unrolled itself because it wanted to possess everything—how much better it would have been for it not to want this, for it became the second! … The better is the “whence,” the worse the “whither.”
[III-8-8]

I’m reminded of an adage: more possessions, more possessed; less possessions, less possessed. This world of “whither” in which we live is filled with so many options. Hundreds of channels to watch on cable television. Thousands of movies to rent at the video store. Millions of books to order over the Internet. Almost whatever we want can be delivered to our doors next day by an express service. Except, it seems, what we really want: simple truth and lasting happiness. For that, we must return to the One, “whence.”

For Plotinus, then, it isn’t what we do that is most important but who we are. There is no harm in doing so long as all our activity doesn’t diffuse our spiritual energy and leave us with less being. What comes before is always a higher good than what comes after. The creator is never less than what is created. Thus our attention should be directed toward the source, not its products.

This holds for ourselves, since the creative power of our souls is the source of many things: ideas, technology, children, art, knowledge, emotions, to name but a few. If we are masters of what we create there is no problem. But all too often these creations usurp our control and come to dominate our energy and attention. The master is enslaved by the servant.

Creation when viewed from above is contemplation. This is Plotinus’s vision of the natural order. Whatever is higher contemplates and brings what is lower into being. At this moment my attention is contemplating my train of thoughts, picking and choosing which should be brought to the forefront of consciousness and which should be consigned to the dustbin of useless ideas. When a thought appears promising my attention shifts to typing out the letters that represent the concept and watching them appear on a computer screen.

In an ideal situation, I should be able to toss away the words I write as easily as I create them. But every writer knows how difficult it is to highlight a lengthy passage and hit the “delete” key. Why? Because we are captured by our creations.

I come to think that part of me is in those words and that I somehow will be diminished if they are sent into electronic oblivion. Actually, says Plotinus, this cannot happen, since my true self is soul, eternal and unchangeable. However, we fail to see this and over-identify with what we do or create. And what we make, including what we make of ourselves in life, is beset by limitation. This is why the universal soul, also called the Soul of the All, has the power to create entire universes; in contrast, our individual souls sometimes can barely get our bodies out of bed in the morning.

The Soul of the All, then, abiding in itself makes, and the things which it makes come to it, but the particular souls themselves go to the things.
[IV-3-6]

The Soul of the All effortlessly manages the affairs of its “body,” the physical universe. Nature always is natural. Everywhere the laws of nature operate seamlessly, flawlessly, incessantly. Never is there any sort of hitch, glitch, fatal error, or breakdown. We don’t find nature posting a “Sorry, gravity temporarily unavailable” sign.

The Soul of the All, whose lower contemplation manifests as nature, never becomes confused, depressed, listless, or out-of-sorts. But we, to the extent that we leave our center, lose sight of the perfect harmony of the cosmos. We become deluded by the diversity that surrounds us and seemingly is us. We forget that conflict and contention are products of a limited vision, not the way things really are.

There is a great lesson here for us: look toward what is higher, not lower. Create, but do not lose yourself in what you fashion. Always remain in close communion with what lies above, and inspires, your present state of consciousness. For spirit, this is the One. For the universal soul and particular souls, this is spirit. For nature, this is the universal soul, the Soul of the All. Wisdom and power belong to those who draw their intelligence and energy from a higher source. Their contemplation is of what is greater than themselves, not lesser.

We shouldn’t think that if we learn how to abide in ourselves we will attain world-creating powers. For one thing, who really would want such a responsibility? For another, there is scant evidence that humans have ever demonstrated such power regardless of their spiritual attainment. Rare purported miracles, it must be admitted, always are picayune in comparison to what nature produces all the time. No saint or prophet ever has placed a star in the sky or established a new law of physics.

It is much more important to attain inward freedom and wisdom than outward power and knowledge. There is a rhyme and reason to creation and our role as individual souls isn’t to play Master of the Universe. That function is being carried out by another.

Who, then, could capture its
[the One’s]
power all together as a whole? For if one did capture it all together as a whole, why would one be different from it?
[V-5-10]

Our goal, says Plotinus, should not merely be to remain as limited human beings with slightly increased capabilities. No, it is to return to the One and enjoy a form of consciousness that is vastly different from what we experience now. But because we are always busy with the world, we never make this grand spiritual journey, a mystical voyage like Ulysses’. We are attached to materiality. We are mesmerized by matter.

For everything which is directed to something else is enchanted by something else…. For this reason all practical action is under enchantment, and the whole life of the practical man: for he is moved to that which charms him.
[IV-4-43]

When we are motivated by anything outside ourselves, we are reacting to that thing. It is in control of us. Neither a man lusting after a fast car nor a woman pining for a pretty dress is in control of his or her desire. The car and the dress are fully in command of the situation, lifeless objects dominating conscious beings. What a strange state of affairs. On the other hand, when action truly comes from within ourselves there is no question of it being a reaction. This is genuine contemplation, making real, or realizing, that which is within us.

Contemplation alone remains incapable of enchantment because no one who is self-directed is subject to enchantment.
[IV-4-44]

So the mystic philosopher is self-contained. He or she realizes that the One is overall and thus is at the core of every atom of creation, including the consciousness of every soul. It is senseless to look for treasure outside a dwelling when it is known to lie within. The energy wasted in digging for happiness out in the world would be put to much better use by exploring the mine of well-being that is inside us.

The great Plotinian message is exceedingly simple: contemplate and become what truly is—genuine being, not shadows and reflections. Look within yourself and turn to a new way of knowing. Learn to be what you truly are.