Plotinus
Maxims of Pagan Wisdom
It is for the gods to come to me: not for me to go to them.
1
his reply, given by Plotinus to Amelius, who invited him to approach the
gods with the prescribed rituals, reflects the spirit of the “solar” path. The
surpassing of the religious attitude; the transcendent dignity of the man in
possession of Wisdom, whom Plotinus terms the σπουδαῖος; his superiority not
only to the natural world, but also to the divine world: all these are affirmed
here.
It is a matter of an inner attitude that is fundamental for practice.
One must create a quality in oneself by which the suprasensible powers (the
gods) are constrained to come, like females attracted by the male. This quality is
summarized in one verb, which means nothing and yet means everything:
TO BE -BE, CONSIST, make yourself a center. Through “ascesis,” through “purification,”
through what Plotinus himself will explain. You have heard tell of the “dry
way.” This is an aspect of it. Separate yourself from those who are attracted to
the invisible worlds through vague neediness, soulful yearning, and confused
vision—more “nonbeings” than “beings.”
You must make yourselves like the gods; not like good men. The end is
not to be sinless, but to be a god.
2
These maxims cleanly separate the initiate’s path from the path of men. The
“virtue” of men, in the final analysis, is a matter of indifference: the image of an
image, as Plotinus says. “Morality” has nothing to do with initiation. Initiation is
a radical transformation from one state of existence into another state of
existence. A “god” is not a “moral example”: it is an other being. The good man
does not cease to be “man” through being “good.” In every time and place that
understands what “initiation” means, the idea has always been the same. Thus, in
Hermetism: “Our work is the conversion and the changing of one being into
another being, of one thing into another thing, of weakness into strength . . . of
corporeity into spirituality.”
3
Sinners can also draw water from the rivers. The giver does not know
what he is giving but simply gives.
4
How does man stand with respect to the all? As a part? No. As a whole
that belongs to itself.
Lacking unity, things are deprived of “ being.” The more unity, the more
being they possess.
Every being is itself by belonging to itself; and belonging to itself, it
concentrates itself. As Unity, it possesses itself, and has all the grandeur,
all the beauty. Therefore do not run and flee from yourself indefinitely.
Everything within is now gathered into its unity.
5
The essential element for the condition of “being” is unity.
UNIFY YOURSELF—BE ONE
This bundle of energes, this horde of beings, sensations, and tendencies that
make up you: bend them beneath a single law, a single will, a single thought.
ORGANIZE YOURSELF
Bend your “soul,” use it in every way, take it to every crossroads until it is inert,
incapable of its own movement, dead to every instinctive irrationality. Just as a
perfectly trained horse, when ordered, goes to right or left, stops, or leaps ahead,
so your soul must be to you: a thing that you hold in your fist. Unchained, you
will be one: being one, you are—and it belongs to you. Belonging to you, you
will possess grandeur.
Ancient classical wisdom distinguishes two symbolic regions: the lower, of
things that “flee”; the upper, of “things that are.” What flow or “flee” are the
things that cannot attain the realization and perfect possession of their own
nature. The other things, are: they have transcended this life, which is mixed
with death and is a ceaseless running and aiming. Their “immobility” and even
the ancient astronomical designation of their “place” are symbols, denoting a
spiritual state. To be one, no longer dispersed, follows.
What is the Good for such a man [for the σπουδαῖος]?
He is himself his own good. The life that he possesses is perfect. He
possesses the good in that he seeks nothing else.
To take away what is other with respect to your own being is to
purify yourself.
In simple rapport with yourself; without obstacle to your pure unity;
without anything mingled within this purity, being solely yourself in pure
light . . . you have become a vision.
Though being here, you have ascended.
You have no more need for a guide.
Fix your glance. You will see.
6
With marvelous conciseness, this expresses what is to be called “good” in the
transcendent sense: the absence of anything that can penetrate you and draw you
out of yourself by a desire or impulse. Plotinus takes care to define the spiritual
significance of such a concept, saying that the superior man can still “seek other
things, inasmuch as they are indispensable not to him, but to his neighbor: to the
body that is joined to him, to the life of the body that is not his life. Knowing
what the body needs, he gives it: but these things in no way intrude upon his
life.”
7
“Evil” is the sense of need in the spirit: that of every life incapable of
governing itself, that stumbles around, desiring, striving to complete itself by
obtaining something or other. As long as this “need” exists, as long as there is
this inner and radical insufficiency, the Good is not there. It is nothing that can
be named: it is an experience that only an act of the spirit on the spirit can
determine: separating itself from the idea of any “other,” reuniting with itself
alone. Then there arises a state of certainty and plenitude in which, once given,
one asks for no more, finding all speech, all speculation, all agitation useless,
while one knows of nothing more that could cause a change in one’s inmost
soul. Plotinus rightly says that this being which totally possesses its own life
possesses perpetuity: being solely “I,” nothing could be added to it either in the
past or the future.
The state of being is in the present being.
Every being is in act, and is act.
Pleasure is the act of life (ἡ ἐνέργεια τῆς ζωῆς).
Souls can be happy even in this universe. If they are not, then blame
them, not the universe. They have surrendered in this battle, where the
reward crowns virtue.
8
Plotinus again specifies the meaning of “being”: it is to be present, to be in
action. He speaks of “that sleepless intellectual nature” (ἡ φύσις ἄγρυπνας), a
strictly traditional expression. We know of the terms “the Awakened,” the “Ever
Wakeful,” and the symbolism of “sleep,” which besides may be more than
symbolism, referring to the continuity of a “present being” that undergoes no
alteration even in that change of state which habitually corresponds to sleep.
Being, then, is being awake. The experience of the whole being gathered in
an intellectual clarity, in the simplicity of an act: that is the experience of
“being.” To abandon oneself, to fail—that is the secret of nonbeing. Fatigue in
the inner unity, which slows and disperses, the inner energy that ceases to
dominate every part, so that as it crumbles a mass of tendencies, instincts, and
irrational sensations arise: this is the degradation of the spirit manifesting in ever
more deviant and senseless natures, to the limiting point of dissolution that is
expressed in matter. Plotinus asserts that it is incorrect to say that matter “is”:
the being of matter is a nonbeing. Its indefinite divisibility indicates the “fall”
from unity that it represents; its inertia, being heavy, resistant, and blunt, is the
same as applies to a person who is fainting, cannot hold himself upright, and
collapses. It is of no importance that physical knowledge has its own and
different “truth.” Corporeal being is the nonbeing of the spiritual.
As the present state of culmination, “being” is identical with “good.” Thus
“matter” and “evil” are identical in their turn, and there is no other “evil” beside
matter. Here we must abandon current opinions. The “evil” of men has no place
in reality, hence none in a metaphysical vision, which is always a vision
according to reality. Metaphysically, the “good” and “bad” do not exist, but
rather that which is real and that which is not—and the degree of “reality”
(understood in the spiritual sense already explained as “being”) measures the
degree of “virtue.” In the view of ancient classical man, only the state of
“privation of being” was “evil”: fatigue, abandonment, the sleep of the inner
strength, which at its limit, as we have said, determines “matter.” Therefore
neither “evil” nor “matter” are principles in themselves: they are derivative states
due to “degradation” and “dissolution.” Plotinus expresses himself exactly in
these terms: “It is by failure of the Good that the darkness is seen and that one
lives in darkness. And evil, for the soul, is this failure that generates darkness.
Such is the first evil. The darkness is something that proceeds from it. And the
principle of evil does not reside in matter, but before matter [in the cessation of
action, which gave matter its origin].”
9
Plotinus adds: pleasure is the act of life. It is the view already affirmed by
another great mind of the ancient world—by Aristotle, who had taught that every
activity is happy inasmuch as it is perfect. Such are happiness and pleasure in the
form of purity and liberty: those things that spring from the act that is perfected,
and which thereby realizes the one, “being,” the Good—not those passive things,
seized by means of the turbid satisfaction of desires, needs, instincts. Once again
we are led to the nonhuman point of view of “reality.” Even in the case of
happiness, the degree of “being” is the secret and the measure.
Consequently, Plotinus affirms that souls can be happy even in this universe,
thereby bringing to light an important aspect of the pagan concept of existence.
If “virtue” as dominating spiritual actuality implies power, one may understand
how the “good” is no more to be separated from “happiness” than glory from
victory. Whoever is defeated by an external or internal bond is not “good”: and it
would be unjust for such a being to be happy. But it is only the being that passes
judgment on itself, not the world.
Obviously, things are different for those who reduce “virtue” to a simple
moral disposition.
It is all very well to say “my kingdom is not of this world” and wait for a
god to give happiness in the beyond as a reward to the “just” who, lacking
power, have suffered injustice in this life and borne it with humility and
resignation. The truth of the warrior and hero of the ancient classical world was
otherwise. If “evil” and all its materialization in onslaughts and limitations by
lower forces and bodily things has its root in a state of degradation of the good—
it is inconceivable, and logically contradictory that it should persist as the
principle of unhappiness and bondage in regard to him who has destroyed that
root, having become “good.” If the “good” exists, then “evil”—suffering,
passion, servitude—cannot exist. Rather they mean that “virtue” is still
imperfect; “being” still incomplete; “purity” and unity still “tainted.’”
Some lack arms. But he who has arms should fight—no god is going to
fight for the unarmed. The law decrees that victory in war goes to the
brave, not to those who pray.
That cowards should be ruled by the wicked—that is just.
10
Here is a fresh affirmation of the virile spirit of the pagan tradition, a new
contrast with the mystico-religious attitude, and a disdain for those who
deprecate the “injustice” of earthly things and, instead of blaming their own
cowardice or accepting their impotence, blame the All or hope that a
“Providence” will take care of them.
“No god is going to fight for the unarmed.” This is the anti- Christian
cornerstone of every warrior morality;
11 and it relates to the concepts explained
above, concerning the identity (from the metaphysical point of view) of
“reality,” “spirituality,” and “virtue.” The coward cannot be good: “good”
implies a heroic soul. And the perfection of the hero is the triumph. To ask a god
for victory would be like asking him for “virtue”; whereas victory is the body in
which the very perfection of “virtue” is realized.
Fabius’s soldiers, when they set out, did not vow to win or die, but vowed to
fight and to return as victors. And so they did. The spirit of Rome reflects the
same wisdom.
From fear, totally suppressed, [the soul] has nothing to dread.
He who fears anything has not attained the perfection of virtue. He
is a half-thing (ἤμισὺς τις ἔσται).
12
Impressions do not present themselves to the superior man (τῶ
σπουδαῖος) as they do to others. They do not reach the inner being,
whether they are other things, pains and losses, his own or others’. That
would be feebleness of the soul.
If [suffering] is too much—so be it. The light in him remains, like the
lamp of a lighthouse in the turmoil of wind and tempest.
Master of himself even in this state, he will decide what is to be
done.
The σπουδαῖος would not be such if a daimon were acting within
him. In him it is the sovereign mind (νοῦς) that acts.
13
Plotinus admits that the superior man may sometimes have involuntary and
unreflective fears, but more as motions that are not part of him, and in which his
spirit is not present. “Returning to himself, he will expel them. . . . Like a child
who is subdued merely by the power of someone who stares at him.”
14
As for suffering, he can at most cause the separation of a part of himself not
yet exempt from passion: the higher principle is never overwhelmed. “He will
decide what is to be done.” Should the case arise, he can also quit the game. We
should not forget that according to Plotinus the σπουδαῖος is his own “daimon”
and lives somewhat like an actor playing a freely chosen role. Against the
Gnostic Christians, Plotinus retorts drily: “Why find fault with a world you have
chosen and can quit if you dislike it?”
15
Like the νοῦς in man, one can define exactly the principle of “being” made
from pure intellectuality: it is the “Olympian mind,” with respect to which the
“soul” principle (ψυχή) represents something peripheral: mostly it is a depth that
remains hidden and latent. But then it is not the “I” but a “daimon” that acts in
every deed. Plotinus says precisely that all that happens without deliberation
unites a daimon with a god. Now we will see how he describes the opposite
condition.
There the reason for being . . . does not exist as a reason, but as being.
Better said, the two things are one.
Each should be itself.
Our thoughts and actions should be our own. The actions of every
being should belong to it, be they good or bad.
When the soul has pure and impassive reason for its guide, in full
dominion of itself, wherever it wants to direct its energy: then alone the
action can be called ours, not another’s: from within the soul as a
purity, as a pure dominating and sovereign principle . . . not from an
action that is diverted by ignorance and split by desire Then
there would be passion and not action in us.
16
The sensations are the visions of the sleeping soul.
Everything of the soul that is in the body is asleep. The true
awakening is to exit from the body. To exchange existence with another
body is to pass from one sleep to another, from one bed to another.
Truly awakening is to abandon the world of bodies.
17
Since materiality is the state of unconsciousness for the spirit, any reality that
appears through the material senses is a sleeping reality. But we should not
interpret the exit from the body and the abandonment of the world of bodies in a
crude way: it is essentially a matter of an inward change, integrating oneself with
the “sleepless intellectual nature.” And this is the true initiatic and metaphysical
initiation.
Plotinus aptly compares the change of bodies as passing from one bed to
another. Even though it has a consistency, the doctrine of reincarnation could not
be better stigmatized as it is by this pagan initiate. On the “wheel of births” one
form is equivalent to another with respect to the center, which is equally distant
from any point on the circumference. Metaphysical realization is a fracture in
the series of conditioned states: a bursting open to transcendence. One does not
reach it by following the traces of those “fugitive” natures, those who pursue a
goal that they have placed outside themselves: in the world of bodies and
becoming.
All that one sees as a spectacle is still external; one must bring the
vision within; make yourself one with what you have to contemplate;
know that what you have to contemplate is yourself.
And it is you. Like someone possessed by the god Apollo or a Muse,
he would see the divine light blazing within, if only he had the power to
contemplate this divine light in himself.