Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 3: In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four PeriodsPlotinus
Philosophy
Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 3: In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four Periods
Plotinus
Plotinus
Intelligence has two powers: by the first, which is her own power of
thinking, she sees what is within her. By the other she perceives
what is above her by the aid of a kind of vision and perception;
by the vision, she first saw simply; then, by (perceptive) seeing,
she received intellection and fused with the One. The first kind of
contemplation is suitable to the intelligence which still possesses
reason; the second is intelligence transported by love. Now, it is
when the nectar intoxicates her,[141] and deprives her of reason,
that the soul is transported with love, and that she blossoms into a
felicity that fulfils all her desires. It is better for her to abandon
herself to this intoxication than to remain wise. In this state
does intelligence successively see one thing, and then another? No:
methods of instruction (or, constructive speech) give out everything
successively; but it is eternally that intelligence possesses the
power of thought, as well as the power not to think; that is, to see
the divinity otherwise than by thought. Indeed, while contemplating
Him, she received within herself germs, she felt them when they were
produced and deposited within her breast; when she sees them, she is
said to think; but when she sees the divinity, it is by that superior
power by virtue of which she was to think later.
THE SOUL DOES NOT THINK GOD, FOR IN THAT CONDITION SHE DOES NOT THINK.
As to the soul, she sees the divinity only by growing confused, as it
were by exhausting the intelligence which resides in her; or rather,
it is her first intelligence that sees; but the vision the latter
has of the divinity reaches down to the soul, which then fuses with
intelligence. It is the Good, extending over intelligence and the soul,
and condescending to their level, which spreads over them, and fuses
them; hovering above them, it bestows on them the happy vision, and the
ineffable feeling of itself. It raises them so high that they are no
more in any place, nor within anything whatever, in any of the senses
in which one thing is said to be within another. For the Good is not
within anything; the intelligible location is within it, but it is not
in anything else. Then the soul moves no more, because the divinity is
not in motion. To speak accurately, she is no longer soul, because the
divinity does not live, but is above life; neither is she intelligence,
because the divinity is above intelligence; because there must be
complete assimilation (between the soul and the divinity). Finally, the
soul does not think even the divinity, because in this condition she
does not think at all.
THE TOUCH WITH THE GOOD IS THE GREATEST OF SCIENCES.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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