Enneads VI 5: On the Integral Omnipresence of the Authentic-Existent (2)

Plotinus struggles in this chapter, his analogies are difficult to follow. Alas, the curse of a mystic: when one beholds the world where all is one, how is one to communicate it here, where everything is separate? Examples do no good unless you have experienced it yourself; but if you have experienced it yourself, the example is useless.

VI 5: On the Integral Omnipresence of the Authentic-Existent (2)

Because the intellectual world is omnipresent, It is not illuminating the sensible world from somewhere off above, but imminent and supporting it everywhere all at once. Material things always "touch" their Ideas, not by physical contact (for Ideas are not spatial), but by relation to Them. The Idea (again, having no extent) doesn't "give" anything of Itself to Matter, but rather Matter is allowed to participate in the Idea, live the Idea, and thus become a temporary image of It in such ways it can.

When we say "live the Idea", that's not mere rhetoric—participation in the intellectual realm is mediated through Soul, that One Life in which we all share. But Life isn't limited, available in this place but not that one—no, It too is infinite by Its participation in the intellectual world, you possess It within you, and It is there with you everywhere you go. You don't return to the intellectual world by leaving here and going off somewhere else: you are already within It by virtue of being alive, upheld by It at every moment.

Nay, more—you are It! You have merely turned away from Yourself! Turn around, look inward again, and there You are—back Home.

I have been thinking to myself for a while that to Plotinus, Love and Truth seem to be one and the same thing—pursued as one, in tandem. I notice this in Porphyry, too; in his youth, Porphyry seemed to be motivated by Truth alone, but as he grew in Wisdom he grew in Love in equal measure. Plotinus all but makes this association explicit himself in §10.

Lest you think I am doing an injustice to Plotinus by straying into a giddy ALL ONE tirade, I refer you to §12 where he does as much himself.

HEN TO PAN 🐍