On Distinctions of Form

[sdi]

I continue to make slow progress through Plotinus, but this morning I read an interesting paragraph indeed:

In the Supreme there is Reality because all things are one; ours is the sphere of images whose separation produces grades of difference. Thus in the spermatic unity all the human members are present undistinguishably; there is no separation of head and hand: their distinct existence begins in the life here, whose content is image, not Authentic Existence.

That is to say, here in the misty world of images, our various parts and capacities are seen distinctly, but in the higher realm, they blend together into a union.

I am reminded of two things.

First, it is commonly reported among those who experience Near-Death Experiences a lack of distinction of parts—they can see and touch and so on, but they don't experience having eyes or hands. To quote Raymond Moody's Life After Life: Despite it's lack of perceptibility to people in physical bodies, all who have experienced it are in agreement that the spiritual body is nonetheless something, impossible to describe though it may be. [...] Words and phrases which have been used by various subjects include a mist, a cloud, smoke-like, vapor, transparent, a cloud of colors, wispy, an energy pattern, and others which express similar meanings. He quotes several people describing their experiences: My being had no physical characteristics, but I have to describe it with physical terms. I could describe it in so many ways, in so many words, but none of them would be exactly right. It's so hard to describe. or [When I came out of the physical body] it was like I did come out of my body and go into something else. I didn't think I was just nothing. It was another body... but not another regular human body. Its a little bit different. It was not exactly like a human body, but it wasn't any big glob of matter, either. It had form to it, but no colors. And I know I still had something you could call hands. I can't describe it. or It was like I was just there—an energy, maybe, sort of like just a little ball of energy.

Secondly, years ago, I asked my deity about whether I should consider Them a god or goddess, and They said to me, "It's complicated: it is more like both, though not like the kind of 'both' in your world [e.g. hermaphroditism]." Plotinus here is hinting at why: the very distinction of male and female fades, and you are left instead with unified capacity.

Comments

[boccaderlupo]

Interesting piece, and that description from Moody sounds a bit like what some transcendental states in other traditions describe. I would add that certain passages during theurgic operations result in a state that is very much like that described (I use "passages" as there is a degree of time loss incurred).

To dial back to Alan Watts, the Plotinus quote sounds a bit like where he goes with his "Supreme Identity" stuff (no surprise, as Watts was playing around early with Neoplatonism and I suspect that informed his version of Vedanta), but I would have to go back and read that stuff to be sure.

[sdi]

Watts was also very taken with Zen, in which there is the famous koan (perhaps the most famous of all) from The Gateless Gate: "What was your face before your parents were born?" I suppose speaking of the form of the spiritual body is a rather literal take on an open question, but...