So, you might ask, what has Mr. Eternal Student been studying and learning about lately? (You probably wouldn’t ask, but there’s a slight chance that you would.) Well, I’ve been studying and learning about Plotinus and Neoplatonism lately. No, I’m not reading the Enneads book by book or plowing my way through some huge tome on the philosophers of Roman antiquity. I simply dug out a CD with a 30 minute lecture about Plotinus on it that came with the Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition course from The Teaching Company, which I went through last year. Plotinus, who lived in the Roman Empire during the Third Century, basically took Plato’s thoughts and mixed in some Aristotle, Pythagorous, Stoicism, and other Greek stuff to cook up a coherent spiritual \/ metaphysical system, a religion of sorts. It never really evolved into a religion, with ceremonies and songs and church buildings and strict moral codes. You would search in vain for a Neoplatonic Temple, at least here in the modern world. But it did have, at its very center, an appealing idea for all eternal students: the idea that thinking is a sacred experience, the best way to “the eternal mind” which is God. <\/p>\n
Actually, the true spirituality revolves not around thinking but understanding; that heady feeling when you say “I get it!”, when all the mental cogitation falls away because your mind is now at one with some great concept. That, according to Plotinus, is a taste of heaven (a temporary re-unification with Plato’s “forms”). All the other wonderful experiences in this world, like the beauty of nature (mountains, rivers, stars, trees, etc.), or fine wine, or good food, or sex, are OK with Plotinus; but they depend upon the body and the senses, which weaken with age and eventually die completely. They are tied-in with matter, which slowly but relentlessly decays. But according to Plotinus, the great experience of learning and comprehension belongs to the soul, which is eternal. Yes, we are talking here about the classic mind-body dualism, shamelessly. In modern times, dualism has gotten a bad rap (although it may be making a comeback in the field of consciousness research, given that neuroscientists and experimental psychologists don’t seem to be making much headway in devising a satisfying reductionist explanation of the phenomenon of human consciousness). <\/p>\n
I rather wish that there was a church of Neoplatonism (don’t tell me about the Unitarians; they make a spirituality of not believing in anything. Ditto for the Ethical Culture crowd, but minus the spirituality). Most mainstream religions give the act of thinking and intelligence short shrift. “Don’t think too much”, they tell you; we know what the thoughts of God are and you don’t, so don’t go wandering off on some crazy intellectual path. The Bible warns you about this early on; the world is a mess today because the first humans wanted to know and understand (i.e., Adam and Eve and the apple and the snake). If people would just shut their minds down and accept what’s been “revealed” to them without any follow-up questions, everything would be Paradise. Stupidity is bliss.<\/p>\n
But what about ethics, you might ask. Does Neoplatonism have a version of the Golden Rule or the Ten Commandments? Negatory on that, good buddy. Plotnius does talk about virtue in the Enneads, as any good citizen of the Roman Empire would. At one point he says that if a person learns the “eternal virtue” through contemplative experience of “The One” (God), he or she will by default also learn the day-to-day virtues of civic life. So, he doesn’t say much about how to live a virtuous life. And if his idea of virtue was the same as the Roman Empire’s idea of virtue, then it leaves a lot to be desired (given that the Romans were a nasty, aggressive, imperialistic band of people, even after they became Christians). Plotinus and his teachings ultimately imply a mystical withdrawal from the world. In a way, he was very Buddhist (although ironically, the Buddhists don’t have much regard for intelligence as a pathway to the sacred). But even the Buddhists have the concept of the “bodhisattva”, the soul who achieves perfection as a Buddha and is entirely ready to attain nirvana-bliss, but chooses to stay in the earthly realm of corruption so as to help those imperfect beings who suffer there. <\/p>\n
In a way, George Bernard Shaw anticipated a “best of both worlds” mix of Neoplatonic intellectual\/spiritual enlightenment and bodhisattva-like service to the world in his “Don Juan In Hell” play-within-a-play. Shaw’s “Hell” turns out to be a lovely place, where all of the good things of the earth are enjoyed and none of the bad things exist. There is music, art, fine wine, and every woman is young and beautiful again. Sounds like Don Juan’s kind of place, where he could spend an eternity just fine. But no — the Don still has a mind of his own, and after a few eons he starts to see that there’s something better after all. He becomes enlightened and walks away from it all, as to find a place where eternal contemplation and oneness with “The Good” is combined with service to “the life force” as it struggles in the imperfect places (like our own universe). In other words, Don Juan becomes kind of a guardian angel, working secretly to alleviate suffering and promote enlightenment in a world of pain. <\/p>\n
I can imagine that when Plotinus died, good Roman citizen that he was, he went to the place of eternal banquets and orgies like Don Juan did. Plato and Aristotle probably also did their time there too, perverted ancient Greeks that they probably were (inviting all the little boys to join their academy). But I have to believe that they all eventually had the great insight, the big “AH-HAH!” moment, that led them to a bland but infinitely meaningful life in Heaven (with on-going work assignments here in the world of decay).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So, you might ask, what has Mr. Eternal Student been studying and learning about lately? (You probably wouldn’t ask, but there’s a slight chance that you would.) Well, I’ve been studying and learning about Plotinus and Neoplatonism lately. No, I’m not reading the Enneads book by book or plowing my way through some huge tome […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=503"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5319,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503\/revisions\/5319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}