What is Neoplatonism?

It is often said that all of "Western thought" is simply footnotes to Plato, and this is both, of course, somewhat hyperbolical and, at the same time, can of chew. But the man himself can't, of course, take all the credit, because indeed there have been few schools of thought as influential on our world, on some of the greatest religions and thinkers in history, as the philosophical School of Neoplatonism. Appearing in late antiquity as a continuation of the school of Platonism, Neoplatonism would come to play a decisive role in the philosophy and theology of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and really all of Western thought, as we sometimes call it. Indeed, the category that we often call mysticism is almost entirely based in its language and symbolism on this school called Neoplatonism. It's a topic that has come up a lot in our previous discussions, in previous episodes on this channel, and will continue to do so in the future. So, I think it's high time that we ask oursel the question: what actually is Neoplatonism?

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I'm very happy and honored to say that this episode is part of a large collaborative project with some of my friends and colleagues here on YouTube, some truly amazing people and scholars that are making some incredible content. Uh, this collaboration includes Zevi from Seekers of Unity, who will be covering Neoplatonism and its relationship with Cabala, both the origins of Cabala in terms of how Neoplatonism plays a role there, as well as the periods of medieval times and the Renaissance. Uh, Dr. Justin Sledge from the channel Esoterica will be covering Neoplatonism and its relationship with Gnosticism. Dr. Angela Puca from Angela's Symposium will be covering Plotinus and Iamblichus, two of the most central figures in early Neoplatonism, and their views on magic in particular. We also have Dana Trell, who'll be covering Thomas Taylor's Platonist Creed, an incredibly interesting text. And lastly, we also have John Veri, who will be making an episode covering Neoplatonism and its relationship with cognitive science. So, this is a massive, large collaborative project that all are sort of trying to get at the topic of Neoplatonism from different angles and in relationship with different traditions from around the world. So, be sure to check out the episodes by all these other amazing people, and you will get a wide and comprehensive understanding of Neoplatonism from different perspectives, which I think is really valuable.

Neoplatonism is one of the most influential philosophical movements ever, and the clues to its place in intellectual history are right there in the name: Neoplatonism. It is, in other words, a form of Platonism, the tradition that follows and builds on the teachings of Plato. And this is an important point: Platonism can be a broad category, and we often divided into periods and schools like Middle Platonism and indeed Neoplatonism, or Late Platonism. But we should remember that they are all parts of a single Tradition, at least in a sense. According to these philosophers themselves, they all saw themselves as simply adhering to and clarifying the teachings of their Master, Plato.

The word Neoplatonism is therefore often seen as somewhat problematic by scholars. It's not a word used by its adherence, so you'll never here the ancient Neoplatonists call themselves Neoplatonists. Uh, but this is rather a modern, anachronistic term used by scholars and historians. The term "Neo" means new, which seems to indicate that this was a new philosophy, but to the Neoplatonists, there was nothing "Neo" about it. It was simply the true interpretation of the ancient Platonic teachings. Therefore, many scholars, as well as myself to some degree, often prefer to use other terms like Late Platonism to refer to this movement, in order to highlight that it was not some new, separate thing, but a late stage of development for the Platonic school of thought, and also, to some degree, also a late state of development for all of Greek and Hellenic philosophy in general.

Furthermore, we should probably not look at Neoplatonism as a school at all, because that too is a modern academic construct. Many of the thinkers we categorize as Neoplatonist can differ in dramatic ways, as we will see. So, we should keep in mind that this is a general term used to denote a late-stage Pagan Platonism, which has certain characteristic features that unify it, but which also can be incredibly diverse and complicated. In any case, it's clear that Neoplatonism was very innovative and has features that set it apart from earlier representatives of Platonism in general.

So, with that said, what is it then that makes Neoplatonism Neoplatonism? Well, the movement or School basically originated in the 3rd century with an amazing figure called Plotinus. He is usually described as the "founder" of Neoplatonism, and many of its characteristic teachings can be traced to him, even though he would say that he actually takes them directly from Plato, of course. Plotinus is one of the most fascinating, incredible, and indeed influential philosophers of all time, and to understand Neoplatonism, we kind of need to understand him, even though the school was further developed and associated with successive figures like Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus. Plotinus is kind of the man in this case, so it serves as well to explore him a bit more in depth.

Plotinus lived in the 3rd century, as I mentioned. He was from Alexandria in Egypt originally, but was deeply Hellenized and spent most of his career as a philosopher in the city of Rome. He was well respected and famous during his lifetime, and we know of his ideas and teachings primarily through his writings, a collection of treatises compiled by his student Porphyry, known as the Enneads. And we'll return to this work later, but this is important because basically all we know about Plotinus's life comes from a short biography that Porphyry included as a kind of prologue to the Enneads, and which is called simply "On the Life of Plotinus." In other words, it is the story of Plotinus's life as viewed from one of his own students. But despite its brevity, this account contains some truly amazing details.

As I already mentioned, he was born in Egypt around the year 204 and grew up in the city of Alexandria. In particular, Porphyry tells us that Plotinus was very secretive about his background and disliked talking about it, so we don't really know much at all about his early years. But sometime in his late 20s, he became interested in philosophy and started studying in Alexandria under a teacher called Ammonius Saccas. Porphyry tells us that Plotinus studied under Ammonius with two other students, Erennius and Origen. And you may recognize that later name because it is the name of one of the most famous early Christian philosophers and theologians. He was also from Alexandria, and so both the name, the time, and the place seem to suggest that this might be the same guy. In other words, Plotinus and the famous Origen might have been school buddies, although the scholars continue to disagree about his true identity. Many believe that there may have been two Origens and that this is simply a coincidence that this name shows up here in the life of Plotinus as well.

In any case, Porphyry also tells us that all the students of Ammonius were forced to promise never to reveal his teachings to others, a promise that none of them seems to have kept. Because after traveling around the Mediterranean world for a while, Plotinus settled in the city of Rome when he was around 40 years old and quickly became famous as a great philosopher that attracted many students. He really became the philosopher of the 3rd century, and especially an authority on Plato and Platonism. No one could explain Plato better than Plotinus, and he was the preeminent scholar of Platonist Doctrine in the world at the time.

He certainly seems to have been a very charismatic figure, judging from these stories about his life. In some ways, he adopted a kind of semi-Pythagorean lifestyle, for example, by living a rather ascetic life, not eating very much, and following a strictly vegetarian diet. People from all walks of life, from senators to people of the lower classes, both men and women, would attend his lectures and hold him in great regard. And there was a kind of inner circle of close students, which included Porphyry, who wrote this biography.

There are incredible stories about Plotinus's supposed spiritual powers and status. He, of course, lived in a world that was entirely dominated by the classical religion of Greece and Rome, and he seems to have respected that religion to some degree, because we don't find any evidence in his writings that he was at all openly critical to the cult. But at the same time, he seems to have seen himself as being somewhat above those kinds of things. What he was doing was philosophy, right? Exploring the higher noetic realities and not these relatively lower practices associated with religion.

In one of the more dramatic and striking parts of Porphyry's biography, he tells us of one time when Plotinus said something that was quite shocking to the people around him. "Amelius was fond of sacrifices and used to busy himself with rites of the new moon and rites to Lares. He once tried to get Plotinus to participate with him, but Plotinus said, 'They must come to me, not I to them.' We do not know what consideration led him to make such a grand pronouncement and did not have the nerve to ask him." As we can see from this quote, even Porphyry himself and the rest of the crew seemed quite shocked by this seemingly impious statement, saying that the gods of the religious Pantheon should come to him rather than the other way around, to the point that they didn't have the nerve to inquire about it anymore.

Another story tells of how another philosopher, Olympius of Alexandria, was jealous of Plotinus and wanted to use magic to basically cast a spell and attack him. But once he did, he realized that Plotinus's Soul was so powerful that all the attack simply deflected back onto Olympius himself, forcing him to give up. Plotinus had cultivated his Soul and noetic Consciousness so much that it was a force to be reckoned with.

Lastly, we can't recount Plotinus's life without mentioning the story about the summoning of his Guardian Daimon. Porphyry tells us that there was an Egyptian priest that came to visit Rome and wanted to demonstrate his powers by inviting Plotinus so that he could summon his protective Daimon. So, at this time, it was believed that each person had a protective Daimon, an intermediary Spirit between humans and gods, and this priest from Egypt could supposedly summon these Daimons. Porphyry recounts the event thus: "Plotinus readily agreed, and the invocation took place in the temple of Isis, since the Egyptians said that this was the only pure place he could find in Rome. When he called upon Plotinus's Daimon to appear, it was a God that came rather than a member of the genus of Daimons, as the Egyptians said, 'You are blessed, since you have a God as your Daimon and are not accompanied by a member of the lower genus.'" In any case, the fact that Plotinus was accompanied by a Daimon of superior divinity led him to raise his Godlike Vision towards it. This is why he wrote the book "On Our Arot Daimon," in which he tries to explain why different people have different Guardians. Again, we see here an example of Plotinus's impressive spiritual powers: his personal Daimon was not just some old regular Daimon, but an actual God.

But despite these very lofty details, he was also just a guy and is described as being very pleasant, kind, and caring as an individual. Indeed, many people, especially those who were about to die, would entrust their children to his care, and his house was "filled with boys and girls whom he looked after and cared for." So, not only was he an incredibly well-respected philosopher, but also kind of a well-respected person in general in his society.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the fact that our information comes from a devoted disciple, he's also described as rather pleasant to look at. We do have depictions of Plotinus, even though he personally refused to be painted or sculpted, saying, "Isn't it enough that I have to carry around the image that nature has clothed me with?" Like a true Platonist, he believed that everything in the visible world, including our bodies, are only imperfect images or copies or reflections of the perfect world of forms in the Nous. So, to paint an image or make a sculpture of him would be to paint an even more imperfect image of an already imperfect image, and he wasn't about that. Porphyry tells us that they cheated, though, and got a famous painter and sculptor to attend Plotinus's lectures and memorize his looks so that he could later recreate it. Thus, we have depictions that are supposedly pretty close to real life Plotinus.

Sadly, Plotinus was sick for a lot of his life, having a lot of problems with his bowels and became afflicted with nasty throat infections, which in the year 270, when he was 66 years old, finally resulted in his passing. The greatest philosopher of his day and one of the most significant thinkers in world history breathed his last with the words: "Try to elevate the God within us to the Divine in the universe."

Plotinus's legacy is incredibly vast, and we are lucky that basically all of his philosophical writings survive. And after his death, our friend Porphyry decided to take all of those treatises and compile them into a single, albeit incredibly messy, collection, still a magnificent work of philosophy, which became known as the Enneads. Ennead means a group of nine, and the work essentially consists of 54 treatises divided into six Enneads, that is, six groups of nine treatises each. This division and structure is entirely by Porphyry and is really weird. It divides single treatises into many and has a pretty confusing outline based on a loose kind of thematic structure. Nonetheless, this work would come to play a major role in the history of philosophy and religion, sometimes under other names and in misattributed forms, which we'll touch on in future episodes. But it is in these Enneads that we find the teachings of Plotinus and therefore also the foundational ideas of Late Platonism or Neoplatonism.

So, what is this guy all about? Well, it's worth pointing out once again that Plotinus simply sees himself as clarifying and explicating the teachings of Plato. So, the contents of his Neoplatonic philosophy is based strongly on the Platonic dialogues and incorporates many of the characteristic thoughts of Plato, such as the world of forms, for example. He seems especially interested and influenced by some specific dialogues, such as, for example, the Parmenides, where we get ideas about the One, and which is often seen as Plato's most mature and complex metaphysical dialogue. And also, very importantly for those of you who know your Plato, you'll know that he had quite an esoteric side and that he famously dissed the whole project of writing philosophy for this reason. There is often talk about Plato's so-called Unwritten Doctrines, those ideas that he never wrote down but which represents his true, deepest ideas. And this wasn't some later invention either, as Aristotle himself, one of Plato's students, affirmed that these Unwritten Doctrines were a thing and gives us hints as to what they were actually about.

Without going too deeply into it, we can say that it seems like these secret, true doctrines were strongly related to ideas associated with Pythagoreanism, such as a huge emphasis on the idea that the foundations of reality is based on a monad and a dyad, a one and a successive two, esoteric number metaphysics, in other words. And Plotinus seems to be influenced and claims to represent and teach these Unwritten Doctrines. This is unsurprising when we consider the fact that the very core of his philosophy consists of the idea of the One, which we will get to soon. So, he bases his philosophy on Plato, on his dialogues, the Unwritten Doctrines, and the Platonic tradition that developed afterwards.

So, Plotinus follows in a strong and flourishing tradition of wisdom, which include not only Platonism, but also other schools such as Stoicism. He really was the philosopher of his day, as we said, and despite how much he wants to claim that he is simply relaying the teachings of Plato, there is no denying that he was incredibly innovative and original himself. But this is why Neoplatonism is such a significant school of thought and school of philosophy. It's kind of the culmination of the whole project of Hellenic philosophy. Plotinus takes inspiration from the Platonic tradition, from Plato, but also certain aspects from Aristotle, the Peripatetic philosophy. He also takes certain aspects of Stoicism, and he creates this incredible system, if we can call it a system, this incredible philosophy that we now know as Neoplatonism. It's really significant and really, really important stuff.

It's really difficult to know where to begin when it comes to Neoplatonism, but in the most general strokes, we can say that it is a philosophy that conceives of different levels of reality, these levels or realities perhaps being referred to as hypostases in the original Greek. At the core of this entire system, at the core of reality itself, and its, you could say, its highest level, is the concept of the One, 'to hen' in Greek. The One is completely beyond any description or understanding. It's beyond being, it's beyond time and space. It is one, but it's also not one, because calling it one is actually saying too much. This is a radically apophatic principle, something that lies completely beyond the light of human understanding and its concepts. But it is from this One, and kind of also in this One, that everything else unfolds. We will return to the incredible way that Plotinus describes, or perhaps undescribes, the One in the Enneads later, but it is, in short, an utter simplicity from which everything else emanates. It's also identified with the Platonic concepts of the Good and the Beautiful, and these three terms are sometimes used interchangeably to refer to this one concept of the One.

Now, basically everything I say here is going to have to be nuanced and maybe even redacted later on, but we'll begin with a simple overview. From this One, there is a kind of emanation, something appears which is distinct from the One, but is simultaneously kind of the same at the same time. The One is so perfect that it overflows into something other than itself, in a sense, a perfect image of the One, which is called the Nous. Nous is a word in Greek that is basically impossible to translate, and I really mean that this time. The most common translation is perhaps 'intellect,' but we also see other words or translations like 'mind,' sometimes 'Divine Mind' or 'consciousness,' none of which really captures its full meaning. So, we're just going to be using the word Nous from here on out.

The Nous is the first principle after the One. It's a kind of Consciousness in which knowledge about everything is contained. The Nous is still beyond time and space, so it is a mind that knows all things at the same time, so to say, and in a unified way. All its knowledge is a single, it's a single thing, right? It's not that it has knowledge of all these separate things in different times; it has knowledge of everything, but that knowledge is a completely unified knowledge of everything in a single, eternal instant, you could say. The Nous is one; it's an utter Unity that is numerically singular, perhaps even more properly called one than the actual One, which is, as we said, even beyond the concept of Oneness. It is the knower, the known, and the act of knowing, all in one, and everything is contained in the Nous in complete Unity. It is this Nous that is the Platonic world of forms; that's the archetype of the whole world, but as a Unity beyond temporality and distinction. The Nous is being itself; the Nous is even God.

Now, sometimes Plotinus will refer to the One as God, but more often it is the Nous that represents the concept that we associate with God most of the time. So, to use more theological or theistic language than Plotinus himself would have been comfortable with, the Nous is God, and the forms are God's own thoughts as he knows himself with a knowledge that is identical to himself. This Nous not only contemplates itself, but also looks back at the One and contemplates this One, even though this is technically impossible. And as a result of this, there is then another emanation. We move sort of further away from the One as there appears another lesser reality, and this is the Soul, or 'psyche' in Greek.

The Soul receives the information stored in the intellect and is sort of responsible for taking all that knowledge and making it into actual stuff. Just like the Nous looks back at the One, its originator, the Soul looks back at the Nous, its originator, and contemplates it. And as a result, it emanates or creates the universe as we know it: the world of multiplicity, the world of things, of time and space, which is often referred to as the world of nature. It is here, below the level of Soul, that everything we know and experience in the sensible world exists, including our own individual souls. The sensible world is kind of the outer manifestation or imperfect copy of the perfect Nous and its contents, which is the world of forms. Everything we experience here exists in the Nous in a more perfect and unified way, beyond temporality.

So, this is a pretty neat and understandable system, right? It begins at the top with the One, which emanates the Nous, which emanates the Soul, which in turn emanates or creates the physical world as we know it. Makes total sense, right? Wrong! In fact, while the outline that I've just given is accurate in a sense, it can also be very misleading and even lead to inaccurate understandings and interpretations of Late Platonist metaphysics.

For one, this whole process of emanation takes place outside of time. When we think of this process of being or becoming, we see it as the One becoming the Nous, becoming the Soul, but this implies a temporal progression, which is not how it should be understood. Time doesn't exist except in the level below Soul, in our sensible universe. So, this whole process from the One to the Nous to the Soul is not something that happens, "quote unquote," or even has happened. It is a description of the way reality is in the eternal, non-temporal moment. It recounts an essential structure within reality, not an event. It can be pretty trippy to wrap your head around, but it is important not to conceive this as a temporal thing of something happening in time and space.

Secondly, we describe this process as one thing kind of creating another, and in our minds, we often imagine these realities as being different or separated from each other in some way, in a kind of hierarchy. The One is way up here, and the material world is somewhere down here, and they are as far away from each other as they can be. But this can also be very misleading. While Plotinus does point out that there is a difference between the One and the Nous, and the Nous and the Soul, and he actually pretty strict about this in one way and in certain passages, they are also in some way part of a single reality. Forget this vertical image that I presented, and instead imagine all of reality, including these levels and the physical universe, unfolding within the Nous itself, and ultimately within the One itself. This is more of a monistic picture, and the different levels are all a single reality or a kind of continuum, you could say. Perhaps a better image would be to see them as circles within each other, but even that is a compromise, because after all, this process or these hypostases can't really be imagined in a kind of, um, in the sense of a kind of image or a representation, really. It is a metaphysical reality beyond time and space; we can't really imagine what it's like.

For example, at least according to Plotinus, the human self down here on Earth is not separated from the noetic world, that is, the world of the Nous, or even from the One, actually. The individual self is in the Nous right now and at all times. We are all constantly participating in the Nous and even in the One. We are the Nous, and we are the One, even if we don't realize it. So, you can see that this neat division into various levels or realities is very misleading, because it is also a deeply integrated system where there is a distinct continuity between the lowest and highest aspects of reality. It's all taking place within itself, so to say.

And this is important for another reason, namely that Plotinus's philosophy, and really most of Neoplatonism, is very much performative and participatory in nature. It's not just some abstract theoretical philosophy about the way that reality is structured, but also involves the process by which the individual person can realize his true nature, his true self, by climbing up this ladder of existence back from this lower part of the physical universe and the body all the way back up to the Nous.

On the human level, Plotinus tells us that we are to turn away from our bodies. Matter is seen as evil in a sense, but insofar as it becomes an object of desire as opposed to the One or the Good. Indeed, to Plotinus, the One is present even in matter itself, and the physical world is a beautiful yet imperfect copy of the noetic world of forms. So, Plotinus's practical instructions involve a shift of focus from the bodily and material to the intellectual. We are to detach ourselves from the desires of the physical and instead turn towards our higher self, which has its home in the noetic world. In other words, this involves a kind of asceticism, not an extreme one by any means, but certainly a way of living that is tempered and controlled. Plotinus himself seems to have lived a rather ascetic life, eating relatively little, and when he did eat, it was exclusively a vegetarian diet. Some Neoplatonists have opted to live a life of sexual abstinence altogether, but this was not something required or the norm, really.

In general, Plotinus tells us that we are to make the journey inward into the depths of our own selves and to again turn away from the bodily and contemplate our true noetic self and the higher realities. How one does this on a more concrete level is hard to say. Some have speculated that Plotinus may have performed some sort of meditation practice and taught this kind of practice to students, but this is uncertain and mostly speculation. It seems pretty certain that it involves some sort of inward traveling, right? Of traveling inwards into the Soul and the depths of the self, and through that, sort of ascend higher into the noetic and the intellectual worlds. And when she does that, she can realize her true home in the Nous and, in a sense, even become united with the Nous, or more accurately, to realize that she was the Nous the entire time.

Furthermore, Plotinus even seems to indicate that we can become mystically united with the One itself, to experience a "Flight of the alone to the alone" or "a solitary in the solitary," as Plotinus says in self in the very final words of the Enneads. You can perhaps see why many have chosen to call Plotinus a Mystic when we take all these aspects into account. Now, words like 'Mystic' and 'mysticism' are, of course, debated and problematic in some way, but I think it's important to recognize and consider this very participatory aspect of Plotinus's teachings and the teachings of Neoplatonism, because it is a very central aspect of their philosophy. Like I said, it's not only about the structure of reality in a theoretical sense, but the human journey back to her higher essence, a kind of spiritual self-realization and ascent back to the source. There is a bidirectional progression: everything flows from the One and ultimately returns back to it, like inhaling and exhaling of breath. This language and imagery has become some of the most influential and recurring in the history of the category of mysticism across various religions and spiritual traditions ever since then. This motion of flowing out and returning is a core feature of Neoplatonism.

The human being's true home is in the Nous, and this outer bodily form is only a fleeting, temporary shell. The world isn't inherently negative, though. Indeed, Plotinus has a whole treatise in the Enneads called "Against the Gnostics," where he basically tears this group of early Christians apart. Basically, they believe that the physical world was created by an evil Demiurge or false Creator God and that basically all of the world is a kind of negative prison, and Plotinus did not agree with this idea. He does not have as negative of a view of the physical world and of creation as such, and so he dedicates this treatise in the Enneads to completely refuting the Gnostics, sometimes very harshly. After all, the world is a copy of the perfect Nous, but in a kind of imperfect way. Remember, the Nous contains everything that is and ever will be in this world, but in a non-temporal and perfect way. We are experiencing that world in an imperfect way through the mediation of time and space, and at the same time, we also saw everything takes place in the Nous. We are all in the Nous right now and having these experiences inside the noetic world.

This is a worldview that is fundamentally different from the modern one most of us hold, where we conceive of a real external world out there, outside of our subjective minds. The Neoplatonic view is sort of the other way around completely: there isn't a real external world in which there are minds. The external world is, in fact, within mind, within Nous or Consciousness. It's not that the external world isn't real, at least as we commonly understand that phrase, but simply that mind or Nous is the prior principle. It is Consciousness or Nous that is real, and the external world unfolds within that Consciousness. But there is still a kind of hierarchy, right? This physical world is less perfect than the world of the Nous, and this is why Plotinus and the other Neoplatonists put such an emphasis on leaving the body, right? Of ascending back towards the higher world, or I should say, the higher aspect of the world or reality, because, like I said, it's all a single continuum in a sense.

Now, here is another good opportunity to stop and dispel some possible misunderstandings and sort of wrong ways of imagining this stuff. When we say that the Soul leaves the body and travels up into the higher noetic worlds, one tendency to imagine this is to think of the Soul as sort of leaving the body and somehow sort of traveling up into space or something all the way up there. That is not how this should be understood. This whole journey, the journey of the Soul into the higher realms, all of it takes place inside oneself, right? It's a journey inward, not upward into some heavenly world, right? It's a journey inward into the depths of the Soul, into the depths of the self, because it is there, inside ourselves, in our true sort of essence, our true core, that is where the Nous and maybe even the One actually is, so to say. It is within us that this entire Cosmos exists, from nature to Soul to Nous. Remember, we are in the Nous; we are the Nous. So, the entire noetic reality, including knowledge of all things and the whole of reality, exists within the self. There are depths to the self that very few people have any idea of, and this journey of ascent is the process of realizing this aspect of yourself.

This is what Plotinus refers to as the undescended soul or the undescended self, that there is a true part of ourselves that is always in the Nous and never leaves it. "The fact is that even our own soul does not descend in its entirety, but there is something of it always in the intelligible World. However, if that part which is in the sensible World becomes dominant, or rather if it is dominated and subjected to disturbance, it does not permit there to be self-awareness in us of that of which the upper part of the soul is in contemplation." This idea of the undescended self is a Core teaching of Plotinus in particular, but it should be pointed out that many later Neoplatonists, indeed some of the most prominent ones like Iamblichus and Proclus, all completely disagreed with him on this topic. The doctrine of the undescended self was entirely rejected by many later Neoplatonists.

Once one lets go of all feathers of physical body and existence and plunges into the depths of one's true self, the human becomes united with the Nous. Plotinus himself very famously describes the experience of this journey from the body and the bafflement of having actually returned from the non-temporal noetic experience of the absolute back to his regular old body and individual Consciousness. He says, "Often after waking up to myself from the body, that is, externalizing myself in relation to all other things, while entering into myself, I behold a beauty of wondrous quality and believe then that I am most to be identified with my better part, that I enjoy the best quality of life and have become united with the Divine and situated within it, actualizing myself at that level and situating myself above all else in the intelligible World. Following on this repose within the Divine and descending from intellect into acts of calculative reasoning, I ask myself in bewilderment, how on Earth did I ever come down here, and how ever did my soul come to be enclosed in a body, being such as it has been revealed itself to be even while in a body?"

This return seems to be the highest experience or state that a person can strive towards, but Plotinus sometimes goes even further and suggests that the person can even become the One itself. This is a very complicated topic, and Plotinus doesn't talk about it as much as he does about the Nous, primarily because, well, it can't be talked about. In fact, an experience of becoming the One or mystically uniting with the One is not an experience at all; it's beyond even experience. The One is, after all, covered by an absolute apophatic darkness. Nothing can be said about it; it lies in the utter darkness of unsaying and unknowing, beyond things like understanding, description, or even experience.

As we saw, the way that Plotinus approaches describing or talking about the One in the Enneads is absolutely incredible. It's a sort of exercise in trying to explain something that cannot be explained or talked about. In these texts, we find some of the most radical and amazing examples of apophatic philosophy and expression in history. Uh, he will describe the One in a certain way in multiple passages and then later on completely contradict himself. The One is one, but the One is not one; the One is free, and then the One is not free. In fact, what is so fascinating about this approach is that it isn't necessarily descriptive at all; that is, Plotinus is not describing anything about the One for us, because such a thing cannot be achieved. Instead, it's a kind of participatory process. What does this mean? Well, when Plotinus describes, or rather undescribes, the One, he's taking us on a journey or a kind of exercise. He doesn't give us any actual descriptions of the One, but gives us paradoxical statements: the One is this, but it is not this; the One is that, but also not that. He's helping us collapse all our conceptions and understandings, undermining any way that we can conceptualize the topic in our head, until there is nothing left but our own unknowing or ignorance. And it is there, in that unknowing darkness, that we maybe will get a glimpse of what the One entails. It's crazy stuff, and it is this One that we can become one with, as it were.

We've already explored the fact that everything kind of takes place within the One and everything partakes of the One, although this is another one of those paradoxes. The One is everything and everywhere, but it is also nowhere and utterly beyond anything. "It is because the One is omnipresent, for there is nowhere where it is not, and so it fills everything, and so it is a many, or rather it is already all things. For if it itself were only everywhere, it would be everything. But since it is also nowhere, while all things come to be due to it because it is everywhere, they are other than it because it is nowhere." And another quote: "The One is outside nothing but it has intercourse with all things." Indeed, this apophatic way of talking about the One, of postulating that the very fundamental aspect of reality cannot be understood or grasped or described in any kind of way, would be incredibly influential on the theologians and philosophers of the monotheistic religions. So, thinkers from the Islamic, Christian, and Jewish religions, and so would play a major role in the vocabulary and symbolism of the theologies and mysticisms, maybe of all those religions.

In any case, Plotinus indicates that we can become the One, to be united with it. It's something that is exceedingly rare, but it can be done by the most accomplished of souls. Plotinus himself has obviously had this experience, or should I say non-experience. In fact, Porphyry tells us in his biography that Plotinus experienced this highest state on four occasions while he was with him. "So it is that this Divine Daimon of a man ascended in his thoughts to the first Transcendent God many times, traveling the roads described by Plato in the Symposium, and to him appeared that God who has neither shape nor form, who has his seat above intellect and every intelligible thing. I, Porphyry, now 67 years old, once drew near this God and was unified with him. Anyway, the goal appeared near Plotinus. His aim or goal was to be unified and to be present to the God that is set over all things. This goal, an indescribable state of perfection, he achieved some four times while I was with him." And when we read sections from the Enneads that talk about this uniting with the One, it seems pretty clear that he's speaking from firsthand experience. "On actually ascending to this and becoming this alone, casting aside all else, what could we say about it, except that we are more than free and have more than autonomy? Who would connect us with chance events, either random or due to an accidental attribute, once we have become the true life itself, or having come to be in it, which contains nothing else but is just itself?"

What is this encounter with the One like? Well, since the One cannot be described in any way, obviously to try to describe what it is to be that One is equally impossible. It involves a total disappearance of the self and everything associated with it. To be mystically united with the Nous is one thing, and that is a very high achievement indeed, where we become what we already were. But it seems that even in that moment of Union with the One of the Nous, the place where everything is non-temporal and without division, the united person still retains some kind of individuality, even though she has become pure knowing, knowing herself through a knowledge that is herself, beyond any subject-object dichotomy. There is still some kind of individuality, or rather, there is still something. But when the person wishes to achieve mystical Union with the One, she has to reach even beyond the noetic to the total darkness and nothingness that is the One. She has to completely shed any sense of herself, even the noetic, until she is utterly nothing. When she is "alone with the alone." "It is just like those who are sent to partake of the Sacred religious rites, where there are acts of purification and the stripping off of the cloaks they had worn before they go inside naked. One proceeds in the ascent, passing by all that is alien to the God, until one sees by oneself alone that which is itself alone, uncorrupted, simple, and pure, that upon which everything depends and in relation to which one looks and exists and lives and thinks." There can be nothing with the One, because the One is nothing; it's no thing in a sense. We cannot Unite with the One at all; instead, we shed everything until we are nothing, and in that nothing, there is only the One. So, we aren't the One; the One is simply itself; it just is. "Perhaps one can argue that one should not say one will see and the thing seen, if indeed one should say that there are two things, the Seer and the Seen, and that both are not one. This argument is indeed rash, for at the time of Union, this seeing self neither sees nor discerns nor imagines two things, but has in a way become another and not oneself, nor does one belong to oneself. In the intelligible world, one has come to belong to the Good and has become one, like a center touching a center point."

And that is the absolute highest achievement and experience, or non-experience, that we can have, and it's accompanied by a kind of absolute bliss, at least in the moments after, since when you are the One, you are not experiencing anything, including bliss. It is even described in erotic ways, with the person being a lover seeking out her beloved and passionate yearning, which obviously reminds us a lot of later expressions in traditions like Sufism.

So, now we've kind of made the whole journey. We started with the One and saw how reality unfolded and flowed from this One all the way down to our individual souls and even matter itself, although that is a very complicated topic, as we saw. And now we've also made that Journey back from the individual self to our true home in the noetic world and even in a kind of mystical Union with the One itself: the outgoing and ingoing from the One back to the One, the inhaling and exhaling of the breath, to use the language of the Sufi Ibn Arabi.

But this is an episode about Neoplatonism, after all, and we really only focused on Plotinus here. He is a very significant figure, perhaps the most significant figure in that tradition, since he's considered the kind of founder, at least the most important systematizer of that particular school of thought. But there is, of course, a lot more to Neoplatonism than just Plotinus, because while his successors would look to him as a great authority and base their ideas on some of the most general features of his system, the later Neoplatonists would forge their own ways of looking at the world, in which they could sometimes differ dramatically and fundamentally from Plotinus.

He was succeeded by people like Porphyry, who was a close student we've already met, and this guy kind of stuck pretty close to the teachings of his master. He was, though, a little more interested in what we could call religion. So, Plotinus in general used language that wasn't really outright religious at all. I'm sure he believed in the gods in some way, and he does refer to the Nous and sometimes the One as God or 'Theos' in singular, but he doesn't really seem bothered with fitting the religious system of his culture into his philosophy. Indeed, we saw in the biography that he even thought that the gods should come to him rather than the other way around.

Porphyry, his student, was a little more interested in mythology and religion and incorporated that somewhat more into his thought. But this religious aspect really starts to flourish with the later proponents of Neoplatonism, such as Iamblichus and Proclus. With these thinkers, there appeared what is known as theurgy, which is a complex topic of its own, but which tries to call upon the gods through rituals, often with the purpose of elevating oneself. So, unlike Plotinus, who believed that we are in the Nous and that we can make the journey to perfection on our own by simply plunging into the depths of our own being, the theurgist or theurgic Neoplatonists like Iamblichus believe that we actually needed the help of the gods to achieve this journey to the higher worlds, and he describes theurgic rituals to achieve such a salvation. The gods of the Greek and Roman Pantheon were often seen as being personifications of different aspects of the noetic world, for instance, and are given a much more prominent role in the thought of people like Iamblichus and Proclus. Right, so unlike Plotinus, who keeps his philosophy sort of separated to some degree from religion in that sense, even though, of course, he uses words like God and it's obviously influenced by religious thought to some degree, people like Iamblichus and Proclus incorporate the religious system much more into Neoplatonism. Uh, the different gods become different aspects of the Nous. Sometimes the god Zeus, or Jupiter in the Roman context, is identified with the Nous as a whole, and then all the different aspects of the Nous are the other gods, which are kind of aspects of Zeus as the highest God. So, they fit the pantheon and the religious mythology into this Neoplatonic system in a very kind of a neat and impressive way a lot of the time.

In general, the later Neoplatonists are much more systematic in their approach than Plotinus. Um, from reading the Enneads, we can see that Plotinus probably has a

kind of system in mind, but it's very hard to make out the details of this system because the anad are very difficult. They are very messy, partly because of Po's ordering of the anad, but also how they are written in themselves are a lot more; they're not as clear and systematic, let's just say, compared to someone like procas. In his elements of theology, procus presents a much more systematic and elegant structure of the neoplatonic worldview.

But in these systems, we often see a stark contrast to platinus. While plotinus's system is relatively simple, he likes to identify various aspects of reality with each other and in a unified sense. Those of people like yamus, procus, and others are often a lot more complex. Whereas platanus had a very simple one-New-Soul structure, yamus argues for various levels of the one, as well as multiple intellects or noes. The one has three aspects, for example, and the lowest aspect of the one is the highest aspect of the Noose. And then the news has three aspects of its own, and the lowest part of that is... and he just, every part of those parts has parts in themselves.

So he and procus, for example, really build the system into a much more complex picture, uh, many more parts and aspects. Whereas platinus himself, uh, kept it very simple, and consciously so. He, he actually, uh, he very much criticized other met physical systems that made everything way too complex, right? He, he kept it very simple as a principle, while the later near platonist, as we see, had a much different approach. There is a metaphysics that has a lot more parts, and parts that are much more independent.

Indeed, most of the later near platonists would reject platanus' idea of the undescended self, for example, where, as we saw, an aspect of the self is always in the news. These later thinkers instead argue for a reality where the different parts of the world, or of reality, are much more strictly separated from each other. The human aspect can never leave the human realm as such, because there is a much more stark border between the levels, and instead requires other means of achieving ascended states, such as through the help of the Gods, for example, through theurgic rituals.

So, this creates a pretty confusing picture. While the neoplatonists in general are seen as belonging to a single school, which goes back to platinus and ultimately to PL PL, there is a huge diversity in the different ideas that individual members of this school had. As we saw in the beginning, calling it a school at all can be problematic, and it should probably rather be seen as a kind of loose, late antique tendency within platonist thought.

So, how can we define neoplatonism at all? Well, despite these differences, there are still a few things that unify neoplatonism as a coherent philosophy, and which characterize it and the later developments that it influenced. Neoplatonism in general holds to the idea of the hypostasis, the levels of reality, which generally follow the same outline: there is the one, followed by The Noose, followed by the soul, followed by nature and the physical world. While the different thinkers would postulate nuances to this, various intellects or steps along the way, the general outline is recurring in basically all of neoplatonism.

Similarly, another recurring theme is the apophatic nature of the one, or of the most fundamental aspect of reality: the idea that the one is hidden in an absolute darkness of knowing, beyond understanding or explanation. We also see characteristics such as these different realities emanating out from each other: that the one emanates the news, which emanates the soul, and so on. Now, as metaphorical as this may be, it is still a key feature of this school, as well as much else of what we have talked about here today.

So, when you see these features that I've just described in later religious schools or philosophies, you'll be able to recognize them as very characteristically neoplatonic. Because, indeed, as we said in the beginning, neoplatonism has been one of the most influential philosophical movements in history that has played a key role in the development of Christian, Islamic, and Jewish theology and mysticism, as well as influencing westernness, so terorism, occultism, as I said in the beginning, also all of what we call Western thought in general.

It influenced some of the earliest Christian theologians, such as pseudo dianus, whose apophatic theology, expressed in works like the mystical theology, is strongly plotinian and proclin in nature. This would influence some of the great figures and teachings of the Eastern Orthodox church, and figures in the west like me ekot and Nicholas of kusza, just to mention a few.

In the Islamic world, neoplatonism and the works of platinus became one of the defining factors in the tradition of FFA and calam, and influenced such figures as IB CA, or abis fak arzi, and the Sufi metap physics of figures such as iban Arabi and Abu hammed Al gazali.

Similarly, in the Jewish World, neoplatonism played a major role in the emergence of various forms of Jewish philosophy and mysticism, including, of course, kabala. Indeed, that topic of mysticism is significant because so much of what we understand as mysticism can be traced directly to neoplatonism: from the apophatic language that is used, to the emphasis on the soul stripping of worldliness and returning to a pure world of mind, and to be mystically united with the one at the core of reality. It is some of the most common language in the history of "quote unquote" mysticism, even if that word should be used carefully.

In other words, we owe a whole lot to these guys and their fascinating ideas. And that is why it's so amazing that we're doing this large collaboration here on YouTube. Uh, my colleagues: zevi from Seekers of unity, Dr. Justin Sledge from esoterica, uh, Dr. Angela puka, Angela's Symposium, Dana trell from the modern hermeticist, and uh, John BVI from his channel, John BVI, are all making videos about neoplatonism and its influence and relationship with different aspects of intellectual history. So be sure to check out all of those amazing episodes.

I'll be making two of them. Zevi is making three, I believe. My next video in particular is going to be about neoplatonism and Islamic thought, so stay tuned for that, which should be coming out next week. But also definitely check out the other, uh, videos or episodes; they're going to be amazing. I've seen the episodes, and they're absolutely incredible. I'm so happy and honored to be part of this incredible project to bring one of the most influential and important philosophical traditions, uh, to a wider audience here on YouTube. Uh, again, I'm truly honored and so great to call these people my colleagues and also my friends, and I look forward to much more similar, uh, many such similar projects and collaborations in the future.

For now, this will have to do for an admittedly inadequate and incomplet introduction to the vast world of neoplatonism. We have focused primarily on platinus here, who is perhaps the central figure, but we've also seen how this school and this tradition is much broader than that. We've also touched on some of the other significant thinkers from that school. Still, we've been introduced to some of the core features and most important aspects and tendencies of this amazing philosophical tradition, which will help us better spot the places where it shows it's a beautiful face in the history of intellectual thought and even today. I'll see you next time. [Music]