Return to the One by Brian Hines Read Free Book Online Page B

dissimilar and unproportioned to the goal toward which they lead. And this goal is God. 5
     
    Just as Plotinus’s faith is not a faith in anything particular that can be encompassed by the limited grasp of the senses and reason (but rather in the existence of the ineffable, unlimited, and incomprehensible One), so is the faith of St. John of the Cross. Both mystics urge us to return to God along the path of the via negativa, the negative way. Since this material world is at the opposite pole of the cosmos from the spiritual world, a negation of materiality leads to the most positive spirituality.
    St. John of the Cross says, “All the world’s wisdom and human ability compared to the infinite wisdom of God is pure and utter ignorance…. Accordingly, to reach union with the wisdom of God, a person must advance by unknowing rather than by knowing.” 6 And Plotinus advises, “One must not make it [the One] two even for the sake of forming an idea of it.” [VI-8-13]
    Confusion—no cause for concern
    N OW , when a mystic expresses the idea that it is wrong to express ideas about God, we have a contradiction, at least from the point of view of a logician. “Plotinus just demolished his own argument!” such a person would cry. “Yes, that’s his intention,” another person more attuned to the subtleties of Plotinus’s teachings would respond. Reading the Enneads, we find Plotinus, like St. John of the Cross, continually blowing up the conceptual structures he has just constructed with such care.
    So don’t be concerned if you get confused in the course of trying to understand Plotinus’s teachings. This is to be expected and, indeed, is to be welcomed.
    For at the crossroads of belief and the negation of belief, of sensation and the negation of sensation, of thinking and the negation of thinking, we stand at the juncture of the Known and Mystery. Continue straight on your course down the path of knowledge that got you to the crossroads and you experience more of the same conceptual and sensible scenery. Make an abrupt shift in direction, a genuine leap of faith, and you end up somewhere completely different.
    Crossroads are confusing when we aren’t sure in which direction our destination lies. There are no clearly marked signs showing the way to the One. In fact, it seems that if you see anything familiar along the path, including a signpost akin to those you’ve encountered before, you haven’t yet taken the fork that leads most directly to the spiritual summit.
    Plotinus continually emphasizes that there is a stark distinction between the everyday reality where almost all of us live now and the spiritual reality of higher domains of consciousness. To be genuinely converted, in his view, is to convert our attention from awareness of material thoughts and things to an inward, intuitive perception of spirit. Even the lowest reaches of the spiritual realm bear little resemblance to the physical universe, and when the soul attains to heaven, less will be familiar.
There are few things here that are also there [in the higher world] ; and when it is in heaven it will abandon still more. [IV-3-32]
     
    If little or nothing here will accompany us on our return to the One, what purpose is there in filling our heads with all the concepts contained in the Enneads and reiterated in this book you are reading now? Good question. As someone who enjoys playing with ideas, I have to admit, reluctantly, that an entirely defensible answer is: no purpose at all. This presumes, however, that a spiritual seeker’s consciousness is standing directly in front of the passageway that leads to the One, ready and eager to dive in and start the journey. Since usually this isn’t the case, the rational side of Plotinus’s philosophy is intended to prepare us for true mystical experience.
    Reaching the end of the line
    S TEP BY STEP , reason leads us to the point at which rationality ends. When the spiritual seeker is convinced he truly