Return to the One (10 page)

Infinity Is Ineffable

I
MAGINE A WORLD
without words, images, or thoughts.

You can’t, because imagination involves words, images, or thoughts. As soon as we try to capture this sort of world in a concept such as “all would be so flowing and connected there,” our thoughts about thoughtlessness cut ourselves off from actually experiencing that reality. Our imagining destroys what we wish to imagine. This is the great conundrum of mystical spirituality: is it possible to describe the indescribable?

Plotinus, though he spends thousands of words saying so, answers: No. The One is the highest, beyond all description in terms of lower things.

It is, therefore, truly ineffable: for whatever you say about it, you will always be speaking of a “something.” But “beyond all things and beyond the supreme majesty of Intellect” is the only one of all the ways of speaking of it which is true.
[V-3-13]

It is easy to understand intellectually why the One is ineffable. When something is unity, wholly and completely, it possesses no qualities that could be described. Even to say that the One is love implies that there is the One, and there also is an attribute that it possesses called love. Now we have two, not one. Yet:

[The One]
is only itself and really itself, while every other thing is itself and something else.
[VI-8-21]

What is difficult (so amazingly, stupendously, overwhelmingly difficult) is to break the habit of “is-ing.” Obviously I am a good example of this, having just used “is” twice in the previous sentence. I am addicted to “is” and “am.” I constantly evaluate and quantify. And almost everyone else does the same. Descriptions permeate the consciousness of humans around the world, no matter in what language they are expressed.

This is because we have no experience of anything other than duality and relativity. Nothing we are familiar with, as Plotinus pointed out, is only itself, a pure existence. And once again we come face-to-face with the limits of language, for to even say that something is itself is to assume a separation between the thing and itself that is bridged somehow by an impalpable is-ness.

The One exists beyond duality beyond reason, beyond mind and words. In the
Enneads,
Plotinus continually warns about the danger of mistaking words for reality especially when speaking of the One. He recognizes that words are necessary if we are to say anything about the One. Yet there is an unstated footnote attached to every such expression.

But one should understand “as if” with each of them.
[VI-8-13]

What we are after in our search for the One is not a thought or a thing but the source of thoughts and things. So the One is far removed from the sorts of mental machinations that unceasingly course through normal human consciousness, which we carelessly and anthropomorphically ascribe to God as well.

If he was thought he would not think, just as movement is not in motion…. He is higher than speech and thought and awareness; he gives us these, but he is not these himself.
[VI-7-37, V-3-14]

We talk of God in human terms, as He or She, or with attributes like us, because we know no better. We personify the divine and the mysterious because our experience is limited to the personal and physical. We assume, consciously or unconsciously, that ultimate reality is marked by diversity and variety because we have no experience of anything else. Hence, we believe that the words we use to describe things in our earthly world can be used to describe God.

Our problem, then, is how to avoid making murky what is absolutely clear, how to avoid adding complexity to what is completely simple. In our eagerness to comprehend the One we must be careful not to let our imaginations run away with us. If someone is pressed to try to describe his understanding of God, it is better to admit “I have no clue” than to introduce a fictitious duality into the One. As we read earlier:

One must not make it two even for the sake of forming an idea of it.
[VI-8-13]

Plotinus, a mystic as well as a rational philosopher, teaches that the higher reaches of the path that leads to the One are wordless. This is not the same as saying that the path is undefined. A highway may or may not be marked with a name, but if it leads in the right direction, a traveler will get to his or her destination all the same. Traveling by car, bicycle, or foot is accomplished neither through words nor through wordlessness, but by wheels turning or feet walking.

The mystic’s mode of transport, however, is consciousness, and the territory to be traversed also is consciousness. So while you can think about whatever you want while driving a car (mind doesn’t affect machinery), incorrect thinking slows or stops travelers on their way to the One, or even sends them in the opposite direction. Plotinus explains that attention first has to be shifted from spoken words to unspoken words, and thence to what can only be called wordless words, unitary intelligence without divided thought.

As the spoken word is an imitation of that in the soul, so the word in the soul is an imitation of that in something else.
[I-2-3]

Our whole approach to the One will be thrown off course if we believe we can travel to enlightenment through words or thoughts. It isn’t a matter of, say, pondering the Buddhist
Dhammapada
for my whole life and then realizing that the Christian
Bible
contains a more correct depiction of divine reality. This would be like me believing that God is square and then finding out that God actually is a circle. Since I was looking for some sort of spiritual shape, I wasn’t far off the mark and might simply observe, “Oops, I made a slight mistake; now I know better.”

But if God is formless and nameless, far removed from any shape or word, then a much more radical change of direction is needed. A person’s entire consciousness must be transformed if he or she is to experience God. A way has to be found of experiencing emptiness, of entering into the nothingness that is the threshold to the One.

The
via negativa
of spirituality, the negative way, is a difficult path to follow because we are so accustomed to experiencing the positive side of life. Teachers, coaches, and bosses encourage us to

“think positively.” Bare shelves in our homes soon are covered with bric-a-brac. Quiet is disconcerting; we are happier when radios and televisions permeate the air with sound waves. If our minds somehow stop thinking for a moment, a gushing stream of thoughts rapidly fills the void in consciousness.

If we want to return to the One, Plotinus urges us to value negativity more highly, since for him it is the negation of illusion. Our present state of existence is all shadows, Plato’s cave. What we think is real and positive actually is unreal. It is better to remain silent than to say anything about the One.

This helps explain why mystic philosophers such as Plotinus and Meister Eckhart so often take away thoughts about God and divine reality immediately after they have offered them. Such verbal behavior is called apophasis, which Michael Sells describes as unsaying or speaking-away. You say something, and then you unsay it.

According to Sells, “An overview of Western apophasis would begin with Plotinus. Though elements of apophasis existed earlier, it was Plotinus who wove these elements and his own original philosophical and mystical insights into a discourse of sustained apophatic intensity.”
¹
Here’s an example.

But if the One—name and reality expressed—was to be taken positively it would be less clear than if we did not give it a name at all…. Therefore, when you have said “The Good” do not add anything to it in your mind, for if you add anything, you will make it deficient by whatever you have added.
[V-5-6, III-8-11]

Watching a beautiful sunset in the company of others, there always seems to be someone who has to say: “That’s a beautiful sunset.” Or, relaxing by a mountain stream, a companion breaks the silence: “It’s wonderful to just listen to the sound of rushing water.” “Well, it
was,
until you opened your mouth!” we may think, rather uncharitably. Do we add anything to reality by naming it? In the case of spiritual realities, Plotinus teaches that this sort of addition is always a subtraction.

Who could draw a picture, sing a song, or compose a poem about infinity? What image, melody, or words could possibly capture the ground and source of all being? It is exceedingly difficult for humans to comprehend even the very small or the very large, the infinitesimal sub-atomic world or the vastness of intergalactic space. It is absolutely impossible to fathom infinity. Not because it is nothing but because it is everything—small, large, and in-between.

And it
[the One]
must be understood as infinite not because its size and number cannot be measured or counted but because its power cannot be comprehended. For when you think of him as Intellect or God, he is more; and when you unify him in your thought, here also the degree of unity by which he transcends your thought is more than you imagined it to be.
[VI-9-6]

So the great Plotinian quest is for unity of soul, not of thought. The One is to be found in the seeming emptiness that remains when all images and ideas of material or spiritual reality have been cast out. This vacuum of consciousness is actually a plenum, for it is the boundless spring from which all else flows. What we seek is the source of matter and thought.

All that surrounds us, inside our minds and outside in the world, is merely the crude sediment of creation, what remains when unity becomes multiplicity and spirit becomes matter. Thus it is essential to leave aside knowledge of created things if we are to know the creator.

One must depart from knowledge and things known, and from every other, even beautiful, object of vision.
[VI-9-4]

Return to the One is union, pure presence of soul and source, drop and ocean.

For this reason the vision is hard to put into words. For how could one announce that as another when he did not see, there when he had the vision, another, but one with himself?
[VI-9-10]

Beauty Is Beyond

A
FTER ALL THIS TALK
about the One being formless, limitless, and ineffable, the reader may be getting an impression that the One is some sort of amorphous blob of pure existence without any qualities: shapeless, featureless, colorless. In a sense this is correct, since the highest encompasses all that is below and so is not any particular thing, but all things. Yet Plotinus leaves no doubt that the One is the source of all beauty.

Therefore the productive power of all is the flower of beauty, a beauty which makes beauty.
[VI-7-32]

Thus the spiritual seeker desiring to return to the One needs only a simple direction. Follow beauty. It is natural to be attracted to earthly sorts of beauty. Handsome men, gorgeous women, visions of nature, alluring artwork—all these and so much more beg for attention. “Look at me; delight in me; long for me.”

But Plotinus tells us that what we dimly recognize in every beautiful object is the beauty beyond. We dart from one delight to another yet remain unsatisfied. For we never are able to gaze upon pure spiritual Beauty, only its shadowy material reflection.

The lover … has a kind of memory of beauty. But he cannot grasp it in its separateness, but he is overwhelmingly amazed and excited by visible beauties…. Then all these beauties must be reduced to unity, and he must be shown their origin.
[I-3-2]

This is, I have to say, a beautiful bit of philosophy, at once world-denying and beauty-affirming. So often mysticism is considered to be self-absorbed asceticism, closed-eye introverts contemplating their own navels or foreheads rather than the glories of nature and other human beings. There is indeed this side to Plotinus, yet his only reason for denying physical beauty is to gain a greater spiritual beauty. To empty one’s pockets of pennies so they may be filled with dollars isn’t the act of a miser, but of a lover of wealth.

Over and over, in many ways, the
Enneads
proclaim the wisdom of what was referred to before as one-stop happiness shopping. Most of us search for well-being hither and yon, here and there, in this person and that thing, in cherished beliefs and comfortable values. We sift through life like prospectors intently searching through huge piles of dirt for small flecks of gold, discarding most of the matter and ideas we come across, carefully clinging to what precious little seems to produce a glimmer of happiness in us.

Plotinus says that it is we who are made of gold, and all our sifting and searching is distracting us from finding the vast treasure of beauty that lies within.

When we know ourselves we are beautiful, but ugly when we are ignorant of ourselves.
[V-8-13]

Someone who truly knows him- or herself stands out from the crowd. Porphyry describes Plotinus as a “god-like man … mild and kind, most gentle and attractive,” who “sleeplessly kept his soul pure and ever strove toward the divine which he loved with all his soul.”
¹
Through him the divine shone clearly, as sunlight beams brightly through a clear spot on a soot-covered window.

The beauty in both us and the world generally is masked by matter. We can’t do anything about the world; that’s the province of the Soul of the All, or World Soul. We can, however, transform the ugliness of our own souls through a spiritual makeover. This is accomplished by turning away from every sort of beauty that can be perceived by the senses, for the supposed beauty of matter actually is ugly. Not because it is ugly in itself but because it masks what is true.

It’s as if a woman thought she was applying lipstick and eye shadow, and found out that a lump of coal, not makeup, was in her hand. First she would need to drop what she was holding. Then she would need to clean herself up and learn what truly produces beauty. For Plotinus, every addition to the natural beauty of the One is a subtraction. Our consciousnesses, says Plotinus, presently are in a sorry state.

We’ve become enthralled by images, shadows on the cave wall. What we consider to be substance, seemingly solid matter, actually is a flimsy gossamer covering over the enduring reality of spirit. Physical bodies and forms reveal only the merest hint of the true beauty beyond, just as a close-fitting mask conveys the shape of a face but hides the features that make it so attractive. If we love the ephemeral and derivative beauty of this world then we will be enraptured by the wellspring of beauty.

Even in this world, we must say that beauty consists less in symmetry than in the light that shines upon the symmetry, and this light is what is desirable. After all, why is it that the splendor of beauty shines more brightly upon a living face while only a trace of beauty appears on the face of a dead man? … Why is an ugly man, as long as he is alive, more beautiful than the beauty of a statue?
[VI-7-22]
²

Great question. Often a good-looking person is observed enjoying the company of someone quite plain. A comment is whispered: “What does she see in him?” (or he in her). Well, a beauty beyond sight—inward beauty.

Men, I have to admit, generally are less able to discern such hidden radiance. My sex is more attuned to lusting after the female form than loving the feminine soul. Women, though certainly not immune to carnal desire, generally are closer to understanding Plotinus’s message: when we long for someone, what we really are after is the subtle inner beauty that shines through the body, not the person’s plainly visible bodily form. What is it that makes a “real woman” or a “real man”? Something difficult to describe, yet easily recognized by those with the eye to see it.

Just as with the bodies here below our desire is not for the underlying material things but for the beauty imaged upon them.
[VI-7-22]

Our return to the One is furthered by looking beyond the physical and acquiring a taste for invisible beauties. Whatever delights us here will also delight us there, in the world beyond. And more so, since here our enjoyment of beauty is constrained by the coarseness of materiality. This is akin to only feeling our lover’s skin through thick gloves; the promise of pleasure is all around us, but our fulfillment is continually frustrated. Deeper and deeper we dive into sensuality, desperately trying to get the happiness we feel we deserve, not realizing that what we seek lies in the opposite direction.

So long as we believe that we are our outer selves we will be cut off from the beauties within. We have to experience the beauty of our souls. Our first and most important task is to realize this beauty. A beautiful soul sees beauty everywhere just as a person carrying a bright lantern is continually immersed in light, even during the darkness of night. How does a soul do this? By not gazing upon visible matter with the physical body during spiritual contemplation.

For it is certainly not by running around outside that the soul “sees self-control and justice,” but itself by itself in its understanding of itself and what it formerly was, seeing them standing in itself like splendid statues all rusted with time which it has cleaned: as if gold had a soul, and knocked off all that was earthy in it.
[IV-7-10]

Every material form—dogs, dirt, daisies, diamonds, whatever—springs from the spiritual realm and is seen much more clearly there. The immaterial forms or concepts in our minds—justice, judgment, joy, jealousy—also are dim reflections of substantial spiritual realities. Matter has cast a veil over simple truth, including the truth about ourselves. The beauty we seek, whether in things or thoughts, is wonderfully close at hand. We just need to look within rather than without.

So all of us are sculptors, regardless of our ability to wield a chisel and mallet. Each person can choose to create the most beautiful
objet d’art
imaginable, his own self. Actually this is not so much a matter of creation as one of discovery and cleansing. Pierre Hadot says, “For the ancients, sculpture was an art which ‘took away,’ as opposed to painting, an art which ‘added on.’ The statue pre-existed in the marble block and it was enough to take away what was superfluous in order to cause it to appear.”
³

This is the soul’s ugliness, not being pure and unmixed, like gold, but full of earthiness; if anyone takes the earthy stuff away the gold is left, and is beautiful, when it is singled out from other things and is alone by itself.
[I-6-5]

Virtue, wisdom, beauty, love—all these divine qualities already exist within us, just as the statue already exists within the stone. This is why spirituality is so natural when practiced correctly. Nothing needs to be forced. No need to pretend to be anything other than what we are. Our artistry is to chip away and toss aside from our awareness all the physical sensations and personal preoccupations that obscure the soul’s original glory

Go back inside yourself and look: if you do not yet see yourself as beautiful, then do as the sculptor does with a statue he wants to make beautiful; he chisels away one part, and levels off another, makes one spot smooth and another clear, until he shows forth a beautiful face on the statue.

Like him, remove what is superfluous, straighten what is crooked, clean up what is dark and make it bright, and never stop sculpting your own statue, until the godlike splendor of virtue shines forth to you.
[I-6-9]
⁴

Our great mistake is believing that beauty and ugliness exist out there in the world somewhere. We spend much time and effort beautifying our homes, our gardens, our bodies, our cars. No one plans a vacation in an ugly place. We love beautiful music, beautiful art, beautiful movies, beautiful books, and do our best to avoid what clashes with our aesthetic sensibilities.

And now Plotinus comes along asking a simple question: Is it possible that we are always and everywhere surrounded by beauty, and don’t recognize it?

How then can anyone be in beauty without seeing it? If he sees it as something different, he is not yet in beauty, but he is in it most perfectly when he becomes it.
[V-8-11]

An intelligent person carries his intelligence with him everywhere he goes. Ditto with an athletic person or a musical person. Knowledge, physical activity and song accompany these people not because they are picked up in the course of their travels through life but because intelligence, athleticism and musicality are a part of their being. Similarly, says Plotinus, a beautiful soul sees beauty in every nook and cranny of creation. He also attracts and enchants all who come in his presence, for in and through himself he radiates godlike qualities.

There is nothing wrong with creating and admiring external beauty. But our senses can only convey transmitted news of beauty that is now, and will always be, separate from ourselves. We should strive for more than merely enjoying beauty, as it is possible to become beauty.

In the One there is no separation, only union. So it might seem that here is where the soul will unite with true beauty along with all else we could possibly desire. However, in absolute unity there are no qualities. Hence it really is not proper to term the highest Good beautiful or best, but rather, beyond beauty and beyond the best.

Up to it
[the Good]
all things are beautiful. But he is beautiful beyond all beauty, and is king in the intelligible realm, transcending the best.
[I-8-2]

It is in spirit, the first emanation from the One, where beauty per se, intrinsic beauty, will be found. Not the beauty of something, but Beauty alone in its fullness. If the One is king, beyond beauty, then spirit is queen, the epitome of beauty. When we are immersed in spirit, we are immersed in beauty.

The Intellect is beautiful; indeed it is the most beautiful of all things. Situated in pure light and pure radiance, it includes within itself the nature of all beings. This beautiful world of ours is but a shadow and an image of its beauty…. It lives a blessed life, and whoever were to see it, and—as is fitting—submerge himself within it, and become One with it, would be seized by awe.
[III-8-11]
⁵