Return to the One (28 page)

Detachment Is Delightful

A
TTACHMENT AND DETACHMENT
, holding on to this and letting go of that, is a basic dynamic of life.

Our lungs absorb oxygen and expel carbon dioxide. Our digestive systems take in nutrients and eliminate waste products. Our attention continually seizes upon certain feelings and thoughts to the exclusion of others. Our eyes move from sight to sight and our ears from sound to sound.

So when Plotinus urges us to attach ourselves to the One and detach ourselves from materiality, the basic process of which he speaks already is familiar to us. We are expert in connecting to one thing while disconnecting from other things. But since our attaching and detaching involves lesser goods, which fail to fully satisfy, we never approach the true Good. Thus if we detach ourselves from everything without, all the people and things that we wrongly believe will bring us lasting happiness, our souls will be able to experience the delight of the One within.

The soul must let go of all outward things and turn altogether to what is within, and not be inclined to any outward thing, but ignoring all things (as it did formerly in sense-perception, but then in the realm of Forms), and even ignoring itself, come to be in contemplation of that One.
[VI-9-7]

Here Plotinus describes the scope of the mystic philosopher’s detachment. There are three levels of withdrawal from all outward things. First, the spiritual seeker turns away from both sense-perception and any thoughts or memories of the physical world. This leads the soul, now disconnected from materiality, into the spiritual world, the realm of forms.

Next, the ethereal beauty of higher realms also must be left behind. For even though the spiritual world is much more unified than the physical universe, it is still a one-many, not the One. There are sights and sounds and other sensations in the World of Forms. These too must be ignored, says Plotinus, just as physical perceptions were before.

Finally, after casting aside all else, the soul must ignore even itself to truly contemplate the One. This contemplation is so complete that nothing separates the contemplator and the contemplated except the slightest degree of otherness: soul becomes a drop in the spiritual ocean.

A lover, it is said, has eyes only for his or her beloved. Similarly, Plotinus tells us that the realized soul is so happy to have returned to the One that everything else in existence could vanish and the soul would rejoice, since then nothing could possibly interfere with her intimate communion.

She
[soul]
is filled with joy, and she is not mistaken, just because she is filled with joy; she does not speak in this way because her body is tickled with pleasure, but because she has become once again what she was before, when she was happy. She says she despises … everything which used to give her pleasure.

…
If everything else round her were to be destroyed, that would be just what she wanted, so that she could be close to him
[the One]
in solitude. Such is the joy to which she has acceded.
[VI-7-34]
¹

The final destination of the
Enneads,
a travel guide for the soul, may be termed Joy. This is important to remember because if certain quotations are taken out of context, Plotinus can be mistaken for a misanthrope. For example, one of the
Enneads
most frequently-cited passages is a description of the spiritual journey as “a solitary flight to the Solitary One.”

This sounds rather dreary and lonely. The mystic sets forth all alone to return to the heart of aloneness, not exactly the stuff of which spiritual dreams are made. But let’s look at the larger passage in which these words are found:

When one falls from contemplation, he must reawaken the virtue within him. When he perceives himself as embellished and brought into order by these virtues, he will be made light again, and will proceed, through virtue, to Intellect and wisdom; then, through wisdom, to the One.

Such is the life of the gods and of divine and happy men: release from the things down here below, a life which takes no pleasure in earthly things, a solitary flight to the Solitary One.
[VI-9-11]
²

This inward detachment from all down here below is not the act of a world-denier but of a God-affirmer. Through contemplation of higher realities, the spiritual traveler passes through realms of limited pleasure in order to reach the domain of unlimited bliss, the One. The journey is solitary because it takes place within a person’s consciousness, not outside in the physical world where others can accompany him or her. And the endpoint is described as the Solitary One because such is the sole foundation of all that exists. As we read before,

For from that true universe which is one this universe comes into existence, which is not truly one.
[III-2-2]

Imagine pairs of lovers enjoying a park on a warm summer afternoon. They hold hands, hug and kiss, nestle on a bench, cuddle while lying on the grass. Each of these present attachments flows from a prior detachment. The men and women strolling along with their arms around each other, whispering intimacies, were not always so entwined. A few days, months, or years ago they were apart. And now they are together. If they had not detached from a previous lover, or their own aloneness, they wouldn’t presently be attached.

So this is the spirit in which Plotinus’s paeans to detachment should be taken: when a person leaves his house to visit a good friend whom he hasn’t seen for a long time, it isn’t because he hates his home. Rather, he longs to be with his absent companion. In the same fashion, the mystic philosopher doesn’t despise this world. Rather, he or she yearns for the One who is beyond this world so much more that, by comparison, nothing on Earth holds any importance.

What is there in human affairs so great that it will not be despised by the person who has risen above them, and who is no longer dependent on anything here down below?

Such a person will not consider even the greatest strokes of good luck to be of importance, whether they be ruling over kingdoms, power over cities and peoples, or colonizations and foundations of cities, even if he is responsible for them himself. Will such a person, then, think it important if he is thrown out of power, or if he sees his own city razed to the ground?

…
He would no longer be a sage if he considered that wood and stones were important; nor, for that matter, that mortal beings should die!
[I-4-7]
³

Strong stuff. In one fell swoop Plotinus takes away every earthly reason we might have to feel either sad or joyful. He tells us that nothing in human affairs is worth either a tear or a smile. It is all shadows and seeming. Our concern for anything made of matter, including our own bodies, is misplaced.

Those who have reached the spiritual heights realize that everything here comes from there. To a sage, grieving over the loss of something physical is as silly as believing that a person standing in front of a mirror fractures into pieces if the mirror breaks. The true World of Forms is unaffected by what happens to the images of reality cast upon this material world.

Thus it isn’t so much that Plotinus is unsympathetic to someone who has suffered a loss as that he doesn’t recognize separation from anything physical, even a person’s own body at death, as entailing the loss of something valuable. In fact, he goes so far as to consider death a gain.

After all, we say that such a person should believe that death is better than life with the body. [I-4-7]
⁴

J.M. Rist says, “All this, we should notice, is not intended to represent the wise man as unconcerned with friendship and harsh…. On the contrary, his very detachment from the world and its worries will make him the best of friends.”
⁵
Why? Because the sage is able to offer his friends the most precious gift of all: wise understanding of the human condition.

A man of this sort will not be unfriendly or unsympathetic…. But he will render to his friends all that he renders to himself, and so will be the best of friends as well as remaining intelligent.
[I-4-15]

Just as a sick doctor is handicapped in healing his patients, so is a woman less able to aid a distraught friend if she too is down in the dumps. Hence Plotinus implies that we can be the best of friends only when we have become the companion of the One. Possessing the wisdom that comes from knowing the Good, one is able to offer sound counsel and support to those in need.

Our aim is to emulate the detachment of the Soul of the All as it effortlessly manages the affairs of this universe without being affected in any way by its involvement with materiality.

The soul of the universe is not troubled; it has nothing that it can be troubled by…. As we draw near to the completely untroubled state we can imitate the soul of the universe.
[II-9-18]

This doesn’t mean that we cease to feel painful and pleasurable sensations, for these are undeniable accouterments of human life. But we need to consider what is affected for good or ill by such physical stimuli. Body soul, or both body and soul? Plotinus teaches that only the lower aspect of soul is entangled with the beast, body. The higher aspect of soul, each person’s true self, always is detached from what happens to the beast.

Amazingly, this includes even such extreme suffering as being burned alive in a bronze statue, the “bull of Phalaris” (Phalaris was a Sicilian tyrant who put victims in the statue and, when a fire was lit beneath it, perceived their cries as the bellowing of the lifeless bull).

As for the activities of the sage relating to contemplation: some, indeed, might perhaps be hindered [by outside circumstances]…. Yet the “greatest lesson” is always near at hand and present for him; all the more so if he were inside the so-called “bull of Phalaris.”

It is vain to call such a situation pleasant, whether they repeat it twice or many times, for according to them
[the Epicureans]
, the person claiming “this is pleasant” is the same as the one in a situation of agony.

For us, however, the person who suffers is one thing, the person speaking is another. Although this other is forced to live with the sufferer, yet he will never leave off the contemplation of the Good in its entirety.
[I-4-13]
⁶

Michael Chase explains that the greatest lesson refers to what Plato calls the Idea of the Good, or of the One. Chase notes that the sage “can, thanks to assiduous exercise, call it to mind at each and every moment, realize the identity of the best part of himself with the Principle of all things, and thereby become indifferent to external circumstances.”
⁷

By contrast, the Epicurean philosophers believed only in a bodily self that was limited to experiencing physical reality. So Plotinus observes that it would be ridiculous for Epicureans being burned alive to say “this is pleasant,” because in their world view the person physically suffering is the same person claiming not to suffer, an obvious contradiction. But if the higher soul is detached from physical sensations, as Plotinus holds, then it is possible to differentiate between the person who is suffering bodily and the person who continues to experience the Good spiritually.

For most of us, life is a never-ending seesaw of ups and downs. One moment we are soaring with delight, the next moment we are cast into despair. The tide of our well-being rises and falls in concert with the moon of outward circumstances. Try as we may to remain level-headed and inwardly balanced, it is exceedingly difficult to remain centered on the fulcrum of consciousness, the higher aspect of soul, and be neither attracted by worldly pleasure nor repelled by worldly pain.

However, such is the state of those whose inner vision is firmly focused on the reality of spirit and the One, not of the ordinary person whose attention is still pulled hither and yon by whatever shadowy material illusion is presented to the physical senses. The sage is detached from what his body experiences. He is aware of physical sensations but inwardly remains almost totally unaffected by them.

One must understand that things do not look to the good man as they look to others; none of his experiences penetrate to the inner self, pleasures and pains no more than any of the others.
[I-4-8]

This detached attitude of the mystic philosopher can appear as pathological indifference to those who believe that a person’s humanity is manifested by an empathic sharing of other people’s joys and sorrows. But since Plotinus considers physical existence and all that comes with it akin to a dream, it makes no sense to him to share in someone else’s fantasy. Even though the vast majority of people spend their lives being either frightened or enthralled by shadows, in no way is this proof of their reality.

One must not take weeping and lamenting as evidence of the presence of evils, for children, too, weep and wail over things that are not evils.
[III-2-15]