Return to the One (36 page)

In the same vein, Mansur al-Hallâj, a tenth-century Sufi mystic, was tried and executed by Islamic authorities for saying “I am the Truth.” But Borhân al-Din, another Sufi, spoke of the difference between a profane and a holy claim to identity with God: “Pharaoh, God’s curse upon him, said ‘I am your Lord.’ His use of the word ‘I’ was God’s curse upon him. Mansur said ‘I am God’ and his use of the word ‘I’ was a mercy from God.”
⁹
Franklin Lewis elucidates:

The insistence on duality of subject and object disappears when one has submerged his self in the divine, and this phrase, “I am the Truth,” in this state actually reflects the extreme humility of the speaker, whereas to speak of oneself as servant and God as an exterior “thou” merely insists upon one’s own existence, and therefore on duality
¹⁰

Since exoteric religions are based on an I-thou relationship between the individual and God, it is no wonder that they always have been much more popular than the esoteric teachings of mystics such as Eckhart, al-Hallâj and Plotinus. For the exoteric, I-ness isn’t a barrier to knowing or loving God, because the separate self is considered to remain both here in the world and hereafter in heaven. But the esoteric strives to attain a formless state of union in which all, or nearly all, distinctions between the soul and God vanish.

To make a sacrifice or pray in a place of worship is possible for anyone. To purify one’s consciousness of material images and thoughts so as to be able to merge the soul with spirit is a much more difficult task. Further, it is not even a goal sanctioned by the traditional Judeo-Christian-Islamic theologies, which posit that a large gap remains between man and God even at the height of spiritual attainment. This is why mystics are considered heretics if they aspire to know God more intimately than theological doctrine deems possible.

Yet the flame of mysticism never can be extinguished, despite the efforts of doctrinaire fundamentalists, because it is kept alight by the spark of the divine that burns, recognized or not, within the soul of every person. In the nascent mystic, or esoteric, that formless light has begun to pierce the inner shadows. A longing for enlightenment has taken hold. Reflections of God in religious forms no longer fulfill. The sun of the One has made its presence known, and the soul will not be content until it returns to its source.

Huston Smith says:

So the issue of unity and diversity in religion is converted into one of spiritual types: esoteric and exoteric. The esoteric minority consists of men and women who realize that they have their roots in the Absolute. Either they experience the identification directly or, failing this, they stand within earshot of its claim; something within them senses that the claim is true even if they cannot validate it completely. The exoteric majority is composed of the remainder of mankind for whom this way of talking about religion is sterile if not unintelligible.
¹¹

Religion typically denies that it is within an individual’s power to know God directly, at least while still alive in a human form. Faith in salvation after death thus becomes all-important because solid evidence of the divine presence usually will not occur during one’s life. However, faith plays a minor role in Plotinus’s philosophy because his emphasis is on the soul’s direct contemplation of spirit and the One. For the mystic, inner vision trumps outward belief, just as, for the scientist, experimental results trump conceptual theories.

It will be interesting, then, to conclude our study of Plotinus’s teachings by viewing him less as a philosopher and more as a spiritual scientist. With this change in perspective, I hope the legacy of the
Enneads
will be perceived more clearly, as will Plotinus’s relevance to the spiritual seeker in our modern, scientifically-advanced culture.

In the following chapter, we will consider the nature of a science of spirituality. We’ll find that Plotinus’s approach to knowing God and spirit has much in common with the scientific method, and that this goes a long way toward explaining the tension between the message of the
Enneads
and traditional theologies such as those in Christianity.

Toward a Science of Spirituality

W
E HAVE COMPUTERS
that soon will surpass the human brain’s information processing power but science still doesn’t know whether consciousness is produced by matter or exists independent of physical reality. We have theories that persuasively explain how the universe was formed in a big bang some fourteen billion years ago but science can only guess about what power was responsible for the creation, and continues to sustain material existence. We have made great strides toward deciphering the human genome but science lacks an understanding of what differentiates life from non-life and how living beings arose on earth.

Indeed, we know more and more about the world around us, but the mysteries of the world within us, the world that
is
us, are almost as unfathomed as in the days of the ancient Greeks. The search for meaning, as opposed to facts, is as elusive today as it was two thousand years ago. Erwin Schrödinger, a pioneering twentieth-century physicist, says:

I consider science an integrating part of our endeavor to answer the one great philosophical question which embraces all others, the one that Plotinus expressed by his brief: …
who are we?
And more than that: I consider this not only one of the tasks, but the task, of science, the only one that really counts.
¹

Given that science has expanded so vastly the boundaries of knowledge about material existence in the past few centuries without producing any indisputable advancement in our comprehension of spiritual existence, it is understandable that many people are deeply skeptical of the dominant role presently played by science and technology. They fear that scientism, an unwarranted faith in the ability of science to reveal the truths of the cosmos, is usurping the proper place of spirituality and religion.

However, there is little doubt that our problems stem not from a surfeit of knowledge about reality but from a deficit. If we could meld science’s commitment to a rigorous search for truth with religion’s openness to the possibility of realms of reality beyond the physical, the world would be much better off. Science has proven its ability to uncover the secrets of the physical realm. Now it is time to recognize that the scientific method is equally well suited to realizing the truth of spiritual domains.

Mysticism thus can be said to have an affinity of method with science, and an affinity of subject matter with religion. That is, the mystic, like the scientist, seeks to move from hypothesis to certainty (or, at least, near-certainty) by confirming or rejecting a possible truth about existence through careful observation and experimentation. Yet the domain of reality being studied lies beyond the physical, as does religion’s realm of interest, so non-material consciousness is both the mystic’s means of investigation and field of study. Evelyn Underhill says:

Normal consciousness sorts out some elements from the mass of experiences beating at our doors and constructs from them a certain order; but this order lacks any deep meaning or true cohesion, because normal consciousness is incapable of apprehending the underlying reality from which these scattered experiences proceed.

The claim of the mystical consciousness is to a closer reading of truth, to an apprehension of the divine unifying principle behind appearance…. To know this at first hand—not to guess, believe or accept, but to be certain—is the highest achievement of human consciousness, and the ultimate object of mysticism.
²

Material science has vastly increased our knowledge of the world without. This should encourage, rather than discourage, comparable efforts to realize the deepest truths of the world within, the domain of soul, spirit, and consciousness. For as we learn more and more about the astounding vastness, complexity, and order of the physical universe, what lies at the root of the marvels of creation becomes more of an enigma, not less.

John Wheeler, a physicist, nicely encapsulates the relation between knowledge and ignorance, which holds true in both the material and the spiritual realms: “We live on an island of knowledge surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does our shore of ignorance.”
³
The larger the area that is illuminated, the greater becomes the mystery of what lies unseen in the darkness beyond. Seemingly, we are destined to never stop sailing on the vessel of Inquiry, for more truth always lies over the horizon.

Plotinus, though, taught that there was a way out of the ultimately frustrating circularity of more knowledge leading to more ignorance, a distressing condition clearly diagnosed by the Skeptics and other Greek schools of philosophy. The key to the resolution of this dilemma lies in the mystic premise that without is within. The fundamental essence of the cosmos is also the fundamental essence of
us
. The ocean is contained within each drop.

Thus singularity of consciousness, one-pointedness, is the key to realizing the One that is the foundation of everything in existence. This fundamental spiritual precept, “become one to know the One,” is wonderfully simple and rational. It lies at the heart of almost every mystical philosophy, though the manner in which this teaching is expressed has varied in different cultures.

The mystic seeks to know the knower within, pure consciousness, rather than what can be known without. Instead of trying to expand his or her personal island of material and mental knowledge, the goal is to shrink it, at least during the time of contemplation or meditation. For when nothing is known, sensed, felt, or willed, what remains can only be everything—the ineffable divinity Plotinus calls the One.

Spiritual science and material science thus look for truth in opposite directions, in accord with a central tenet of Plotinus’s mystic philosophy: there are two grand currents in the cosmos, emanation and return. Broadly speaking, the current of emanation is downward and outward, while the current of return is upward and inward (recognizing that these directions refer to states of consciousness, not spatial dimensions).

A physical scientist focuses his attention on outward forms of matter and energy, while a mystic concentrates on the inner formlessness of his own soul. This means that the mystic aims to realize ultimate truth by following the path of ignorance instead of knowledge. Ignorance, that is, of anything connected with materiality.

For if matter is false and spirit true, then a negation of falsity will produce a positive result: knowledge of what is genuinely and permanently real. As we have already noted, this
via negativa
(the negative way) is the spiritual path favored by most mystics throughout recorded history including Plotinus and medieval Christian mystics such as Meister Eckhart.

Eckhart, who has been called the most Plotinian of all Christian philosophers, spoke in his sermons of the danger of confusing images with reality:

Since it is God’s nature not to be
like
anyone, we have to come to the state of being
nothing in
order to enter in to the same nature that He is…. All that smacks of
likeness
must be ousted that I may be transplanted into God and become one with Him…. Once this happens there is nothing hidden in God that is not revealed, that is not mine…. But so that nothing may be hidden in God that is not revealed to me, there must appear to be nothing
like,
no image, for no image can reveal to us the Godhead or its essence.
⁴

Consciousness, in other words, must be cleansed of all material and mental images so that it returns to its original state: an unblemished mirror able to perfectly reflect the mysteries and glory of God. The human soul thus is the ultimate scientific instrument. Telescopes, particle detectors, chemical analyzers, and the like convey to a researcher’s consciousness information about the world out there. These are images of physical reality, not reality as it is. The soul, however, is capable of realizing spiritual truth directly, without any intermediary. Becoming spirit, it knows spirit.

However, it is much easier to embrace a physical or mental representation of God with body or mind than to merge formless soul with the formless One. This probably is the main reason why a scientifically-inspired spirituality fails to appeal to most people. Simply put, it requires hard work. To think, feel, and act is easy, so to think purportedly divine thoughts, feel purportedly divine emotions, and act out purportedly divine actions is within everyone’s current capacity.

But to refrain from thinking, feeling, and acting is the most difficult job in the world—and the most important. Says Eckhart, “They must know that the very best and noblest attainment in this life is to be silent and let God work and speak within. When the powers have been completely withdrawn from all their works and images,
then
the Word is spoken.”
⁵

Since turning off the chatterbox of thoughts that plays almost continuously in the mind appears to be a Sisyphean task, a mystic who tells us that this is the only way to hear and know God will not be received all that enthusiastically. As Huston Smith observed previously, the majority of people will be drawn to exoteric religions in which much greater emphasis is placed on outward action than on inner silence.

But exoterism by itself keeps us stuck in a morass of spiritual complacency. Conjecture becomes a substitute for direct perception. Instead of climbing to the top of the mountain of reality and seeing for ourselves what lies above the mist of appearances, we huddle with other flatland-lovers of a like persuasion and say “How wonderful that the view from the summit is like this.”

No, it isn’t, for two reasons. First, only those who have returned to the One know the nature of God. Second, these saints and sages universally say that what they know cannot be expressed. So it is reasonable to conclude that until the soul is reunited with the One, we are all agnostics if not atheists. To hypothesize about God is a far cry from realizing God.

Still, there is persuasive evidence that some people have realized the ultimate divinity and that among this august company are founders of the world’s great religions. There also may be people alive today with a comparable realization, modern saints and seers. But if a claim is made that someone, living or dead, has attained the highest truth, that claim deserves the closest scrutiny and must not be accepted at face value.

This is one aspect of the scientific method: anyone who proposes that something is true must be prepared to defend his or her thesis against all comers. Such results in a conceptual survival of the fittest, with only the strongest statements about the nature of reality being able to resist attacks against their validity. As A.H. Armstrong says:

When claims to possess an exclusive revelation of God or to speak his word are made by human beings (and it is always human beings who make them), they must be examined particularly fiercely and hypercritically for the honor of God, to avoid the blasphemy and sacrilege of deifying a human opinion.

Or, to put it less ferociously, the Hellenic (and, as it seems to me, still proper) answer to “Thus saith the Lord” is
“Does
he?,” asked in a distinctly skeptical tone, followed by a courteous but drastic “testing to destruction” of the claims and credentials of the person or persons making this enormous statement.
⁶

Further, even if we conclude that we are justified in accepting someone’s claim to spiritual truth, this certainly doesn’t mean that he or she is the only repository of such knowledge.

Most likely, mathematicians could come to agree, albeit with some difficulty, on what distinguishes a great from a good mathematician and perhaps they could even come to a consensus on who the greatest mathematician of all time was. But this wouldn’t preclude someone else from being just a little bit less great than that person, or even equal. And it certainly wouldn’t obviate the possibility of an even greater mathematician living in the future, or having lived unrecognized in the past.

After all, there is every reason to believe that both the material and spiritual laws of nature are unchanging. So these laws are capable of being discovered or realized by anyone at any time, if the investigator engages in the proper experimental method. Indeed, scientists have confirmed that there is no trace of arbitrariness in the physical laws of nature (even probabilistic events, as in the quantum realm, are governed by well-defined laws of probability). Likewise, Plotinus taught that unalloyed contingency, caprice, or chance are similarly absent from the higher realms of soul and spirit.

In part this is because individuality as we know it ends early on in Plotinus’s cosmology. Here on Earth, souls have taken on coverings of many different physical and mental forms. There in the spiritual world, those veils are removed and each soul is found to contain the All, just as the All contains each soul. True intelligence—an immediate, intuitive, universal and unerring knowing—replaces the limited knowledge to which we are privy now, so shakily founded on fallible reason and sense perception.

Hence, upon the possibility of separating one’s consciousness from matter and the lower realms of mind rests Plotinus’s claim to a scientific status for his metaphysics. Granted, he doesn’t make such a claim explicitly, but this is because both the ancient and the classic Greek philosophers made no distinction between science and religion or physics and metaphysics. So Plotinus took it for granted that mystic philosophy was science and science was mystic philosophy.