Recently I started re-reading the book I wrote about Plotinus' teachings, Return to the One, because someone had told me they'd ordered it, and I wanted to see if I still agreed with what I said about this Neoplatonist Greek mystic philosopher.
After all, I hadn't taken a look at the book for several years. It brings in a modest amount of Amazon royalties each month, but when I'm occasionally asked about the book, my typical response is along the line of "I still agree with much of it, but my views have changed quite a bit since I wrote it."
So the game I've been playing with myself these past few days is to find what still resonates with me in Return to the One.
One rule of that game is this: taking the advice I offered to readers in the "Preliminaries" section of the book, I'm trying to take a Big Picture view of Plotinus and what I wrote about his teachings, rather than a literal view where every word means just what it says and nothing more.
Be more concerned with grasping the broad outlines of Plotinus's philosophy than the specifics. It is better to comprehend the treatises in the Enneads as a whole, in an almost intuitive fashion, than to try to assemble a logical understanding bit by bit.
Having finished re-reading that Preliminaries section, I was struck by some passages relating to the self, a subject I'm fascinated by, because I'm convinced that neither I nor anyone else has an enduring self or soul, in line with Buddhism and modern neuroscience.
Plotinus said this, according to his student Porphyry, quoting from my book.
In like fashion, we're told that Plotinus refused a request made by one of his students to have a portrait made of him, explaining: "Isn't it enough that I have to bear this image with which Nature has covered us? Must I also consent to leaving behind me an image of that image -- this one even longer-lasting -- as if it were an image of something worth seeing?"
Thus Plotinus viewed his genuine being as something other than his physical form. This wasn't a self, though. Here's how I put it.
The primary goal of the mystic philosopher, as Plotinus teaches in the Enneads, is to bring the movable center of his or her consciousness into alignment with the unmoving center of existence, the One. A person's illusory and shifting sense of individuality thus must be distinguished from a true sense of self. If one traces his or her I-ness back to its source, as one would trace a line (or radius) back to the center of the circle from which it emanates, then the core of one's self will be found to be identical with the core of everything.
That's a nondual sort of philosophy, which makes sense, since Plotinus viewed the One as the essence of existence.
But it struck me that since Plotinus was writing in a pre-scientific age (the 3rd century), he had no idea of how the brain functioned. So in reclaiming Plotinus' teachings for our modern age, I took a look at what I said about the self in the initial part of Return to the One, viewing those statements as a neuroscientist or secular Buddhist might.
Here's the passages I came across.
Thus something can exist, yet barely be. And this, of course, includes one's own self.
Our goal is to be one, not many. In reality, for each of us there is only one being thinking thoughts and acting our actions. So whenever someone thinks one way and acts another a division is created that is at odds with the true nature of both the self and the cosmos. Truth is One, not multiple.
Whatever I am, I am not an object that I can look upon, separate from the consciousness doing the looking.
In the Enneads, Plotinus points us toward the only way of unmasking the deepest mysteries of life: become the mystery you wish to unmask and be nothing else. If you want to know what the essence of life is, simply be alive. If you want to know what the essence of consciousness is, simply be conscious. If you want to know what the essence of the One is, simply be the One.
Sam Harris, echoing Buddhist teachings that he is intimately familiar with, likes to say in the guided meditations on his Waking Up app, things such as:
Look at something. Be aware of that perception. Then briefly look for an entity that is doing the looking which is separate from the perception. In the moment where you don't find such an entity, that not-finding is what you're looking for.
Which sure sounds similar to the nondual Oneness at the core of Plotinus' teachings. Anyway, I'm going to continue re-reading my book, looking for more connections to my current atheist frame of mind in Return to the One.
[“In the Enneads, Plotinus points us toward the only way of unmasking the deepest mysteries of life: become the mystery you wish to unmask and be nothing else.”]
This could well apply to ‘mind’ and ‘self’, concepts that I feel mask much of what frustrates any enquiry into ‘self’ (or truth!). The concept ‘mind’ includes thoughts, memories, emotions, knowledge etc – the whole range of mental phenomenon. In fact, in using the concept so habitually it obscures what the mind actually is – the storehouse of information that has been amassed in the brain since birth. On investigating the mind, what is found is its contents, experienced as thought and memory – and of course, my ‘self’.
As for the notion of the mind being who we are, well, in a sense that is true seeing as all our accrued information represents my ‘self’, the ‘me’, ‘who I am’ etc. Yet it is possible to lose this information (disease, accident, etc.) and still retain the sense of ‘me’ – which is logical as even without all the accrued information, the whole-body organism persists as the real biological me. Even a simple celled creature has the sense of its own existence.
There is an awful lot of hype regarding the mind. Much of it stems from the wish to make the mind something more ethereal than it is. And also, as the mind is its contents and some of these contents give rise to the sense of a ‘me’, the ‘self’, then of course it feels it is imperative to maintain this illusory mind/self structure.
Sam Harris seems to have homed in to the crux of the matter. [“Look at something. Be aware of that perception. Then briefly look for an entity that is doing the looking which is separate from the perception. In the moment where you don't find such an entity, that not-finding is what you're looking for.”] Which is fine, but perhaps not complete until the mind/self is seen for what it is.
Posted by: Ron E. | July 17, 2022 at 08:56 AM
Peace of mind is realized only when you no longer hide behind one of the many masks you’ve been wearing all of your life.
Discovering authenticity within the conditioned personality is not easy.
We are trained from birth to please, not offend and to say and do what our society and time period declare is right.
We do this so that others will like us and admire us.
Thus, the potential for conflict is reduced.
Because this approach to life is based on inauthenticity it may ease tension on the surface in our dealings with others, but subconsciously, it causes worry in the event we are discovered to be faking it.
Being liked, loved or well thought of may well be an inherent survival mechanism.
However, the hidden cost is that the mind can never be at peace with itself, others and the world around it, because it has to remain on guard to prevent one from being accused of being a fraud.
The authentic self is discovered in solitude where such pretense can be dispensed with.
But that is just the first phase.
The second phase is accepting who you actually are, without fear of being criticized.
The third phase is living within the integrity of that authenticity without worrying what others think.
The fourth and final phase is the realization that there is not even an authentic self to worry about.
Posted by: Roger | July 17, 2022 at 11:13 AM
Roger. A fair description of the confusion of the mind myth.
Posted by: Ron E. | July 17, 2022 at 11:33 AM
Thanks Ron E.
I liked,
" ....... mind actually is – the storehouse of information that has been amassed in the brain since birth. On investigating the mind, what is found is its contents, experienced as thought and memory – and of course, my ‘self’."
Posted by: Roger | July 17, 2022 at 12:03 PM
"Thus, the potential for conflict is reduced."
I read an interesting passage once in one of the fragments of Heraclitus' remaining works. He mentions at some length that he welcomes conflict, because conflict is the motivator of change, of evolution, of progress, if I recall. The logical follow-on to that would be as we are pulling in our horns and doing our level best to avoid conflict, we are blunting our ability to make meaningful changes in our life, and in the world. We have homogenized ourselves.
We should, of course, not seek conflict for its own sake. But recognizing the value of constructive conflict may be a counterintuitive path to better things. After all, a sage of timeless wisdom once told us, "Without deviation, progress is not possible." Of course, I'm speaking of St. Frank Zappa.
Posted by: Dibloggenes | July 19, 2022 at 12:24 AM
With Peace of Mind, one can have open mindedness and critical thinking.
" ....... to avoid conflict, we are blunting our ability to make meaningful changes in our life, ....."
Yes, this has value, but it is relative to what the change is. My conflict may produce some harmful change, that I think is meaningful.
Posted by: Roger | July 19, 2022 at 07:52 AM