WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.819 We often talk about history in terms of, you 00:00:02.819 --> 00:00:06.040 know, the loud people, the conquerors, the revolutionaries, 00:00:06.040 --> 00:00:08.000 the people who break things. Right. Generals 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:10.720 who smashed armies, politicians who dismantled 00:00:10.720 --> 00:00:13.300 empires. We're just naturally drawn to the noise. 00:00:13.419 --> 00:00:16.239 Of course. It's human nature. If something explodes, 00:00:16.440 --> 00:00:19.100 you look at it. Exactly. But today I want to 00:00:19.100 --> 00:00:24.039 look at a figure who was arguably quieter than 00:00:24.039 --> 00:00:27.859 a librarian. but who acted as this massive, almost 00:00:27.859 --> 00:00:30.960 invisible bridge between two completely different 00:00:30.960 --> 00:00:33.899 eras of human thought. He really did. We're talking 00:00:33.899 --> 00:00:36.320 about the connective tissue that links the, let's 00:00:36.320 --> 00:00:38.899 say, rigorous logic of ancient Greece, Plato, 00:00:38.979 --> 00:00:43.920 and Aristotle to the spiritual, religious intensity 00:00:43.920 --> 00:00:46.939 of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and even 00:00:46.939 --> 00:00:49.229 beyond that. It's a fascinating position he holds 00:00:49.229 --> 00:00:51.189 because without him, that whole transition from 00:00:51.189 --> 00:00:53.350 what we think of as reason to faith in the West, 00:00:53.570 --> 00:00:55.729 it just looks completely different. And right 00:00:55.729 --> 00:00:57.429 there in the middle of it all, standing on that 00:00:57.429 --> 00:01:00.289 bridge, is a man named Plotnus. Plotnus, the 00:01:00.289 --> 00:01:03.189 founder of what we now call Neoplatonism. Although, 00:01:03.310 --> 00:01:05.269 we should probably clarify right out of the gate, 00:01:05.430 --> 00:01:07.609 he never would have used that word. He wouldn't 00:01:07.609 --> 00:01:10.069 have called himself a Neoplatonist. No, not at 00:01:10.069 --> 00:01:12.569 all. He didn't think he was inventing anything 00:01:12.569 --> 00:01:15.030 Neo or new. He just thought he was being a good 00:01:15.030 --> 00:01:17.170 Platonist, you know, reading the old... text 00:01:17.170 --> 00:01:19.790 correctly but he wasn't just dusting off old 00:01:19.790 --> 00:01:22.090 scrolls i mean this is a guy with a serious edge 00:01:22.090 --> 00:01:24.730 here's the hook that really got me interested 00:01:24.730 --> 00:01:29.120 we are talking about a philosopher who was so 00:01:29.120 --> 00:01:32.140 dismissive of the physical world, so completely 00:01:32.140 --> 00:01:35.120 over the concept of having a body, that when 00:01:35.120 --> 00:01:37.159 his students begged to have his portrait painted, 00:01:37.359 --> 00:01:40.060 he actually got angry. He did. It's a famous 00:01:40.060 --> 00:01:43.420 anecdote. He flat out refused to sit for a painter. 00:01:43.640 --> 00:01:46.120 Which is, you have to admit, a terrible marketing 00:01:46.120 --> 00:01:48.859 strategy for a public figure. Oh, terrible. But 00:01:48.859 --> 00:01:51.000 his reasoning was perfectly consistent with his 00:01:51.000 --> 00:01:54.150 philosophy. He asked them, is it not enough to 00:01:54.150 --> 00:01:57.069 carry around this image in which nature has enclosed 00:01:57.069 --> 00:01:59.989 us? And then the killer line. Must you also leave 00:01:59.989 --> 00:02:02.489 behind an image of the image? An image of the 00:02:02.489 --> 00:02:05.269 image. That right there is the key phrase for 00:02:05.269 --> 00:02:07.909 understanding him. It is. He saw his physical 00:02:07.909 --> 00:02:10.770 body as a shadow of a shadow, a mere mimicry 00:02:10.770 --> 00:02:14.030 of his true self. So in his mind, painting a 00:02:14.030 --> 00:02:16.430 portrait of his face was, it was like taking 00:02:16.430 --> 00:02:18.650 a photograph of a costume. It just wasn't him. 00:02:19.189 --> 00:02:21.830 So our mission today is to explore this enigma. 00:02:22.050 --> 00:02:24.349 We're going to look at a man born in Egypt in 00:02:24.349 --> 00:02:27.289 the 3rd century who ended up changing how humanity 00:02:27.289 --> 00:02:30.460 thinks about the soul, the intellect, and this 00:02:30.460 --> 00:02:34.080 huge concept of the one. And maybe most importantly 00:02:34.080 --> 00:02:36.039 for us listening today, we're going to look at 00:02:36.039 --> 00:02:38.819 his radical ideas about happiness. Because for 00:02:38.819 --> 00:02:42.139 Plotinus, happiness had absolutely nothing to 00:02:42.139 --> 00:02:44.259 do with what was happening to you and everything 00:02:44.259 --> 00:02:45.860 to do with what was happening in you. It's a 00:02:45.860 --> 00:02:48.039 radically empowering philosophy. It really is. 00:02:48.139 --> 00:02:49.900 Especially when you understand the architecture 00:02:49.900 --> 00:02:52.719 of reality he built to support it. But it does 00:02:52.719 --> 00:02:55.460 require you to rethink what you consider real. 00:02:56.020 --> 00:02:59.189 Okay, so we have a stack of sources here. pulling 00:02:59.189 --> 00:03:01.229 heavily from the detailed biography left by his 00:03:01.229 --> 00:03:03.389 student Porphyry. Porphyry is key. Right. And 00:03:03.389 --> 00:03:05.889 also the Ennades, which is his major work. And 00:03:05.889 --> 00:03:08.289 of course, modern scholarship on that whole transition 00:03:08.289 --> 00:03:10.770 from the classical world to late antiquity. And 00:03:10.770 --> 00:03:13.449 we really do have to rely on Porphyry here. Without 00:03:13.449 --> 00:03:15.930 him, Plotinus would just be a ghost. So let's 00:03:15.930 --> 00:03:18.229 jump into section one, the reluctant biography. 00:03:19.069 --> 00:03:22.669 And reluctant really is the perfect word. It 00:03:22.669 --> 00:03:24.789 absolutely is. I mean, usually when you study 00:03:24.789 --> 00:03:26.610 a historical figure, you start with the basics. 00:03:27.229 --> 00:03:31.080 Birthday. Parents, hometown. With Plopness, it's 00:03:31.080 --> 00:03:33.080 just a mystery box. We don't even know his birthday. 00:03:33.340 --> 00:03:35.539 We don't. We have to do some math to figure it 00:03:35.539 --> 00:03:38.539 out. We know he died in 270 CE, and Porphyry 00:03:38.539 --> 00:03:41.759 tells us he was about 66. So we place his birth 00:03:41.759 --> 00:03:45.719 around 204 or 205 CE, and he was likely born 00:03:45.719 --> 00:03:50.240 in Lycopolis, Egypt. So is he Egyptian? Geographically, 00:03:50.259 --> 00:03:53.259 yes. But culturally, he was entirely Greek. Oh, 00:03:53.319 --> 00:03:55.500 OK. His native language was Greek. He was educated 00:03:55.500 --> 00:03:58.080 in the Greek classics. And historians have argued 00:03:58.080 --> 00:04:00.419 for centuries about whether his family was, you 00:04:00.419 --> 00:04:03.080 know, Hellenized Egyptian or Roman settlers or 00:04:03.080 --> 00:04:05.580 Greek immigrants. But honestly, Plotinus would 00:04:05.580 --> 00:04:07.020 probably be so annoyed that we're even talking 00:04:07.020 --> 00:04:09.240 about this. He'd be rolling his eyes from the 00:04:09.240 --> 00:04:12.949 great beyond. He would. To him, discussing his 00:04:12.949 --> 00:04:15.930 ancestry or his race was a complete waste of 00:04:15.930 --> 00:04:18.069 time. It was like discussing the cage you're 00:04:18.069 --> 00:04:20.310 trapped in rather than the person inside it. 00:04:20.730 --> 00:04:24.149 Porphyry explicitly says Plotinus never, ever 00:04:24.149 --> 00:04:27.149 discussed his parents, his race, or his childhood. 00:04:27.370 --> 00:04:30.069 Because of that inherent distrust of materiality. 00:04:30.089 --> 00:04:33.589 Exactly. He viewed the physical body as a mimicry. 00:04:33.800 --> 00:04:36.019 So if you identify with your history or your 00:04:36.019 --> 00:04:38.480 genetics or where you were born, you're identifying 00:04:38.480 --> 00:04:41.120 with the shadow. He wanted to identify with the 00:04:41.120 --> 00:04:43.420 light that casts the shadow. But his students 00:04:43.420 --> 00:04:45.540 were clever, right? They did manage to get that 00:04:45.540 --> 00:04:48.160 portrait anyway. They did. This guy, Carterius, 00:04:48.259 --> 00:04:50.420 was one of the most famous painters of the time. 00:04:50.939 --> 00:04:53.180 Porphyry couldn't get Plotinus to sit, so he 00:04:53.180 --> 00:04:55.300 just invited Carterius to the open lectures. 00:04:55.480 --> 00:04:57.180 Just to come and hang out? Yeah, the painter 00:04:57.180 --> 00:04:59.579 would sit there in the audience, staring intently 00:04:59.579 --> 00:05:02.579 at Plotinus, memorizing his features, the way 00:05:02.579 --> 00:05:05.339 the light hit his nose, the set of his jaw. Then 00:05:05.339 --> 00:05:07.459 he'd rush home and sketch from memory. That's 00:05:07.459 --> 00:05:10.060 basically the first unauthorized paparazzi shot 00:05:10.060 --> 00:05:13.649 in philosophy. It is, essentially. And he eventually 00:05:13.649 --> 00:05:16.209 produced a portrait that Porphyry said was an 00:05:16.209 --> 00:05:18.750 excellent likeness. So we do know what he looked 00:05:18.750 --> 00:05:22.009 like, despite his best efforts to remain an image 00:05:22.009 --> 00:05:25.149 of an image. Now, despite this sort of grumpy 00:05:25.149 --> 00:05:27.829 attitude toward his own history, the sources 00:05:27.829 --> 00:05:30.810 say he wasn't a hermit, right? I kind of picture 00:05:30.810 --> 00:05:33.750 a guy like this living in a cave. Yelling at 00:05:33.750 --> 00:05:36.709 clouds. Not at all. And that's the paradox. Despite 00:05:36.709 --> 00:05:38.709 dismissing the physical world as an illusion 00:05:38.709 --> 00:05:41.810 or a shadow, his social and moral life was, by 00:05:41.810 --> 00:05:43.750 all accounts, of the highest standard. He lived 00:05:43.750 --> 00:05:45.550 in Rome. He was surrounded by people. And he 00:05:45.550 --> 00:05:47.970 was actually a caregiver. He was a very prestid 00:05:47.970 --> 00:05:50.829 one. Wealthy Romans who were dying would leave 00:05:50.829 --> 00:05:53.170 their children in his care, trusting him to manage 00:05:53.170 --> 00:05:56.149 their estates and their education. Porphyry tells 00:05:56.149 --> 00:05:58.509 us his house was full of young boys and maidens. 00:05:58.589 --> 00:06:01.009 That is just a fascinating contradiction. This 00:06:01.009 --> 00:06:03.550 world is a shadow, but... listen, kids, I'm going 00:06:03.550 --> 00:06:05.230 to make sure you get a good education and your 00:06:05.230 --> 00:06:07.709 inheritance is managed properly. It shows that 00:06:07.709 --> 00:06:10.250 his philosophy wasn't about being cruel or indifferent. 00:06:10.550 --> 00:06:13.670 It was more like you could participate in the 00:06:13.670 --> 00:06:16.269 play of life with total integrity, even if you 00:06:16.269 --> 00:06:18.509 knew it was just a play. Okay, let's talk about 00:06:18.509 --> 00:06:21.490 his search for wisdom. Because he didn't start 00:06:21.490 --> 00:06:23.889 this philosophy gig straight out of the cradle. 00:06:24.110 --> 00:06:26.829 No, he was a late bloomer by ancient standards. 00:06:27.050 --> 00:06:29.230 He didn't take up the serious study of philosophy 00:06:29.230 --> 00:06:32.569 until he was 28. Which is like... Starting your 00:06:32.569 --> 00:06:36.050 tech startup at 50 today, basically. In the ancient 00:06:36.050 --> 00:06:39.209 world, yes. He traveled to Alexandria, which 00:06:39.209 --> 00:06:41.449 at the time was the intellectual capital of the 00:06:41.449 --> 00:06:44.129 world. It was the place where everything converged. 00:06:44.129 --> 00:06:47.389 Greek, Jewish, Egyptian, Persian thought. It 00:06:47.389 --> 00:06:49.990 was all there. And he was picky. Extremely. He 00:06:49.990 --> 00:06:52.269 went from teacher to teacher, leaving all of 00:06:52.269 --> 00:06:54.709 them dissatisfied. He was actually falling into 00:06:54.709 --> 00:06:56.850 a depression about it. He told a friend he was 00:06:56.850 --> 00:06:59.310 looking for something he couldn't find, a rigorous 00:06:59.310 --> 00:07:02.810 system that also touched the divine. Okay. Finally, 00:07:02.810 --> 00:07:04.850 the friend told him to go check out this self 00:07:04.850 --> 00:07:08.329 -taught philosopher named Ammonius Saccas. The 00:07:08.329 --> 00:07:11.850 sap porter. Right. Ammonius had been a laborer, 00:07:11.850 --> 00:07:15.329 a porter, before turning to philosophy. Plotinus 00:07:15.329 --> 00:07:17.449 walks in, hears Ammonius. speak and immediately 00:07:17.449 --> 00:07:19.589 declares to his friend, this is the man I was 00:07:19.589 --> 00:07:22.170 looking for. I love that moment. It's that resonance. 00:07:22.449 --> 00:07:23.769 You know, when you're searching for a sound you 00:07:23.769 --> 00:07:25.870 can't quite hear and then someone plays the note 00:07:25.870 --> 00:07:28.569 and it just clicks. And he stayed with Ammonius 00:07:28.569 --> 00:07:31.889 for 11 years. 11 years. We don't know exactly 00:07:31.889 --> 00:07:34.610 what Ammonius taught because a bit like Socrates, 00:07:34.790 --> 00:07:38.129 he didn't write anything down. But it clearly 00:07:38.129 --> 00:07:41.069 formed the bedrock of Plutinus' thought, this 00:07:41.069 --> 00:07:45.149 blend of Plato with a very high spiritual drive. 00:07:45.389 --> 00:07:49.399 But then... Plutonius gets the itch. He's 38 00:07:49.399 --> 00:07:51.839 years old now. He's mastered what Alexandria 00:07:51.839 --> 00:07:55.100 has to offer. And he decides he wants to go to 00:07:55.100 --> 00:07:57.819 the source of Eastern wisdom. He wants to study 00:07:57.819 --> 00:08:00.060 Persian and Indian philosophy. This is where 00:08:00.060 --> 00:08:02.240 the biography suddenly turns into an action movie 00:08:02.240 --> 00:08:04.120 for a minute. It really does. He doesn't just, 00:08:04.160 --> 00:08:06.579 you know, buy a ticket to India. No, you couldn't. 00:08:06.620 --> 00:08:09.019 At that time, the Roman Empire and the Persian 00:08:09.019 --> 00:08:11.120 Empire were enemies. You couldn't just cross 00:08:11.120 --> 00:08:14.810 the border as a tourist philosopher. To get access 00:08:14.810 --> 00:08:17.850 to the wisdom of the Magi and the Brahmins, Plutinus 00:08:17.850 --> 00:08:20.649 does something drastic. He enlists. He enlists 00:08:20.649 --> 00:08:22.850 in the Roman army. I just have this mental image 00:08:22.850 --> 00:08:25.670 of him in the back of the legion formation, ignoring 00:08:25.670 --> 00:08:28.290 the spear drills and trying to conjugate Sanskrit 00:08:28.290 --> 00:08:31.199 verbs in his head. It was an incredibly risky 00:08:31.199 --> 00:08:34.399 move. The emperor at the time, Gordian III, was 00:08:34.399 --> 00:08:37.159 launching a massive campaign to march on Persia. 00:08:37.299 --> 00:08:40.580 So Plotinus, the mystic philosopher who thinks 00:08:40.580 --> 00:08:43.919 the body is a shadow, puts on armor and marches 00:08:43.919 --> 00:08:46.100 into war. And the outcome? A total disaster. 00:08:46.460 --> 00:08:49.720 The campaign failed miserably. Emperor Gordian 00:08:49.720 --> 00:08:52.960 III was killed, either in battle or, as some 00:08:52.960 --> 00:08:54.940 accounts suggest, murdered by his own troops. 00:08:55.399 --> 00:08:57.559 The Roman army just fell apart in Mesopotamia. 00:08:57.639 --> 00:09:00.639 So now Plotinus is stuck. He's in hostile territory 00:09:00.639 --> 00:09:03.820 with no emperor and no army. Completely abandoned 00:09:03.820 --> 00:09:06.100 in a hostile land. He had to flee for his life. 00:09:06.259 --> 00:09:08.340 He barely escaped and made his way to Antioch. 00:09:08.399 --> 00:09:10.500 He never made it to India. The irony is just 00:09:10.500 --> 00:09:13.039 so rich. He joins the army just to get a library 00:09:13.039 --> 00:09:15.659 card in Persia and ends up running for his life 00:09:15.659 --> 00:09:17.940 in a failed war. But he survived. And at the 00:09:17.940 --> 00:09:19.980 age of 40, he finally settled in Rome. And this 00:09:19.980 --> 00:09:22.240 is where the deep dive into his actual work really 00:09:22.240 --> 00:09:24.159 begins. Rome becomes his base for the rest of 00:09:24.159 --> 00:09:26.559 his life. And he attracts quite a crew there. 00:09:26.620 --> 00:09:28.500 It wasn't just other philosophers, was it? No, 00:09:28.580 --> 00:09:30.740 not at all. It was a very diverse group. He had 00:09:30.740 --> 00:09:33.139 senators attending his lectures. He had doctors, 00:09:33.279 --> 00:09:36.320 poets, and he had women, which is definitely 00:09:36.320 --> 00:09:38.600 worth noting for the time period, specifically 00:09:38.600 --> 00:09:42.820 a woman named Gemina and her daughter. He actually 00:09:42.820 --> 00:09:45.639 lived in their house. It sounds like a real salon, 00:09:45.840 --> 00:09:47.759 a high intellect salon right in the middle of 00:09:47.759 --> 00:09:51.379 Rome. It was. And he even had these, well, you 00:09:51.379 --> 00:09:53.700 could call them. political philosophical ambitions. 00:09:54.240 --> 00:09:56.960 He tried to convince the emperor Gallienus, who 00:09:56.960 --> 00:09:59.740 really respected him, to rebuild an abandoned 00:09:59.740 --> 00:10:02.200 settlement in Campania. The city of philosophers. 00:10:02.600 --> 00:10:04.419 Cladenopolis, that was the name. He wanted to 00:10:04.419 --> 00:10:06.240 rebuild it and have the inhabitants live strictly 00:10:06.240 --> 00:10:09.019 according to the laws of Plato. No private property, 00:10:09.220 --> 00:10:11.799 philosopher kings, total rationality. That sounds 00:10:11.799 --> 00:10:15.480 like a recipe for a very quiet, but very argument 00:10:15.480 --> 00:10:18.100 -heavy disaster. Perhaps. We'll never know. The 00:10:18.100 --> 00:10:20.759 imperial subsidy was never granted. Porphyry 00:10:20.759 --> 00:10:22.960 doesn't say why, but you have to assume court 00:10:22.960 --> 00:10:25.919 intrigue got in the way. People likely realize 00:10:25.919 --> 00:10:28.360 that a city full of philosophers probably doesn't 00:10:28.360 --> 00:10:31.860 pay much in taxes. So no Platonopoulos. But we 00:10:31.860 --> 00:10:35.320 did get the books. We got the Ennides. But as 00:10:35.320 --> 00:10:38.960 you hinted earlier, the writing process was chaotic. 00:10:40.200 --> 00:10:42.740 Chaotic is an understatement. For one, Plotnus 00:10:42.740 --> 00:10:44.980 didn't even start writing until he was 50. And 00:10:44.980 --> 00:10:47.039 by that time, his eyesight was terrible. So he 00:10:47.039 --> 00:10:49.000 literally couldn't see what he was writing. Barely. 00:10:49.000 --> 00:10:51.759 And he refused to reread his own work. He found 00:10:51.759 --> 00:10:53.879 the process of revision tedious and physically 00:10:53.879 --> 00:10:56.440 painful for his eyes. So he would just write, 00:10:56.600 --> 00:10:59.200 pouring his thoughts out. Porphyry tells us his 00:10:59.200 --> 00:11:01.399 handwriting was atrocious. He didn't separate 00:11:01.399 --> 00:11:03.399 words. He didn't care about spelling. He was 00:11:03.399 --> 00:11:06.019 basically just channeling. He was. Porphyry said 00:11:06.019 --> 00:11:07.720 it looked like he was copying from a book that 00:11:07.720 --> 00:11:09.940 existed only in his mind. He would work out the 00:11:09.940 --> 00:11:12.279 entire argument in his head, then sit down and 00:11:12.279 --> 00:11:14.740 just transcribe it. But because he refused to 00:11:14.740 --> 00:11:17.639 edit, the whole task fell to Porphyry to organize 00:11:17.639 --> 00:11:20.820 this mess of notes. So we owe a huge debt to 00:11:20.820 --> 00:11:22.919 Porphyry. Without him, we'd just have a pile 00:11:22.919 --> 00:11:25.080 of unreadable scrolls with run -on sentences. 00:11:26.029 --> 00:11:28.289 Absolutely. Porphyry is the one who grouped the 00:11:28.289 --> 00:11:31.389 treatises into sets of nine, hence the name innates, 00:11:31.610 --> 00:11:34.389 which means the nines. He tried to arrange them 00:11:34.389 --> 00:11:36.870 by topic, starting with ethics and moving all 00:11:36.870 --> 00:11:39.149 the way up to the universe and the divine. Okay, 00:11:39.250 --> 00:11:41.250 so that's the man, the reluctant biographer, 00:11:41.470 --> 00:11:45.389 the failed soldier, the messy writer. Now let's 00:11:45.389 --> 00:11:48.330 get into the meat of it, the ideas. We need to 00:11:48.330 --> 00:11:50.509 talk about his architecture of reality. This 00:11:50.509 --> 00:11:53.309 is the core of Neoplatonism. Plotinus describes 00:11:53.309 --> 00:11:56.720 this. This hierarchy of reality. It's often called 00:11:56.720 --> 00:11:59.720 the three hypostases or the three underlying 00:11:59.720 --> 00:12:02.179 realities. And at the very, very top, we have 00:12:02.179 --> 00:12:05.220 the one. The one or two hen in Greek. Let's try 00:12:05.220 --> 00:12:07.399 to take this apart because it's the hardest concept 00:12:07.399 --> 00:12:11.419 to grasp. Is the one God? Like, is it a personality? 00:12:11.759 --> 00:12:13.799 No. And this is probably the most critical distinction 00:12:13.799 --> 00:12:15.899 to make right away. The one is not a person. 00:12:15.960 --> 00:12:17.720 It's not a being in the way we think of beings. 00:12:17.820 --> 00:12:19.460 It doesn't have a beard. It doesn't get angry. 00:12:19.639 --> 00:12:21.639 It doesn't choose favorites. But what is it if 00:12:21.639 --> 00:12:24.450 it's not a thing? Plotinus says it is the supreme, 00:12:24.669 --> 00:12:28.049 totally transcendent source. It contains no division, 00:12:28.289 --> 00:12:31.730 no multiplicity. It is, and this is the key phrase, 00:12:31.929 --> 00:12:35.730 beyond being and non -being. Beyond being. That 00:12:35.730 --> 00:12:37.370 breaks my brain a little bit. It sounds a lot 00:12:37.370 --> 00:12:39.470 like nothing. It's meant to break your brain. 00:12:40.149 --> 00:12:42.809 Plotinus uses what we now call apophatic theology, 00:12:43.210 --> 00:12:45.769 which basically means you can't describe the 00:12:45.769 --> 00:12:48.210 one by what it is because language immediately 00:12:48.210 --> 00:12:51.059 limits it. If you say the one is good, You're 00:12:51.059 --> 00:12:53.580 implying there's a quality called goodness that 00:12:53.580 --> 00:12:56.120 is somehow separate from the one. Oh, okay. So 00:12:56.120 --> 00:12:58.200 you can only describe it by what it is not. Exactly. 00:12:58.279 --> 00:13:01.980 It is not finite. It is not divided. It is not 00:13:01.980 --> 00:13:04.879 moving. It is sheer potentiality. Potentiality. 00:13:04.879 --> 00:13:06.539 Think of it like white light. White light looks 00:13:06.539 --> 00:13:08.679 simple, right? It looks like one thing. But if 00:13:08.679 --> 00:13:10.279 you pass it through a prism, you see that it 00:13:10.279 --> 00:13:12.340 contains every color in the spectrum. The one 00:13:12.340 --> 00:13:14.299 is that white light. It contains the potential 00:13:14.299 --> 00:13:16.820 for everything, but it hasn't been divided into 00:13:16.820 --> 00:13:20.490 things yet. Okay. But does it think? Does it 00:13:20.490 --> 00:13:23.289 know that it's the one? Proteinus says no. It 00:13:23.289 --> 00:13:25.490 doesn't think. Yeah. That seems very counterintuitive 00:13:25.490 --> 00:13:27.889 for a supreme God. But think about it. If it 00:13:27.889 --> 00:13:30.009 thought, there would be a duality. There would 00:13:30.009 --> 00:13:32.070 have to be the thinker and the thought. That's 00:13:32.070 --> 00:13:34.529 two things. That's two things. The one is unity, 00:13:34.690 --> 00:13:37.850 pure simplicity. So it has to be above thought. 00:13:37.909 --> 00:13:40.169 It doesn't need to think because it already possesses 00:13:40.169 --> 00:13:42.330 everything. So it's just there. Pure potential. 00:13:42.389 --> 00:13:44.690 Yes. So if the one is just sitting there, not 00:13:44.690 --> 00:13:48.059 thinking, not planning, how do we get... Well, 00:13:48.059 --> 00:13:50.960 us. How do we get coffee cups and podcasts and 00:13:50.960 --> 00:13:54.399 traffic jams? Why didn't it just stay one? That 00:13:54.399 --> 00:13:56.340 brings us to the second concept, which is the 00:13:56.340 --> 00:13:59.179 mechanism of the entire universe. Emanation. 00:13:59.179 --> 00:14:02.440 The overflow. Right, really. Host. Imagine the 00:14:02.440 --> 00:14:05.860 sun. Okay, picturing the sun. Does the sun decide 00:14:05.860 --> 00:14:07.860 to shine? Does it wake up in the morning and 00:14:07.860 --> 00:14:09.600 say, you know, I think I'll make some light today? 00:14:09.919 --> 00:14:12.759 No, it just burns. That's its nature. It can't 00:14:12.759 --> 00:14:15.639 not shine. And by burning, it gives off light. 00:14:15.740 --> 00:14:18.399 It emanates light naturally, indiscriminately. 00:14:18.919 --> 00:14:22.179 And importantly, does the sun lose anything by 00:14:22.179 --> 00:14:24.340 shining? Does it get smaller because the light 00:14:24.340 --> 00:14:26.580 leaves it? Well, in modern physics, yes, it's 00:14:26.580 --> 00:14:29.879 losing mass. But for the sake of the ancient 00:14:29.879 --> 00:14:32.039 metaphor. For the sake of the ancient metaphor, 00:14:32.200 --> 00:14:35.740 no. The sun remains the sun. The light is an 00:14:35.740 --> 00:14:38.379 overflow of its perfection. This is emanation. 00:14:38.840 --> 00:14:42.179 The one is so perfect, so full of reality, that 00:14:42.179 --> 00:14:45.039 it necessarily overflows. So the universe isn't 00:14:45.039 --> 00:14:47.960 a construction project. It's not a job performed 00:14:47.960 --> 00:14:50.779 by a creator god who has a blueprint and a schedule. 00:14:50.940 --> 00:14:53.379 No, it's a necessary side effect of the one's 00:14:53.379 --> 00:14:56.360 existence. The multiple must exist because the 00:14:56.360 --> 00:14:58.840 simple exists. That is a beautiful image. It's 00:14:58.840 --> 00:15:01.240 less like a carpenter building a table and more 00:15:01.240 --> 00:15:04.320 like a flower producing a scent. The flower doesn't 00:15:04.320 --> 00:15:05.840 work to make the scent. The scent just happens 00:15:05.840 --> 00:15:08.379 because the flower is there. Or a mirror reflection. 00:15:08.700 --> 00:15:11.019 The object doesn't change just because it's reflected 00:15:11.019 --> 00:15:13.179 in a mirror, but the reflection exists because 00:15:13.179 --> 00:15:15.500 the object exists. Okay, so the one overflows. 00:15:15.600 --> 00:15:17.700 What does it overflow into? What's the next level 00:15:17.700 --> 00:15:20.919 down the ladder? The first emanation is nu. Nu. 00:15:21.139 --> 00:15:25.440 N -O -U -S. which translates to intellect. Divine 00:15:25.440 --> 00:15:29.120 mind or intellect, yes. If the one is the source 00:15:29.120 --> 00:15:32.080 of the sun's light, noose is the light itself. 00:15:32.419 --> 00:15:35.220 This is where being actually happens. This is 00:15:35.220 --> 00:15:38.360 where Plato's forms exist. All the perfect ideas 00:15:38.360 --> 00:15:41.379 of justice, beauty, truth, mathematic, they all 00:15:41.379 --> 00:15:43.960 live in noose. So noose is kind of like the blueprint 00:15:43.960 --> 00:15:46.970 for the entire universe. Yes, but a living blueprint. 00:15:47.190 --> 00:15:49.950 It's not static. It contemplates the one. It 00:15:49.950 --> 00:15:52.730 looks back at its source. And from this contemplation, 00:15:52.730 --> 00:15:54.870 it overflows again. And that second overflow 00:15:54.870 --> 00:15:57.549 is? The soul. Or the world soul. Okay, we're 00:15:57.549 --> 00:15:59.570 getting closer to home now. We are. The soul 00:15:59.570 --> 00:16:01.830 acts as the bridge. It's the active agent in 00:16:01.830 --> 00:16:04.789 all this. The soul looks up at the intellect 00:16:04.789 --> 00:16:07.850 and sees the forms, the perfect ideas, and then 00:16:07.850 --> 00:16:09.590 it looks down and wants to express them. It wants 00:16:09.590 --> 00:16:11.610 to replicate them. And wants to paint the picture. 00:16:11.830 --> 00:16:14.809 Exactly. The soul generates nature. It generates 00:16:14.809 --> 00:16:17.850 time. It generates the physical universe to give 00:16:17.850 --> 00:16:21.129 a form to the ideas it sees in the noose. And 00:16:21.129 --> 00:16:22.929 finally, at the very bottom of the ladder, where 00:16:22.929 --> 00:16:25.309 the light fades out. That is matter. The bottom 00:16:25.309 --> 00:16:28.429 rung. The least perfected level. It is the darkness 00:16:28.429 --> 00:16:31.559 where the light finally dies out. But... And 00:16:31.559 --> 00:16:34.320 here is where he always surprises you. Plotinus 00:16:34.320 --> 00:16:36.679 asserts that matter is still ultimately divine. 00:16:36.960 --> 00:16:40.360 Why? If it's the darkness. Because it still derives 00:16:40.360 --> 00:16:43.139 from the one. Even the shadow is connected to 00:16:43.139 --> 00:16:45.919 the object that casts it. So the physical world 00:16:45.919 --> 00:16:48.620 isn't evil in itself, as some other sects believed. 00:16:48.740 --> 00:16:51.299 It's just the furthest point away from the source. 00:16:51.379 --> 00:16:53.940 It's the dimmest possible light. So we have this 00:16:53.940 --> 00:16:57.289 cascade. The one emanates intellect. Intellect 00:16:57.289 --> 00:17:00.350 emanates soul. Soul emanates nature and matter. 00:17:00.470 --> 00:17:02.950 It's like a waterfall of reality. A waterfall 00:17:02.950 --> 00:17:06.269 where the top never ever runs dry. This brings 00:17:06.269 --> 00:17:08.049 us to the big question for everyone listening. 00:17:08.190 --> 00:17:10.049 If we are walking around in this dimmest light, 00:17:10.130 --> 00:17:13.250 this physical world, what are we? Are we the 00:17:13.250 --> 00:17:16.029 shadow or are we the light? And that is the central 00:17:16.029 --> 00:17:18.390 question of section three, the true human. Because 00:17:18.390 --> 00:17:20.369 I have to say, I feel like I'm my body. I feel 00:17:20.369 --> 00:17:22.529 like I'm this thing that gets hungry and tired 00:17:22.529 --> 00:17:25.170 and has back pain. And Plotinus would say. You 00:17:25.170 --> 00:17:27.019 are mistaken. And that mistake is the source 00:17:27.019 --> 00:17:29.579 of all your suffering. He distinguishes between 00:17:29.579 --> 00:17:32.460 what he calls the couplement, which is the composite 00:17:32.460 --> 00:17:35.220 of the body and the lower soul that manages the 00:17:35.220 --> 00:17:38.380 body's functions, and the true human. And who 00:17:38.380 --> 00:17:41.640 is the true human? The true human is that higher 00:17:41.640 --> 00:17:44.779 incorporeal capacity of the soul. Plotinus argues 00:17:44.779 --> 00:17:47.339 that our soul didn't actually fully descend into 00:17:47.339 --> 00:17:50.000 the body. Wait, what? There is a part of us that 00:17:50.000 --> 00:17:52.859 never left the level of the intellect. So wait 00:17:52.859 --> 00:17:54.640 a minute. You're saying part of me is still... 00:17:54.990 --> 00:17:58.130 up there so to speak exactly there is a part 00:17:58.130 --> 00:18:01.109 of you that is eternally contemplating the one 00:18:01.109 --> 00:18:03.890 right now as we speak we just aren't aware of 00:18:03.890 --> 00:18:05.990 it because we are so distracted by the sensory 00:18:05.990 --> 00:18:08.430 noise of the body we're focused on the traffic 00:18:08.430 --> 00:18:11.410 jam not the eternal calm so i'm essentially a 00:18:11.410 --> 00:18:13.710 dual citizen i'm living here in the physical 00:18:13.710 --> 00:18:16.150 world but my true self is hanging out in the 00:18:16.150 --> 00:18:19.279 divine mind yes And realizing this is the key 00:18:19.279 --> 00:18:22.160 to his whole definition of happiness or eudaimonia. 00:18:22.319 --> 00:18:24.140 And this is where it gets really interesting 00:18:24.140 --> 00:18:26.799 for modern mental health, I think, because we 00:18:26.799 --> 00:18:28.880 usually define happiness as things going well. 00:18:29.150 --> 00:18:31.390 You know, I got the promotion. I'm healthy. The 00:18:31.390 --> 00:18:33.970 sun is shining. Right. It's based on external 00:18:33.970 --> 00:18:37.369 circumstances. Plotinus argues that if your happiness 00:18:37.369 --> 00:18:40.009 depends on external circumstances, you can never 00:18:40.009 --> 00:18:42.190 be truly happy. Because circumstances always 00:18:42.190 --> 00:18:45.150 change. Exactly. If you need health to be happy, 00:18:45.289 --> 00:18:47.410 you will live in constant anxiety about getting 00:18:47.410 --> 00:18:49.769 sick. If you need money, you will fear poverty. 00:18:50.609 --> 00:18:53.029 Plotinus says true happiness has to be self -sufficient. 00:18:53.109 --> 00:18:55.950 It must be invulnerable. So what is true happiness 00:18:55.950 --> 00:18:58.890 for him then? It is identifying with the true 00:18:58.890 --> 00:19:02.130 human. It is shifting your focus from the outer 00:19:02.130 --> 00:19:04.569 shadow to the inner light. He makes a really 00:19:04.569 --> 00:19:06.390 provocative argument about this, doesn't he? 00:19:06.430 --> 00:19:08.609 He uses the example of a man being tortured. 00:19:08.890 --> 00:19:11.390 He does. It's a classic philosophical test case 00:19:11.390 --> 00:19:13.569 and a very difficult one for most people to swallow. 00:19:13.789 --> 00:19:16.150 Can a man be happy while he is being physically 00:19:16.150 --> 00:19:18.250 tortured? And most of us would say absolutely 00:19:18.250 --> 00:19:21.150 not. That's absurd. Plotinus says yes. Walk me 00:19:21.150 --> 00:19:23.410 through that. I don't get it. How can you be 00:19:23.410 --> 00:19:26.109 happy when you're screaming in pain? He argues 00:19:26.109 --> 00:19:28.589 that the true self is not the thing being tortured. 00:19:28.970 --> 00:19:32.569 The body is in pain, yes. The animal nature, 00:19:32.730 --> 00:19:35.670 the couplement, is in distress. But the higher 00:19:35.670 --> 00:19:39.609 soul, the true human, remains untouched. So it's 00:19:39.609 --> 00:19:41.490 like an observer. It's observing the pain, but 00:19:41.490 --> 00:19:43.690 it is not in the pain. It is still contemplating 00:19:43.690 --> 00:19:47.829 the good, the one. That is hardcore. It sounds 00:19:47.829 --> 00:19:50.349 a bit like stoicism, but amplified. It is very 00:19:50.349 --> 00:19:53.250 close to Stoicism, but there's a really interesting 00:19:53.250 --> 00:19:56.509 nuance. The Stoics worried that if you were asleep 00:19:56.509 --> 00:20:00.589 or mentally incapacitated or senile, you couldn't 00:20:00.589 --> 00:20:02.450 be happy because you couldn't use your reason. 00:20:02.529 --> 00:20:04.589 You needed your conscious mind to be working. 00:20:04.809 --> 00:20:07.569 And Plotinus, what did he think? Plotinus says, 00:20:08.109 --> 00:20:10.990 No, that's wrong, because the soul doesn't sleep. 00:20:11.269 --> 00:20:14.009 The soul doesn't exist in time. It is always 00:20:14.009 --> 00:20:16.789 active, always contemplating, even if you, your 00:20:16.789 --> 00:20:19.269 lower consciousness, aren't aware of it. So a 00:20:19.269 --> 00:20:21.970 person in a coma or someone with dementia? They 00:20:21.970 --> 00:20:24.430 still have a true human inside them that is perfectly 00:20:24.430 --> 00:20:27.529 happy, connected to the one. That is a surprisingly 00:20:27.529 --> 00:20:29.930 tender idea, actually, that the dignity of the 00:20:29.930 --> 00:20:32.250 person remains even when the body or the conscious 00:20:32.250 --> 00:20:35.029 mind fails. It is. It's the ultimate form of 00:20:35.029 --> 00:20:37.779 resilience. Happiness, for him, is a flight from 00:20:37.779 --> 00:20:40.779 this world's ways. The focus is set always and 00:20:40.779 --> 00:20:43.259 only inward. So happiness isn't something you 00:20:43.259 --> 00:20:45.619 achieve. It's something you remember you already 00:20:45.619 --> 00:20:48.619 have. Exactly. You don't have to build the fortress. 00:20:48.759 --> 00:20:51.400 You just have to retreat into it. But Plotinus 00:20:51.400 --> 00:20:53.319 doesn't just want us to think about this fortress 00:20:53.319 --> 00:20:55.960 intellectually. He wants us to actually experience 00:20:55.960 --> 00:20:58.259 the source of it. And that brings us to section 00:20:58.259 --> 00:21:02.319 four, hynosis. And gnosis, the Greek word for 00:21:02.319 --> 00:21:05.599 union or oneness. And this is where we leave 00:21:05.599 --> 00:21:08.039 the lecture hall and enter the monastery, so 00:21:08.039 --> 00:21:10.519 to speak. It is. The goal of existence isn't 00:21:10.519 --> 00:21:12.960 just to be a good person or to understand the 00:21:12.960 --> 00:21:15.740 chart of the universe. The ultimate goal is to 00:21:15.740 --> 00:21:19.099 return to the one. To merge with the source. 00:21:19.420 --> 00:21:21.779 How do you do that? I mean if the one is beyond 00:21:21.779 --> 00:21:24.539 thought you can't think your way there You can't 00:21:24.539 --> 00:21:27.099 just logic your way to God. You can't that's 00:21:27.099 --> 00:21:30.269 the point. You have to strip away thought Plotinus 00:21:30.269 --> 00:21:32.490 describes a process of reversing consciousness. 00:21:32.910 --> 00:21:35.589 It's a method of subtraction. Subtraction. Yes. 00:21:35.769 --> 00:21:37.950 First, you have to ignore the senses. You tune 00:21:37.950 --> 00:21:40.170 out the physical world. Then you have to ignore 00:21:40.170 --> 00:21:43.029 the emotions. Then, and this is the really hard 00:21:43.029 --> 00:21:45.089 part, you have to ignore the intellect. You have 00:21:45.089 --> 00:21:48.230 to stop thinking about justice or beauty or any 00:21:48.230 --> 00:21:50.049 of the forms. You have to become a blank slate. 00:21:50.289 --> 00:21:53.420 A tabula rasa. You have to strip away your ego. 00:21:53.500 --> 00:21:55.839 You have to stop being you. You have to create 00:21:55.839 --> 00:21:59.339 a space of pure profound silence. And then what 00:21:59.339 --> 00:22:02.589 happens? If you are prepared, the one fills that 00:22:02.589 --> 00:22:05.190 silence. And we have an eyewitness account of 00:22:05.190 --> 00:22:07.970 this from Porphyry. He says that during the six 00:22:07.970 --> 00:22:10.410 years he was with Plotinus, he saw his master 00:22:10.410 --> 00:22:13.769 achieve this ecstatic state four times. Four 00:22:13.769 --> 00:22:15.829 times in six years. So it's not like something 00:22:15.829 --> 00:22:18.329 he did every Tuesday morning. It is incredibly 00:22:18.329 --> 00:22:21.009 rare. Porphyry says he only achieved it once 00:22:21.009 --> 00:22:23.930 himself when he was 68 years old. It's a fleeting, 00:22:24.009 --> 00:22:26.849 ecstatic, transformative experience. How do they 00:22:26.849 --> 00:22:28.589 describe it? What does it feel like? The flight 00:22:28.589 --> 00:22:30.880 of the alone to the alone. That's the famous 00:22:30.880 --> 00:22:33.259 phrase. It's not seeing the divine like you're 00:22:33.259 --> 00:22:35.599 looking at a painting. It is becoming the divine. 00:22:35.779 --> 00:22:37.700 The distinction between the seer and the seen 00:22:37.700 --> 00:22:40.119 completely vanishes. You realize that you and 00:22:40.119 --> 00:22:42.380 the one are, in the deepest sense, not separate. 00:22:42.640 --> 00:22:45.160 That sounds incredibly similar to Eastern traditions. 00:22:45.480 --> 00:22:48.400 Nirvana, Samadhi. The parallels are undeniable. 00:22:49.099 --> 00:22:51.759 Remember, his whole desire to travel to India. 00:22:52.250 --> 00:22:55.250 Even though that expedition failed, his philosophical 00:22:55.250 --> 00:22:58.269 destination was very, very similar. The method 00:22:58.269 --> 00:23:00.890 of negation saying, I am not this, I'm not that, 00:23:00.910 --> 00:23:04.529 until only the real remains, is classic Advaita 00:23:04.529 --> 00:23:07.869 Vedanta. And it's classic Plotinus. It's as fascinating 00:23:07.869 --> 00:23:10.650 that he reached this conclusion using Greek logic 00:23:10.650 --> 00:23:12.910 as a starting point. He didn't just meditate 00:23:12.910 --> 00:23:15.430 under a tree. He argued his way to the very edge 00:23:15.430 --> 00:23:18.079 of logic, and then he jumped. That's the beauty 00:23:18.079 --> 00:23:20.500 of Neoplatonism. It's a kind of rational mysticism. 00:23:20.779 --> 00:23:23.319 It builds a ladder of logic, climb by climb, 00:23:23.440 --> 00:23:25.319 until you run out of rungs, and then you have 00:23:25.319 --> 00:23:27.579 to fly. Now, you'd think a guy who thought the 00:23:27.579 --> 00:23:29.359 world was a shadow and wanted to merge with the 00:23:29.359 --> 00:23:32.000 Vaal, one would get along with, you know, everyone 00:23:32.000 --> 00:23:34.839 else who had spiritual vibes. But Plotinus wasn't 00:23:34.839 --> 00:23:37.599 living in a bubble. He had rivals. Let's talk 00:23:37.599 --> 00:23:39.859 about Section 5, Plotinus versus the critics. 00:23:40.200 --> 00:23:42.960 He had two main targets in his writing, the Gnostics 00:23:42.960 --> 00:23:45.160 and the Astrologers. And these disputes tell 00:23:45.160 --> 00:23:46.839 us a lot about his character and his philosophy. 00:23:47.309 --> 00:23:49.450 OK, let's start with the Gnostics, because on 00:23:49.450 --> 00:23:50.990 the surface, they sound like they should be best 00:23:50.990 --> 00:23:54.250 friends. Gnostics believed the material world 00:23:54.250 --> 00:23:58.930 was a trap, a prison. Plotinus refused to have 00:23:58.930 --> 00:24:00.869 his portrait painted because he disliked his 00:24:00.869 --> 00:24:03.329 body. Don't they agree? You would absolutely 00:24:03.329 --> 00:24:05.950 think so. But Plotinus wrote a specific tract 00:24:05.950 --> 00:24:09.029 called Against the Gnostics, and he did not hold 00:24:09.029 --> 00:24:11.650 back. He was furious with them. So what was the 00:24:11.650 --> 00:24:13.910 beef? Where did they disagree? It comes down 00:24:13.910 --> 00:24:16.869 to why the world is the way it is. The Gnostics 00:24:16.869 --> 00:24:19.109 believed the material world was created by a 00:24:19.109 --> 00:24:21.930 flawed or even evil deity. They called him the 00:24:21.930 --> 00:24:24.369 Demiurge. They thought the world was a mistake. 00:24:24.920 --> 00:24:27.180 a prison designed to trap souls and keep them 00:24:27.180 --> 00:24:29.200 from the true God. So they hated the universe. 00:24:29.460 --> 00:24:31.500 They did. They viewed it with resentment and 00:24:31.500 --> 00:24:34.480 contempt. And Plotinus. Plotinus, as we've discussed, 00:24:34.579 --> 00:24:36.740 believed the world was an emanation of the One, 00:24:36.880 --> 00:24:40.420 an overflow of perfection. So while it is the 00:24:40.420 --> 00:24:43.160 lowest level, it is still the best possible image 00:24:43.160 --> 00:24:45.640 of the divine. He looked at the stars, the order 00:24:45.640 --> 00:24:48.339 of nature, the seasons, and he saw beauty. He 00:24:48.339 --> 00:24:50.519 saw the One reflecting in the water. So Gnostic 00:24:50.519 --> 00:24:53.759 said, this place... is a hell hole built by a 00:24:53.759 --> 00:24:57.819 demon and plotina said no this place is a fading 00:24:57.819 --> 00:25:00.519 but still beautiful painting of a masterpiece 00:25:00.519 --> 00:25:03.859 exactly he accused the gnostics of arrogance 00:25:03.859 --> 00:25:07.440 he said you think you alone are sons of god and 00:25:07.440 --> 00:25:10.109 that the stars and the heavens are nothing He 00:25:10.109 --> 00:25:12.089 found it deeply disrespectful to the cosmos. 00:25:12.450 --> 00:25:14.549 He thought you should appreciate the beauty of 00:25:14.549 --> 00:25:16.730 the shadow even while knowing it's a shadow. 00:25:16.990 --> 00:25:19.170 He also attacked their style, didn't he? He hated 00:25:19.170 --> 00:25:22.289 their jargon. The Gnostics had these really complicated 00:25:22.289 --> 00:25:25.109 mythologies with secret passwords, magic words, 00:25:25.230 --> 00:25:27.569 and these elaborate hierarchies of demons and 00:25:27.569 --> 00:25:30.069 angels. Plotinus thought this was all just senseless 00:25:30.069 --> 00:25:32.930 jargon. He believed true spirituality was simple 00:25:32.930 --> 00:25:35.430 and universal, not some secret club where you 00:25:35.430 --> 00:25:37.349 needed a code book to get in. Okay, and what 00:25:37.349 --> 00:25:39.539 about the astrologers? Causal astrologers? was 00:25:39.539 --> 00:25:41.660 huge back then. I mean, everybody believed the 00:25:41.660 --> 00:25:43.940 stars controlled your fate. And Plotinus pushed 00:25:43.940 --> 00:25:46.420 back hard on this too. He argued specifically 00:25:46.420 --> 00:25:49.299 against causal astrology. Meaning what exactly? 00:25:49.599 --> 00:25:52.059 Meaning the idea that the position of Mars causes 00:25:52.059 --> 00:25:54.599 you to be angry or that Venus causes you to fall 00:25:54.599 --> 00:25:57.539 in love. And why did he reject that? Two main 00:25:57.539 --> 00:26:01.559 reasons. First, logic. If the stars cause everything, 00:26:01.859 --> 00:26:04.980 then the universe is irrational. Why would a 00:26:04.980 --> 00:26:08.559 star, which Plotnus viewed as a divine and soul 00:26:08.559 --> 00:26:11.839 being, cause someone to be a thief or a murderer? 00:26:12.079 --> 00:26:14.599 It attributes moral depravity to the gods. It 00:26:14.599 --> 00:26:16.839 makes the gods accomplices to the crime. Exactly. 00:26:17.160 --> 00:26:20.339 And the second reason was free will, or more 00:26:20.339 --> 00:26:23.319 accurately, the freedom of the soul. If the stars 00:26:23.319 --> 00:26:25.380 are driving the bus, then we're just puppets. 00:26:26.089 --> 00:26:28.970 Plotnus insisted that the soul is free. It comes 00:26:28.970 --> 00:26:31.410 from the one. It cannot be enslaved by a rock 00:26:31.410 --> 00:26:33.529 floating in the sky. But he didn't dismiss astrology 00:26:33.529 --> 00:26:36.029 entirely, did he? No, he was a man of his time. 00:26:36.150 --> 00:26:38.650 He believed the stars were ensouled and moved 00:26:38.650 --> 00:26:41.250 in harmony with the universe. But he viewed them 00:26:41.250 --> 00:26:43.789 as signs, like writing on a wall. They might 00:26:43.789 --> 00:26:46.029 predict the future because everything is interconnected 00:26:46.029 --> 00:26:48.569 like a single organism, but they don't cause 00:26:48.569 --> 00:26:51.109 it. That's a really crucial distinction. It's 00:26:51.109 --> 00:26:53.670 like a flock of birds predicting a storm. The 00:26:53.670 --> 00:26:55.690 birds don't cause the rain, but if you see them, 00:26:55.690 --> 00:26:57.650 you know rain is probably coming. Precisely. 00:26:57.650 --> 00:27:00.430 It preserves the connectivity of the cosmos without 00:27:00.430 --> 00:27:03.329 destroying human responsibility. So we've seen 00:27:03.329 --> 00:27:05.829 his life, his system, his practice, and his fights. 00:27:06.250 --> 00:27:09.410 Now we come to the end of his life. Section 6. 00:27:09.930 --> 00:27:13.769 The Death and Legacy. Plotinus died in 270 CE. 00:27:14.359 --> 00:27:17.500 He was about 66 years old. He withdrew to an 00:27:17.500 --> 00:27:20.119 estate in Campania, likely suffering from a very 00:27:20.119 --> 00:27:22.680 painful illness. Some accounts suggest it was 00:27:22.680 --> 00:27:25.720 leprosy, others a throat infection. And he was 00:27:25.720 --> 00:27:29.380 alone. Mostly. His circle had dispersed by then. 00:27:29.900 --> 00:27:32.140 Porphyry was away in Sicily dealing with his 00:27:32.140 --> 00:27:34.880 own suicidal depression. Plotinus had actually 00:27:34.880 --> 00:27:37.400 sent him there to recover. So we have to rely 00:27:37.400 --> 00:27:39.799 on another student, Eustochius, for the final 00:27:39.799 --> 00:27:41.980 moments. And his last words are legendary. They 00:27:41.980 --> 00:27:44.660 are. Eustochius arrived late. Platonist said, 00:27:44.740 --> 00:27:46.559 I have been waiting for you. And then he said, 00:27:46.660 --> 00:27:49.180 try to raise the divine in yourselves to the 00:27:49.180 --> 00:27:51.920 divine in the all. Raise the divine in yourselves 00:27:51.920 --> 00:27:54.319 to the divine in the all. That is a mic drop. 00:27:54.400 --> 00:27:57.220 It summarizes his entire philosophy in one single 00:27:57.220 --> 00:27:59.019 sentence. It's not about going somewhere else. 00:27:59.039 --> 00:28:00.940 It's about tuning your frequency to the frequency 00:28:00.940 --> 00:28:02.740 of the universe. And then there's the snake. 00:28:03.000 --> 00:28:06.880 Yes, the snake. Eustochius recorded that at the 00:28:06.880 --> 00:28:09.700 exact moment Plotinus took his last breath, a 00:28:09.700 --> 00:28:12.019 snake that had been sleeping under his bed crept 00:28:12.019 --> 00:28:14.660 out and slipped away through a hole in the wall. 00:28:14.859 --> 00:28:16.599 You can't write that stuff. It's just symbolic 00:28:16.599 --> 00:28:19.519 perfection. The shedding of the skin, the soul 00:28:19.519 --> 00:28:22.220 slipping away from the body. It fits the mythos 00:28:22.220 --> 00:28:24.519 perfectly. The shadow is left behind and the 00:28:24.519 --> 00:28:27.400 life moves on. So the man dies. Yeah. But the 00:28:27.400 --> 00:28:30.539 ideas, they just exploded. The ripple effect 00:28:30.539 --> 00:28:33.240 is massive. You almost can't overstate it. Ploteness 00:28:33.240 --> 00:28:35.460 is like the operating system running in the background 00:28:35.460 --> 00:28:37.339 of Western spirituality for the next thousand 00:28:37.339 --> 00:28:40.430 years. Okay, let's trace it. Christianity, for 00:28:40.430 --> 00:28:43.809 starters. Huge. St. Augustine. Augustine was 00:28:43.809 --> 00:28:46.150 a brilliant man, but he was stuck. He couldn't 00:28:46.150 --> 00:28:48.269 conceive of a God that wasn't a physical object. 00:28:48.369 --> 00:28:51.049 He was a Manichean at the time. Then he read 00:28:51.049 --> 00:28:53.970 the Books of the Platonists, which were Latin 00:28:53.970 --> 00:28:56.509 translations of Platonists. It gave him the intellectual 00:28:56.509 --> 00:28:59.329 framework to understand a non -material God. 00:28:59.549 --> 00:29:02.170 It allowed him to understand God as light, as 00:29:02.170 --> 00:29:04.589 spirit. The whole Christian concept of the soul 00:29:04.589 --> 00:29:07.049 and the kingdom of heaven being an other world 00:29:07.049 --> 00:29:09.460 of perfection that owes a... Massive debt to 00:29:09.460 --> 00:29:11.940 Plotinus. It's so strange to think that a guy 00:29:11.940 --> 00:29:14.799 who never mentions Jesus influenced Christianity 00:29:14.799 --> 00:29:17.900 so much. Well, Bertrand Russell famously said 00:29:17.900 --> 00:29:20.339 that to the Christian, the other world was the 00:29:20.339 --> 00:29:23.220 kingdom of heaven. To Plotinus, it was the eternal 00:29:23.220 --> 00:29:25.720 world of ideas. Christian theologians just sort 00:29:25.720 --> 00:29:28.220 of combine the two. And what about in Islam? 00:29:28.559 --> 00:29:31.000 Just as significant, and this is a great historical 00:29:31.000 --> 00:29:34.259 mix -up, when Greek texts were translated into 00:29:34.259 --> 00:29:37.200 Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age, parts of 00:29:37.200 --> 00:29:41.549 the Enneads were translated. But they were mislabeled 00:29:41.549 --> 00:29:44.589 as the theology of Aristotle. Wait, so they thought 00:29:44.589 --> 00:29:46.109 they were reading Aristotle this whole time? 00:29:46.230 --> 00:29:49.420 Yes. For centuries, major Islamic philosophers 00:29:49.420 --> 00:29:52.980 like Al -Kindi, Al -Farabi, and Avicenna thought 00:29:52.980 --> 00:29:54.980 they were reading Aristotle, but they were actually 00:29:54.980 --> 00:29:57.420 reading Plotinus. That is a massive error. A 00:29:57.420 --> 00:29:59.839 very fruitful error, though. It meant that Islamic 00:29:59.839 --> 00:30:03.140 philosophy absorbed all this Neoplatonic mysticism. 00:30:03.299 --> 00:30:05.900 It influenced Ismaili thought, Persian philosophy, 00:30:06.180 --> 00:30:08.859 the Fatimid state. The idea of emanation fits 00:30:08.859 --> 00:30:12.599 very, very well with Islamic mysticism or Sufism. 00:30:12.779 --> 00:30:16.079 And then the Renaissance. Marsilio Ficino. He 00:30:16.079 --> 00:30:18.640 translates Plautinus into Latin in the 15th century. 00:30:19.180 --> 00:30:21.619 The Florentine Academy wanted to reconcile Plato 00:30:21.619 --> 00:30:24.019 with Christianity, and Plotinus was the key. 00:30:24.279 --> 00:30:26.359 Artists like Michelangelo and Botticelli were 00:30:26.359 --> 00:30:29.740 breathing this Neoplatonic air. Oh, so? In what 00:30:29.740 --> 00:30:32.640 way? The idea that physical beauty is a ladder 00:30:32.640 --> 00:30:35.140 to divine beauty. When you see a Renaissance 00:30:35.140 --> 00:30:37.640 painting of a beautiful figure, it's not just 00:30:37.640 --> 00:30:39.619 supposed to be a pretty body. It's supposed to 00:30:39.619 --> 00:30:42.000 remind you of the divine form of beauty that 00:30:42.000 --> 00:30:44.839 exists in the intellect. That's pure Plotinus. 00:30:45.039 --> 00:30:47.900 And finally, that connection back to India. As 00:30:47.900 --> 00:30:50.180 we touched on, modern scholars and figures like 00:30:50.180 --> 00:30:53.220 Kumarswami have drawn direct lines between him 00:30:53.220 --> 00:30:57.240 and Advaita Vedanta, non -dualism, the idea that 00:30:57.240 --> 00:31:00.299 Atman, the individual self, is Brahman, the universal 00:31:00.299 --> 00:31:03.180 reality. Plotnus never made it to India, but 00:31:03.180 --> 00:31:05.960 his mind went to the exact same place. It really 00:31:05.960 --> 00:31:07.880 shows that there's a universal human longing 00:31:07.880 --> 00:31:10.200 there. Whether you're in Lycopolis, Rome, or 00:31:10.200 --> 00:31:12.740 Varanasi, people are looking for the same source. 00:31:12.940 --> 00:31:15.220 And trying to find a way to escape the suffering 00:31:15.220 --> 00:31:17.289 of the shadow world. So let's bring it on. home. 00:31:17.349 --> 00:31:19.809 We've covered a lot. The one, the emanation, 00:31:19.869 --> 00:31:22.210 the true human. What's the main takeaway for 00:31:22.210 --> 00:31:24.390 you when you step back from all the charts and 00:31:24.390 --> 00:31:26.769 the Greek terms? For me, it's the definition 00:31:26.769 --> 00:31:29.509 of the self. Klotniss tells us that we are not 00:31:29.509 --> 00:31:32.849 small. We feel small. We feel vulnerable to the 00:31:32.849 --> 00:31:35.750 economy, to sickness, to the opinions of others. 00:31:36.009 --> 00:31:38.049 But he insists that those things are just waves 00:31:38.049 --> 00:31:41.690 hitting a rock. The rock, the true human, is 00:31:41.690 --> 00:31:45.190 ancient, indestructible, and divine. It's an 00:31:45.190 --> 00:31:47.569 incredibly dignified way to view human life. 00:31:47.710 --> 00:31:49.910 It changes the stakes. You aren't fighting for 00:31:49.910 --> 00:31:52.690 happiness. You are uncovering it. Exactly. I 00:31:52.690 --> 00:31:54.190 want to leave the listener with a thought, something 00:31:54.190 --> 00:31:56.569 to chew on. You mentioned earlier that the one 00:31:56.569 --> 00:31:59.670 is sheer potentiality that overflows. It doesn't 00:31:59.670 --> 00:32:02.890 work to create. It just creates by being. Yes. 00:32:03.089 --> 00:32:06.130 It emanates. So if the true human inside us is 00:32:06.130 --> 00:32:08.509 connected to that, what does that mean for our 00:32:08.509 --> 00:32:11.150 own creativity? That is a provocative question, 00:32:11.230 --> 00:32:13.230 isn't it? We often think of creativity as effort. 00:32:13.509 --> 00:32:16.470 We struggle. We build. We strain. But Plotinus 00:32:16.470 --> 00:32:18.920 suggests that true creation is an overflow. Are 00:32:18.920 --> 00:32:21.759 we really creating things? Or when we're at our 00:32:21.759 --> 00:32:24.440 best, you know, in that flow state, are we simply 00:32:24.440 --> 00:32:26.799 allowing the one to emanate through us? Are we 00:32:26.799 --> 00:32:29.940 the makers or are we just the open window? That's 00:32:29.940 --> 00:32:31.700 something to think about the next time you're 00:32:31.700 --> 00:32:34.140 trying to force a solution. Maybe the answer 00:32:34.140 --> 00:32:37.359 isn't to push harder, but to clear the blockage 00:32:37.359 --> 00:32:39.619 and just let the light through. Turn the gaze 00:32:39.619 --> 00:32:43.720 inward. Thanks for diving deep with us. My pleasure. 00:32:43.880 --> 00:32:44.559 See you next time.