[Drifter]

PLOTINUS: HIS LIFE AND TEACHINGS

By B.V. Narayana Reddy

[From THE ARYAN PATH, May 1965, pages 204-08.]

Plotinus was a philosopher with many facets. He was a profound
thinker, who systematized the teaching of his great master Plato
and brought out its mystical and religious significance. He was
a man of the world to whom men submitted their differences and
disputes for a just solution. He was father to the orphan and
the widow, whose worldly possessions he safeguarded by his
prudence and care. He was a mystic who sought inspiration by
daily communion with the Eternal. He lived a life of such purity
that men who came in contact with him reverenced him like a god.
It was not without justification that the oracle of Apollo raised
this undying song to his memory:

> I raise an undying song, to the memory of a gentle friend, a hymn
> of praise woven to the honey-sweet tones of my lyre under the
> touch of the golden plectrum. Celestial! Man at first, but now
> nearing the diviner ranks! The bonds of human necessity are
> loosened for you and, strong of heart, you beat your eager way
> from out the roaring tumult of the fleshly life to the shores of
> that wave-washed coast free from the thronging of the guilty,
> thence to take the grateful path of the sinless soul. Oft-times,
> when your mind thrust out awry and was like to be rapt down in
> unsanctioned paths, the Immortals themselves prevented, guiding
> you on the straight going-way to the celestial spheres, pouring
> down before you a dense shaft of light that your eyes might see
> from amid the mournful gloom. Sleep never closed those eyes.
> High above the heavy murk of the mist you held them. Tossed in
> the welter, you still had vision. Still you saw sights many and
> fair not granted to all that labor in wisdom's quest.

Plotinus himself tells us nothing about his life in his own
writings. He would never say anything about his parents or
birthplace; and he often said that he was ashamed of being in the
body. He showed, too, an unconquerable reluctance to sit to a
painter or sculptor, and when Amelius persisted in urging him to
allow a portrait to be made, he asked him, "Is it not enough to
carry about this image in which nature has enclosed us? Do you
really think I must also consent to leave, as a desirable
spectacle to posterity, an image of the image?" Porphyry, his
friend and biographer, however, tells us that a good portrait of
his was painted in his lifetime without his knowledge; but there
is no evidence that a copy of it exists.

Nothing definite is known of his place of birth, but it has been
generally assumed that he came from Egypt. According to the best
available evidence, his date of birth seems to have been A.D.
205. He began the study of philosophy rather late in life, and
the teacher who influenced him most was Ammonius Saccas. He
spent over a decade with this teacher and, at the age of
thirty-nine, he developed a desire to study Persian and Indian
philosophy and joined the Emperor Gordian's expedition to the
East in the hope that he might meet competent teachers during the
course of his stay in Persia and India. There is, however, no
evidence that he was able to visit these countries, as the
expedition was a failure, and the Emperor himself was murdered in
Mesopotamia early in A.D. 244.

About the age of forty, Plotinus settled in Rome and began to
teach philosophy. During the next decade or so, his fame as a
great thinker was firmly established, and he was honored by the
friendship of the Emperor Gallienus and his wife and of many
other famous men and scholars from all over the Roman Empire. He
did not, however, take any active part in public life, though men
and women of the highest rank sought his advice in their personal
problems and found in him a sagacious friend and guide.

He was easily accessible to rich and poor alike, and his house
was full of young people of whose education and properties he was
in charge. He was meticulous in his care of their property and
spent long hours in scrutinizing the accounts that were submitted
to him on behalf of his wards. During his long stay of over a
quarter of a century in Rome, he acted as arbitrator in various
disputes between private and official parties, but never once was
his judgment or fairness impugned by anybody.

Plotinus never enjoyed robust health. His eyesight was bad and
his austere habits and long sleepless hours spent in
contemplation were a terrible strain on his physical resources.
In A.D. 269 the illness from which he suffered became so much
worse that he left Rome for the country estate of his friend
Zethus in Campania, and he died there in A.D. 270. The illness
of which he died has been identified as a form of leprosy.

He bore his sufferings with great equanimity, and when death
came, he faced it like the wise, great man he was. Of these last
moments, his friend Eustochius has given a touching account. He
was staying at Puteoli and was late in arriving. When, at last,
he came, Plotinus said, "I have been a long time waiting for you.
I am striving to give back the Divine in me to the Divine in the
All." As he spoke, a snake crept under the bed on which he lay
and slipped away into a hole in the wall. At the same moment,
Plotinus died.

It was the wise Socrates who told his mourning friends that the
true philosopher has reason to be of good cheer when he is about
to die, and that the votary of philosophy is always pursuing
death and dying. The truth of this statement is exemplified in
the manner of Plotinus' death. Great men, who have lived nobly,
develop a profound insight into the truth of things as they reach
the end of their earthly pilgrimage, and of the pregnant sayings
attributed to them during their last moments, the words of the
dying Plotinus to his friend are among the most profound -- "I am
striving to give back the Divine in me, to the Divine in the
All." These words epitomize in a small compass the fundamental
teaching of Plotinus.

His basic position is that reality is fundamentally One, not in
the arithmetical sense, which is the opposite of "many," but as
the transcendent and immanent reality from which all things
emanate and into which all things merge. It is the matrix of all
things, spiritual, mental, and material, and all other
conceivable and inconceivable states of being. The One has no
parts and cannot be taken apart or destroyed. It is beyond time
and space. It involves no conflicts because it is beyond all
opposites. It is nameless because to name it implies finitude
and limitation. It cannot be the object of thought, because
thought involves the duality of subject and object. It would be
inaccurate even to say that the One exists, because existence
implies limitation. Nevertheless language has to be used to
express the inexpressible, and when we speak and write of the
One, we must always bear in mind the limitations of language and
its inadequacy to convey ultimate truths.

contd.