The One Beyond All Being
The Teaching
The One is perfect because it seeks nothing, has nothing, and needs nothing. The One overflows, as it were, and this overflowing produces the Many. The Many always seek to return to the source from which they came.
The Good is above being; being is its first offspring. Intellect (Nous) contemplates the Good and in its contemplation produces Soul. Soul in turn produces the material world. But the source remains untouched, unchanged, undiminished — it gives without losing anything.
To know the One, you cannot think about it. You must become it. You must strip away everything — sensation, thought, self — until there is nothing left but the pure identity of knower and known.
Commentary
Plotinus is the philosophical bridge between the ancient world and the mystical traditions of East and West. His One, beyond being, beyond knowing, is functionally identical to the Taoist Tao, the Buddhist Sunyata, the Kabbalistic Ein Sof, the Upanishadic Nirguna Brahman.
The emanation structure, One, Nous, Soul, Matter, is not a hierarchy of value but a description of how the One expresses itself in multiplicity while remaining wholly itself. This is exactly the structure of Tao Te Ching chapter 42: ‘The Tao gives birth to one; one gives birth to two; two gives birth to three; three gives birth to ten thousand things.’
‘Strip away everything until knower and known are one’, this is the universal mystical method. Every tradition’s deepest practice points here.
Themes
Connections 17
Arose apart
No known transmission between Neoplatonism and Taoism while these teachings took shape.
Travelled
Neoplatonism reached Judaism by 900 CE. Isaac Israeli (c. 900) and Ibn Gabirol (11th c.) brought Neoplatonism into Jewish thought, and early Kabbalah drew on it.
Unsure
Plotinus joined a Roman campaign in 242–243 hoping to learn Persian and Indian philosophy. Whether Indian ideas reached him is argued.
Unsure
Plotinus hoped to learn Indian philosophy (Porphyry, Life 3). Indian influence on him is argued.
Arose apart
Both took shape before Hermeticism and Neoplatonism were in documented contact (from 300 CE).
Travelled
Neoplatonism reached Christianity by 355 CE. Marius Victorinus used Plotinus (c. 355–362), Augustine read ‘the books of the Platonists’ (c. 386; Confessions VII), and Dionysius (c. 500) built on Proclus.
Travelled
Gnosticism reached Neoplatonism by 260 CE. Plotinus wrote against Gnostics who came to his seminar (Enneads II.9).
Unsure
Plotinus hoped to learn Indian philosophy (Porphyry, Life 3). Indian influence on him is argued.
Travelled
Neoplatonism reached Christianity by 355 CE. Marius Victorinus used Plotinus (c. 355–362), Augustine read ‘the books of the Platonists’ (c. 386; Confessions VII), and Dionysius (c. 500) built on Proclus.
Travelled
Greek thought reached Neoplatonism by 250 CE. Plotinus read himself as Plato’s interpreter.
Arose apart
Both took shape before Christianity and Neoplatonism were in documented contact (from 355 CE).
Arose apart
Both took shape before Hermeticism and Neoplatonism were in documented contact (from 300 CE).
Unsure
Plotinus hoped to learn Indian philosophy (Porphyry, Life 3). Indian influence on him is argued.
Arose apart
Both took shape before Judaism and Neoplatonism were in documented contact (from 900 CE).
Arose apart
No known line from Neoplatonism to this scientific work.
Arose apart
No known line from Neoplatonism to this scientific work.
Travelled
Neoplatonism reached Christianity by 355 CE. Marius Victorinus used Plotinus (c. 355–362), Augustine read ‘the books of the Platonists’ (c. 386; Confessions VII), and Dionysius (c. 500) built on Proclus.