Theos-Talk Archives (March 1996 Message tl00048)

The Six Enneads

  BY PLOTINUS

   Written 250 A.D.
   Translated By Stephen Mackenna And B. S. Page
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  THE FOURTH ENNEAD - NINTH TRACTATE [excerpts]

     ARE ALL SOULS ONE?.

     1. That the Soul of every individual is one thing we deduce from the
     fact that it is present entire at every point of the body- the sign
     of veritable unity- not some part of it here and another part there.
     In all sensitive beings the sensitive soul is an omnipresent unity,
     and so in the forms of vegetal life the vegetal soul is entire at
     each several point throughout the organism.

     Now are we to hold similarly that your soul and mine and all are
     one, and that the same thing is true of the universe, the soul in
     all the several forms of life being one soul, not parcelled out in
     separate items, but an omnipresent identity?

     If the soul in me is a unity, why need that in the universe be
     otherwise seeing that there is no longer any question of bulk or
     body? And if that, too, is one soul and yours, and mine, belongs to
     it, then yours and mine must also be one: and if, again, the soul of
     the universe and mine depend from one soul, once more all must be
     one.

     What then in itself is this one soul?
     First we must assure ourselves of the possibility of all souls being
     one as that of any given individual is.

     It must, no doubt, seem strange that my soul and that of any and
     everybody else should be one thing only: it might mean my feelings
     being felt by someone else, my goodness another's too, my desire,
     his desire, all our experience shared with each other and with the
     (one-souled) universe, so that the very universe itself would feel
     whatever I felt.

     Besides how are we to reconcile this unity with the distinction of
     reasoning soul and unreasoning, animal soul and vegetal?

     Yet if we reject that unity, the universe itself ceases to be one
     thing and souls can no longer be included under any one principle.

     2. Now to begin with, the unity of soul, mine and another's, is not
     enough to make the two totals of soul and body identical. An
     identical thing in different recipients will have different
     experiences; the identity Man, in me as I move and you at rest,
     moves in me and is stationary in you: there is nothing stranger,
     nothing impossible, in any other form of identity between you and
     me; nor would it entail the transference of my emotion to any
     outside point: when in any one body a hand is in pain, the distress
     is felt not in the other but in the hand as represented in the
     centralizing unity.

     In order that my feelings should of necessity be yours, the unity
     would have to be corporeal: only if the two recipient bodies made
     one, would the souls feel as one.

     We must keep in mind, moreover, that many things that happen even in
     one same body escape the notice of the entire being, especially when
     the bulk is large: thus in huge sea-beasts, it is said, the animal
     as a whole will be quite unaffected by some membral accident too
     slight to traverse the organism.

     Thus unity in the subject of any experience does not imply that the
     resultant sensation will be necessarily felt with any force upon the
     entire being and at every point of it: some transmission of the
     experience may be expected, and is indeed undeniable, but a full
     impression on the sense there need not be.

     That one identical soul should be virtuous in me and vicious in
     someone else is not strange: it is only saying that an identical
     thing may be active here and inactive there.

     We are not asserting the unity of soul in the sense of a complete
     negation of multiplicity- only of the Supreme can that be affirmed-
     we are thinking of soul as simultaneously one and many, participant
     in the nature divided in body, but at the same time a unity by
     virtue of belonging to that Order which suffers no division.

     In myself some experience occurring in a part of the body may take
     no effect upon the entire man but anything occurring in the higher
     reaches would tell upon the partial: in the same way any influx from
     the All upon the individual will have manifest effect since the
     points of sympathetic contact are numerous- but as to any operation
     from ourselves upon the All there can be no certainty.

     3. Yet, looking at another set of facts, reflection tells us that we
     are in sympathetic relation to each other, suffering, overcome, at
     the sight of pain, naturally drawn to forming attachments; and all
     this can be due only to some unity among us.

     Again, if spells and other forms of magic are efficient even at a
     distance to attract us into sympathetic relations, the agency can be
     no other than the one soul.

     A quiet word induces changes in a remote object, and makes itself
     heard at vast distances- proof of the oneness of all things within
     the one soul.
[...]
     It is our feebleness that leads to doubt in these matters; the body
     obscures the truth, but There all stands out clear and separate.
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Nicholas <> am455@lafn.org <> Los Angeles
 First of all, love truth for its own sake, for otherwise no recognition of
  it will follow.  HP Blavatsky