Return to the One (17 page)

Time Is Temporary

I
S THERE ANYONE
who hasn’t uttered the clarion cry of the modern age?

“I need more time.”

Time is a commodity that always seems in limited supply. No matter how much of it we have, and everyone has the same amount, it never is enough. At the end of the day there always seems to be a task undone, a goal unaccomplished, a dream unfulfilled.

“If I had more time,” most of us think, “I’d be so much happier.” That is, we assume that if a few more items could be checked off on our life’s to-do list—which may include, of course, “relax and do nothing”—
then
we would finally enjoy the happiness that
now
always seems to be just around the corner.

Plotinus asks us to consider whether it is this very sensation of now-and-then, time itself, at the root of our dissatisfaction. The great illusion is that we presently lack something that, if obtained in the future, will bring us true happiness. The grand reality is that time is temporary: nothing that exists within time lasts forever, so lasting wisdom and well-being will not be found in the realm of now-and-then.

The One and spirit everlastingly possess all that we seek, with such limited success, within time. So it isn’t more time that we need. It is less time. More accurately, no time at all: eternity.

What would “one thing after another” mean when all things remained in unity? What sense would “before” still have, and what “after” or “future”? Where could the soul now fix its gaze on something other than that in which it is?
[III-7-12]

Here in our universe, material things (including thoughts produced by the physical brain) always are separated by time and space. Since time continually brings about changes and only one thing can occupy a certain space at a particular time, there is a constant push and pull within materiality.

Life on earth bears an unsettling resemblance to a crowded parking lot at a popular shopping mall the weekend before Christmas: there is incessant circling around and jockeying for position, some leaving and some arriving, people frantically striving to be somewhere other than where they are now. Such is the way of this material world, says Plotinus, but not of the spiritual world.

The matter, too, of the things that came into being is always receiving different forms, but the matter of eternal things is always the same and always has the same form.
[II-4-3]

Time, then, is a necessary consequence of physical creation. If there is to be anything other (and lower) than the spiritual world where all the forms are eternally the same, there must be some alternative means of manifesting reality. And this is time.

A.H. Armstrong says, “The life of Intellect [spirit] is a life at rest in eternity, a life of thought in eternal, immediate and simultaneous possession of all possible objects. So the only way of being different which is left for Soul is to pass from eternal life to a life in which, instead of all things being present at once, one thing comes after another, and there is a succession, a continuous series, of thoughts and actions.”
¹

Soul, teaches Plotinus, is unwisely individualistic. This applies on both a universal level to the all-encompassing Soul of the All, and on a personal level to the separate souls. As will be discussed more fully in another section, an element of
tolma
(self-assertion) is involved in the creation of the lower realms of the cosmos. Plotinus says that soul was not content to be eternally united with spirit and desired to manifest its own creative power.

Since everything that can possibly exist already does, within the one-many of spirit, the only option for further creation is to fold up within time and space what is unfolded in the boundlessness of the spiritual world. Then the Soul of the All, along with the individual souls, can reveal, bit by bit within time, what is hidden. We might say that the cosmos is playing hide-and-seek with itself.

For because soul had an unquiet power, which wanted to keep on transferring what it saw there to something else, it did not want the whole to be present to it all together…. In general extension of time means the dispersal of a single present. That is why it is properly called “the image of eternity, “since it intends to bring about the disappearance of what is permanent in eternity by its own dispersion.
[III-7-11, I-5-7]

Plotinus says that if soul is to transfer the knowledge and power eternally contained within spirit to “something else” (matter), the permanence of unity must be fractured by time. This allows the spiritual forms to seep out, so to speak, in the ever-flowing current of time: little by little, moment by moment, something different is revealed.

In our own lives as in the universe as a whole, everything is constantly changing whether we realize it or not. Even apparently changeless matter, such as a stone resting placidly on a mountainside for eons, is composed of atoms in ceaseless energetic motion, whizzing around at speeds of thousands of miles per second. Over vast spans of time, earthly rocks crumble into powder while, elsewhere in the galaxy, new stars and planets are being formed out of interstellar gases and dust.

This is what Plotinus means by an image of eternity. Presently we souls exist in a wavering reflection of unchanging truth. Whether voluntarily, by our
tolma,
or involuntarily, by divine design, we have traded the certain constant bliss of spiritual unity for the uncertain changing anxiety that comes with living in materiality. The lower life of soul is nothing but “insteads.”

And, instead of sameness and self-identity and abiding, that which does not abide in the same but does one act after another, and instead of that which is one without distance or separation, an image of unity, that which is one in continuity; and instead of a complete unbounded whole, a continuous unbounded succession, and instead of a whole all together a whole which is, and always will be, going to come into being part by part.
[III-7-11]

We may glibly speak of living in one world, of feeling one with creation, of loving another to such a degree that we become one heart and one soul. But this is just talk, not reality. If we truly were one with the world, or with creation, or with another, there wouldn’t be anything to talk about or anyone to do the talking. Because we are only able to experience an image of unity our oneness is necessarily limited by inescapable divisions of time and space.

No lasting wholeness is possible when time keeps on bringing one part of creation after another onto the stage of our attention. “Look at me.” “No, forget that, now attend to
me!”
And so it goes, a continuous parade of sights and sounds, thoughts and feelings, imaginings and desires. Instead of enjoying the eternal embrace of the Good we get brief hugs (or slaps) from one thing after another.

Once in a while we meet up with an experience that is so wonderful we can only describe it as a timeless moment. If only this were true. For time takes that moment and shoves it into the past, replacing it with another moment that almost always is less to our liking. So we end up with only pale remembrances of a moment that was once a vibrant living presence.

We are slaves to time, says Plotinus. Time gives us a taste of well-being then snatches away our plate of happiness. Then again a taste, followed by a snatch. Is this any way to live?

In the same way, Soul, making the world of sense in imitation of that other world … first of all put itself into time, which it made instead of eternity, and then handed over that which came into being as a slave to time, by making the whole of it exist in time and encompassing all its ways with time.
[III-7-11]

How then is it possible to free ourselves from the confines of time? First, it is necessary to understand that such a liberation cannot take place at a particular time. This would be like thinking a thought that stops me from thinking. Impossible. One doesn’t leave a prison by staying in the prison.

So long as we are within time, we are, simply put, within time. It doesn’t make sense to ask, “When am I going to arrive in eternity?” For
when
is an attribute of our starting place, not our destination.

In the quotation above, Plotinus has given us the key to solving this conundrum. He says that soul put itself into time. Thus soul was not always in time. If, recognizing ourselves as soul, we are able to return to our original state, we will be outside of time—really outside of time.

Every soul exists outside of time, whether it be the Soul of the All that created our universe or the individual soul that is one’s true self. But whatever is made by soul does exist within time, which includes everything material outside of ourselves and everything mental or emotional within ourselves. Thus it is not far off the mark to say, “I feel that time is slipping by,” for our thoughts and feelings indeed are caught in the flow of time. However, the pure consciousness of soul is within eternity.

Since even the [individual] souls are not in time, but such affections as they have are, and the things they make. For the souls are eternal, and time is posterior to them, and that which is in time is less than time; for time must encompass what is in time.
[IV-4-15]

This means that it is possible for a soul to leap across the line that divides time from eternity. Such a leap, of course, will not take any time, nor will it happen at some time. This passage from the domain of time to the realm of eternity is essentially creation in reverse. The soul walks backward, so to speak, along the path that connects the eternal world of spirit and the ephemeral world of matter. How we came down is how we go back. Plotinus’s teachings about how time came to be are a helpful guide to the spiritual traveler seeking to retrace his or her steps.

Interestingly, those teachings are paralleled in the writings of a noted modern physicist, Stephen Hawking. In
A Brief History of Time,
Hawking says, “As we shall see, the concept of time has no meaning before the beginning of the universe…. One may say that time had a beginning at the big bang, in the sense that earlier times simply would not be defined.”
²
In like fashion, Plotinus says that time is created along with the universe, and the soul abolishes time when it leaves physical reality.

If, then, when soul leaves this activity
[outside eternity]
and returns to unity time is abolished, it is clear that the beginning of this movement in this direction, and this form of the life of soul, generates time. This is why it is said that time came into existence simultaneously with this universe, because soul generated it along with this universe.
[III-7-12]

So spiritual travelers desiring to return to the One need no itinerary. In fact, they should discard any notion of a schedule they may be carrying around in their minds.

“Today (or tomorrow, or next month, or next year) I’ll make this much spiritual progress.” Thoughts like this assume that the journey back to God somehow is a matter of speed, a measure of distance traveled over time. But there is no distance between the soul and the One, for the One is omnipresent. And time exists only in the realm of nature and the Soul of the All, not in the domain of spirit and the One.

For around Soul things come one after another: now Socrates, now a horse, always some one particular reality; but Intellect is all things. It has therefore everything at rest in the same place, and it only is, and its “is” is for ever.
[V-l-4]

Here Plotinus points toward the paradox of spiritual progress. How is it possible to change into something unchangeable, or become what always is?

We sit and wait for spirit to make an appearance. Our toes tap impatiently. Our eyes glance frequently at the clock. We pass the time by imagining how wonderful the moment of meeting will be. But the moment doesn’t arrive. And then it doesn’t arrive some more.

We continue to worry and wonder: “What time will it be when the eternal spirit finally comes?” Then more sitting, waiting, tapping, glancing, and imagining.

There’s plenty of time to ponder this question. All the time in the world. Which is precisely the problem. For spirit is in eternity, and this world is in time. So long as the world is present to us, spirit and the One are absent. Time and motion are here; eternity and rest are there. So long as the soul is busily engaged seeking spirit here, we are not there.

Marsilio Ficino, a fifteenth-century devotee of Plato, put it nicely when he wrote about the folly of men who seek to find rest through motion: “Because of their ceaseless longing for what is to come, they do not enjoy what is present. Although movement has to be stilled for there to be rest; yet those men are forever beginning new and different movements, in order that they may one day come to rest.”
³

World-Soul Is a Weaver

S
PIRIT IS
the eternal tapestry of reality. Spirit is dynamic, intelligent energy
(energeia)
so it is not motionless. But spirit’s activity is outside of time and space. The spiritual forms are part and parcel of spirit’s very being, so there is no place for the forms to move to or from. Yet they are alive, much more alive than the life we experience. Spirit’s tapestry is vibrant, the most beautiful of realities other than the One. The forms within spirit are pure and transparent, each being part of the All and the All being part of each.

The Soul of the All, or World-Soul, uses the loom of providence (our subject in the next chapter) to weave these spiritual forms into the warp and weft of material space and time.

Not every form appears in the design at a given moment. Forms come and go as the weaving proceeds. Dinosaurs appear here and disappear there; stars start to shine now and fade away then; a baby makes an entrance and an elder an exit. The intelligence that guides the weaving of the Soul of the All comes from spirit, and the Soul of the All transfers the design to matter. Getting and giving, ceaseless weaving. This is the role of soul.

But if soul was not present in the Whole these bodies would be nothing, and certainly not in order.
[IV-7-3]

Thus soul is spirit’s emissary to the material realm. Soul enables matter to receive the forms which otherwise would eternally remain in the spiritual world. Spirit, or intellect, is the king and soul is the messenger. The king does not descend from the throne. If the townspeople, everything in this physical universe, are to realize something of the king’s wisdom and majesty, the knowledge will be transmitted through the messenger of the soul.

But Intellect as a whole is always above, and could never be outside its own world, but is settled as a whole above and communicates with things here through soul.
[IV-3-12]

When Plotinus speaks about soul
(psyche),
he may be using the term in any of three meanings. First, there is the domain of soul, the region of creation that comes after the spiritual world. The lower part of this domain is nature, the physical universe. The upper part is a non-material realm of soul that is neither physical nor truly spiritual but a sort of difficult-to-describe in-between state. Scholars call this entire domain the hypostasis of soul, meaning that region of the cosmos where soul is the primary substance.

Second, there is the Soul of the All, also called the World Soul or universal soul. This is the being that rules, so to speak, the domain of soul in the same sense as an individual soul rules its body.

Thus A.H. Armstrong says, “We are not parts or products of the World-Soul, but it and our souls and all other souls are parts of the hypostasis Soul, beings, that is, on essentially the same level. The World-Soul is our elder sister, not our mother, and we can rise as high as it and become its fellow-contemplatives and collaborators.”
¹
Here Plotinus notes that we and the Soul of the All have the same form (but not, obviously, the same powers):

But why has the Soul of the All, which has the same form as ours, made the universe, but the soul of each individual has not, though it too has all things in itself?
[IV-3-6]

Third, then, are the individual souls such as you and me, and the souls that animate every other animal, plant, and variety of living being. Here we come to an overlap, as Lloyd Gerson puts it, between the Soul of the All and separate souls, for “the bodies of individuals are also parts of the body of the universe…. But the universal soul is also prior to individual souls because it ‘prepares the way’ for them by producing nature which includes the organic bodies that individual souls inhabit.”
²

The Soul of the All has such power and we do not, because the World Soul eternally contemplates the universal intelligence of spirit, while we individual souls generally contemplate our limited partial intellects. Further, the Soul of the All governs its body, the physical universe, in calm detachment. As was previously discussed, Plotinus compares the frazzled state of divided fallen souls with the carefree state of partless souls, such as the Soul of the All, which have not descended into materiality.

The universe, Plotinus tells us, is like a “beautiful and richly various house which was not cut off from its builder, but he did not give it a share in himself either.” [IV-3-9] In other words, the builder of the house—the Soul of the All, or World Soul—continues to manage the universe even after it has become inhabited by the separate souls. Yet the builder doesn’t get involved in the goings-on within the house. He is akin to an eminently fair and wise landlord who arbitrates disputes and keeps the plumbing in good working order but lives his own life unaffected by what the tenants do.

For he rules it
[the universe]
while abiding above. It is in this sort of way that it is ensouled; it has a soul which does not belong to it, but is present to it; it is mastered, not the master, possessed, not possessor.
[IV-3-9]

So the ideal relation between body and soul, nobly manifested by the Soul of the All, is for the two to be interwoven but not interrelated. Plotinus teaches that it is preferable for a soul to remain above in the realm of spirit and have nothing at all to do with a body. However, if a person as soul is involved with a body (and all humans are), then it is best to be unaffected by the body with which the soul is so intimately connected.

To most of us, this seems impossible. “If I have a migraine headache, I’m supposed to be
unaffected?”
Admittedly, Plotinus presents us with an ideal that is difficult to realize completely. Still, he is emphatic that the interweaving of body and soul does not affect the soul’s unchanging spiritual essence. This is true whether the weaving is of the Soul of the All with the body of the universe, or of our individual souls with our particular physical bodies.

It is possible for the principle interwoven to be unaffected and for the soul to pass and repass through the body without being touched by its affections.
[I-1-4]

The interweaving of body and soul, says Plotinus, is like a line being mixed with a color. It is simple to demonstrate this notion on a computer’s word processor. Draw a line and then select various colors for it. Red, green, yellow, white, black, blue. No matter what color the line is, it remains the same line. We may say, “That’s a yellow line.” But the yellow and the line are completely separate things, just like the soul and the body.

Plotinus provides another image to help us understand the relationship of body and soul: the universe is like a net floating on the ocean of soul. The net is supported by the ocean at every point, but the ocean is not the net and the net is not the ocean.

And soul’s nature is so great, just because it has no size, as to contain the whole of body in one and the same grasp.
[IV-3-9]

Plotinus points toward several interesting spiritual truths in this quotation. One truth is that the soul isn’t in a body; it is a body that is in the soul. So we misspeak when we say that the soul leaves the body at death, for the soul was never in the body. This is easier to understand if we realize the special meaning that “in” has in the Greek language.

Dominic O’Meara says, “In Greek, ‘in’ can mean to be ‘in’ someone’s or something’s power, to be dependent on this power. In this sense immaterial being is ‘in’ nothing as not depending on any body for its existence. On the other hand body, as dependent on soul, can be said to be ‘in’ soul, just as material reality depends on, or is ‘in,’ immaterial being.”
³
So this is how the universe is in the Soul of the All just as our bodies are in our own souls: not spatially, because soul has no size or shape, but dependently

Another truth, related to the first, is that body cannot exist without soul but soul can and does exist without body. This leads Plotinus to view body as being essentially irrelevant to soul. It is fine for a soul not to have a body and it is almost equally fine for a soul to have a body. We must say “almost,” because the interweaving of soul and body carries with it a serious potential danger that is, in practice, almost always actualized.

This danger is that the soul will lose sight of the fact that it is soul and see itself as body. The weaver loses control, becomes enmeshed in the weaving, and comes to believe that he is part of the fabric of materiality.

However, this is the weaver’s fault. If he could remain detached as does the Soul of the All, his involvement with physical creation would do him no harm. Thus Plotinus teaches that this universe is just as it should be and we shouldn’t criticize its creator for defects caused by the inhabitants.

He who finds fault with the nature of the universe does not know what he is doing, nor how far his arrogance is taking him…. But it is as if two people were living in the same well-built house: one of them criticizes its structure and its builder, although he keeps on living in it all the same.

The other, however, does not criticize; in fact, he affirms the builder has constructed the house with consummate skill, and he awaits the time when he will move on, and no longer have need of a house.
[II-9-
13
, II-9-18]
⁴

We are free to move to the spiritual world from our present dwelling place here on Earth. But we should have a positive motivation for moving: to return to the One. Those who want to leave physical existence because they don’t like the conditions here are, in effect, insulting the creator of this universe.

“You should have made things differently” is the unspoken statement that underlies every criticism of earthly life. This is unjustified arrogance, says Plotinus. We can’t even properly fashion our own lives, much less an entire universe, so who are we to second-guess the workings of the Soul of the All and spirit? Referring to the Gnostics, who despised materiality, he asked:

Who amongst these insanely conceited people is as well-ordered or wise as the All?
[II-9-16]
⁵

The physical world is limited not by its design, which is an accurate reflection of the spiritual forms, but by the very fact that it is a reflection, not the original. Matter reflects spirit’s
logoi,
or forms, just as a mirror reflects an image of whatever is placed before it. If the image isn’t as clear and substantial as the original, this is no fault of the mirror. That’s simply the nature of images.

We cannot grant, either, that this universe had an evil origin because there are many unpleasant things in it: this is a judgment of people who rate it too highly, if they claim that it ought to be the same as the intelligible world and not only an image of it.
[II-9-4]

Many people seem to feel that they should be enjoying heaven on earth. When things go amiss with their lives, they are angry and disappointed. Inside their heads is a voice that tells them: “Everything should be perfect all of the time!” But this is the cry of an ignorant ego, not a wise soul. Plotinus asks us to think clearly for a moment.

If the design of the cosmos is to include material existence, then this obviously must differ from spiritual, or intelligible, existence. Otherwise earth and heaven would be the same, not separate realms.

If, being an image, it
[the universe]
is not that intelligible world, this is precisely what is natural to it; if it was the intelligible world, it would not be an image of it. But it is false to say that the image is unlike the original; for nothing has been left out which it was possible for a fine natural image to have…. We must not abuse those things which are lower than the first, but gently acquiesce in the nature of all things.
[II-
9
-
8
, II-9-13
⁶
]

The Soul of the All has faithfully transmitted the spiritual forms to our world of matter. Everything good and beautiful that can be here is here.
Logos,
the spiritual intelligence of the Soul of the All, weaves wonderful patterns out of the fabric of physical matter and energy. These patterns are thus ensouled and must be reverenced. You, me, all other people, animals, plants, inanimate matter—Plotinus teaches that everything either has a soul, or is a soul. The stars and planets, for example, have souls.

And there are souls in these [the heavenly bodies] too, and intelligent and good ones, much more closely in touch with the beings of the higher world than our souls are.
[II-9-16]

So there is no room in Plotinus’s philosophy for any complaining about the conditions of earthly life. From the One, or God, emanates the cosmos. So this world and all the souls within it are children of the same father. To hate any part of creation is to hate the creator, for the One, through the intermediaries of spirit and the Soul of the All, is the ultimate source of all that exists. In the light of spiritual wisdom, it isn’t possible to hate the weaving and love the weaver.