Here is the fourth installment in my series on the metaphysical foundation for mystical experiences. In this series, I am investigating some of the inherent issues and biases in the current methods of the social scientific study of religion (i.e., the field of “religious studies”). Do you think that mystical experiences are rare aberrations which diverge from “normal” life? This investigation may surprise you…
Dawn of the Age of Plotinus
Plotinus (204/5 – 270 CE) is the last of the great philosophers in the Platonic mode before Platonic thinking made its jump to Christianity when Christianity was legalized in the Roman Empire (313 CE). Later scholars refer to Plotinus and his adherents as Neo-Platonist although not all Neo-Platonists necessarily embraced Plotinus. To put Plotinus in contemporary terms, he is like the Bernie Sanders of Greek philosophers. He’s got a great piece of a philosophy, an “education policy” for analogy’s sake, but not a uniformly comprehensive philosophy. Still, that great piece is his metaphysics so it fits right in with the scope of this article and with mystical experience as a whole.
Plotinus’ metaphysics hinges on three foundational principles: the One, the Intellect, and the Soul.[i] The One, Plotinus’ term for the Good in Plato, is the completely simple, monistic core of all reality. It is the source of being, essence, and causality. It is undifferentiated and indescribable. It stands behind all of reality or is at least coextensive with all of reality. The Intellect is the first distinction of a reality apart from the One. As a result, the Intellect can be described, have form (though still “Form” as Plato means it), and give rise to the various other Forms that populate the plurality of the universe. Everything arises from the Intellect, as the Intellect arises from the One. The Soul is the desire for the source of life, that is the One, which is present in the derivations of the Intellect. The Soul is the yearning for reunion with the One. These three principles are linked in an ontological chain, and it is this chain of One-Intellect-Soul which distinguishes Being from Not-Being.
Plotinus’ metaphysics is “Neo-Platonic” because his worldview presupposes a foundation on Plato’s Forms and Shadows.[ii] The only undergirding component which he pushes further than Plato is the relative worth of those Shadows, which is the “Matter” of the material world. Matter is more thoroughly “evil” in a moral sense for Plotinus rather than just “lesser” in an ontological sense, as it was for Plato.[iii] The reason Matter becomes evil for Plotinus is because it functions as a barrier against his progression through the ontological chain of being. While Plotinus’ valuation of Matter makes his metaphysics problematic for widespread application, it serves to focus and enhance his metaphysics for the intangible and indefinable aspects and experience of reality. This focus fits perfectly for examining mystical experiences through Plotinus’ ontological progression.
Let me articulate that progression more fully. For Plotinus, the Forms reside on a continuum with respect to the individual. This continuum is Soul – Intellect – the One. While Plotinus might like a wider definition, we really could call his metaphysics ontologically mystical. In other words, Plotinus defines ultimate reality in terms of the mystical experience itself. If what/who, that is “the One,” is experienced in mystical experience is ultimate reality, then it only stands to reason that such an experience should be the foundation for our understanding of reality, not empirical experience. On an everyday basis, we are locked in an individualistic experience of the Soul, according to Plotinus. We must proceed through the realm of Intellect (as a spiritual category as well as a mental category) to seek connection to the One. The spiritual and physical experiences of Intellect can be articulated, being kataphatic, but the shift to pure experience of the One silences all comment, which is apophatic.
Why is Plotinus’ metaphysics a good basis for studying mystical experience? Well, an important initial reason is that an Aristotelian approach privileges the usual everyday experience of physical Matter as the foundational ontology for describing mystical experience and its concomitant effect on society. That type of scientific materialism works arguably well for other subjects of study, but it expressly goes against the stated perspective of nearly every mystical tradition. A Platonic perspective is more in line with mystical perspectives, but Plato’s Forms are less descriptive of mystical experiences than Plotinus’ progression of Soul – Intellect – the One. Most of the time the breadth of Plato might be better, but in mystical experience Plato is less helpful than Plotinus’ laser-like focus. Plotinus forces religious studies to grapple seriously with the possibility, not certainty, of the transcendent view of reality that mystical experience takes as the necessary ontological structure for interpretation. In other words, Plotinus allows us to move from questions of existence alone to questions of meaning in mystical experiences for the whole of society beyond the limits of each individual religious tradition.
[i] See Plotinus, The Enneads, tr. A.H. Armstrong, Loeb Classical Library, 7 vols. (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1966-1988), particularly Books 1 (vol. 1) and 9 (vol. 7).
[ii] See David J. Yount, Plato and Plotinus on Mysticism, Epistemology, and Ethics, Bloomsbury Studies in Ancient Philosophy (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 23-47 for a full discussion of how the metaphysics of Plato and Plotinus affect the typical everyday range of human experience and its social implications.
[iii] Plotinus, Enneads, Book 3.2.2.1-45 (vol. 3). See also Irwin, Classical Thought, 195.