Tao Te Ching

The Power of Goodness, the Wisdom Beyond Words
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Plotinus

204 – 249 CE

The founder of Neoplatonism and inspiration for mystics of many traditions - Gnostic, Islamic, Polytheistic, Christian, Jewish - Plotinus was taken as an inspiration and guide by such diverse thinkers as Bertrand Russell and Ralph Waldo Emerson, Radhakrishnan and Coomaraswamy, Coleridge and Yeats, the Sunni and Ismaili Shia in Islam, emperor Julian and St. Augustine. He emphasized contemplation as a powerful, transforming practice and how mind shapes perception, rather than passively receiving something “objective.” His experience and teaching of the “union with the One” translates as an early Western version of the Eastern concept of “Enlightenment.”

Lineages
Roman / Italian

Eras

Sources

Enneads Ἐννεάδες Plotinus / Porphyry

Unlisted Sources

Quotes by Plotinus (15 quotes)

“Everything in the world is full of signs. All events are coordinated. All things depend on each other. Everything breathes together.”

from Enneads Ἐννεάδες Plotinus / Porphyry

Chapters: 45. Complete Perfection

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“I am striving to give back the Divine in myself to the Divine in the All.”

Chapters: 7. Lose Yourself, Gain Your Soul

Themes: Integrity

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“Looking outward we see many faces; look inward and all is one head. If a man could but be turned about, he would see at once God and himself and the All.”

from Enneads Ἐννεάδες Plotinus / Porphyry

Chapters: 39. Oneness

Themes: God Indra's Net

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“Never would the eye have perceived the sun if it had not first taken the form of the sun; likewise, every person must make themselves beautiful and divine in order to attain the sight of beauty and divinity.”

from Enneads Ἐννεάδες Plotinus / Porphyry

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“Once Contemplative Wisdom comes into play, all the virtues may have to yield.”

from Enneads Ἐννεάδες Plotinus / Porphyry

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“The self-directed metaphysician discovers the life-germ, understands not just seeming-knowledge but authentic science; and, abandoning all the realms of deceit and falsity, wanders in the ‘Meadows of Truth.”

from Enneads Ἐννεάδες Plotinus / Porphyry

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“Philosophy is the supremely precious, a journey to the Good, to the Primal-Principal and the Dialectic is the most precious part of philosophy.”

from Enneads Ἐννεάδες Plotinus / Porphyry

Themes: Philosophy

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“Wisdom has the task of presenting all things as Universals, stripped of matter for treatment by Understanding.”

from Enneads Ἐννεάδες Plotinus / Porphyry

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“It is impossible to deny the good of life to any order of living things… Those that deny the happy life to plants are really denying it to all living things.”

from Enneads Ἐννεάδες Plotinus / Porphyry

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“Each being contains in itself the whole intelligible world. Therefore All is everywhere. Each is there All, and All is each.”

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“It is ignorance that causes us to identify ourselves with the body, the ego, the sense”

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“When a person follows the way of the world or the way of tradition and believes in words instead of the sense, the rites instead of the experience; knowledge of Reality cannot arise.”

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“Withdraw into yourself and look. If you do not find yourself beautiful, act as does the creator of a statue who cuts away here, smooths there, makes this line lighter, the other purer until a lovely face has grown upon his work... never cease chiseling your statue until you see the perfect goodness established in the stainless shrine.”

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“It is because things are the way they are that they are good.”

Themes: Ordinary Mind

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“Be confident in yourself. You have already ascended here and now, and no longer need someone to show you the way. Open your eyes and see.”

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Quotes about Plotinus (2 quotes)

“Plotinus is both an end and a beginning—an end as regards the Greeks, a beginning as regards Christendom... [He was] the founder of Neoplatonism and the last of the great philosophers of antiquity... He represents better than any other philosopher, an important type of theory... subjectivism invaded men's feelings as well as their doctrines.”

Bertrand Russell 1872 – 1970 CE
“20th century Voltaire”
from History of Western Philosophy

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“Plotinus—the culmination of this mystic theosophy—restored the repute of philosophy by living like a saint amid the luxuries of Rome... an idealist who graciously recognized the existence of matter... Plotinus is the last of the great pagan philosophers; and like Epictetus and Aurelius, he is a Christian without Christ.”

Will Durant 1885 – 1981 CE
Philosophy apostle and popularizer of history's lessons
from Caesar and Christ

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