Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCHThe Primal Being unites itself with its being. TSoul has no part which it does not touch ; it fallsinto one point with it. It can then no longer becalled a contemplation of God, but a being God. Thesoul becomes pure light, free from all gravity ; becomesGod, or, yet more rightly, knows that it is God. Inthis unconditional unity with the highest, how couldself-consciousness or conscious tbought remain ? Self-consciousness is only where the subject can distinguishitself from the object; thought only where these aredeterminate conceptions; whereas here we have gonbeyond everything determinate and conceivable. If iwe ask how the soul can reach this state, the replyis, through absolute abstraction from external things,through complete sinking into itself. If the soul re-moves every inclination and every image of what ismtside it, if it draws back into itself from everythingvhich is not itself, then it is at once immediately inhe divinity, being entirely in itself. This higherlight may not be pursued, but must be waited for tillit appear. It dawns on the soul without *fsieans orpreparation, by a sudden enlightening. The soul cannotsay whence it comes, from within or from without.Indeed, strictly speaking, it does not come, but is there,and fills us with delight and blessing.We may suppose that with a character so inwardand concentrated as that of Plotinus, and with a systemthe culminating point of which is the identification ofthe soul with the Divinity, his philosophy would "Jalso his religion : the two would be to him convertibleterms. We have seen this to have been a markedfeature in the character of Apollpnius as imagined byPhilostratus. No doubt it became a reality in the1 Zeller, v. 553.