Select Works of Plotinus · 48 of 752 · tr. Thomas Taylor
Select Works, Section 54
Section 4 4. Still the one life has known pleasure longer than the other? But pleasure cannot be fairly reckoned in with Happiness- unless indeed by pleasure is meant the unhindered Act [of the true man], in which case this pleasure is simply our "Happiness." And even pleasure, though it exist continuously, has never anything but the present; its past is over and done with.
§ Ask Guru about this passage →Themes
Kingdom Withinanthropology
The claim that the divine realm is present inside the individual, accessible without external mediation.
Happiness is described as internal ('our Happiness'), suggesting the divine state resides within the individual rather than externally.
All passages →Self Knowledgesoteriology
The recognition of one's own true divine nature as the primary path to liberation; 'know thyself' as soteriology.
The reference to the 'true man' implies a distinction between the empirical self and the higher spiritual identity that must be recognized.
All passages →Related passages · 4 parallels
christian_mysticism|The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme|Chapter 1 (part 4)
“Let them, therefore, again go out with their will from their wilful ignorance or malignity and enter again into the will of God." ( Menschwerdung , 3, 5.) All this goes to show that it is useless and vain to seek for divine wisdom, meaning…”
Shared concept: Self Knowledge — The recognition of one's own true divine nature as the primary path to liberation; 'know thyself' as soteriology. (derived)
christian_mysticism|The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme|Chapter 1 (part 6)
“The human selfhood will then follow in its perceptions the Spirit of God, tremblingly and in the joy of humility, and become able to see what is contained in time and in eternity.
Everything is near to a soul in that state, for the soul is…”
Shared concept: Kingdom Within — The claim that the divine realm is present inside the individual, accessible without external mediation. (derived)
western_esoteric|The Book of Ceremonial Magic (A.E. Waite)|Page 5 (part 2)
“The anonymous Cloud of Unknowing belongs, I believe, to the early part of the fifteenth century, and it is to be classed among the most signal presentations of the conditions and mode of the Union which I have met with in Christian literatu…”
Shared concept: Self Knowledge — The recognition of one's own true divine nature as the primary path to liberation; 'know thyself' as soteriology. (derived)
western_esoteric|Tertium Organum (P.D. Ouspensky)|Chapter XXII (part 4)
“Both philosophies, that of the East and that of the West [says Müller] start from a common point, namely from the conviction that our ordinary knowledge is uncertain, if not altogether wrong.
This revolt of the human mind against itself is…”
Shared concept: Self Knowledge — The recognition of one's own true divine nature as the primary path to liberation; 'know thyself' as soteriology. (derived)