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Select Works of Plotinus · 215 of 752 · tr. Thomas Taylor

Select Works, Section 217

Section 3 3. What, then, is the spirit [guiding the present life and determining the future]? The Spirit of here and now. And the God? The God of here and now. Spirit, God; This in act within us, conducts every life; for, even here and now, it is the dominant of our Nature. That is to say that the dominant is the spirit which takes possession of the human being at birth? No: the dominant is the Prior of the individual spirit; it presides inoperative while its secondary acts: so that if the acting force is that of men of the sense-life, the tutelary spirit is the Rational Being, while if we live by that Rational Being, our tutelary Spirit is the still higher Being, not directly operative but assenting to the working principle. The words "You shall yourselves choose" are true, then; for by our life we elect our own loftier. But how does this spirit come to be the determinant of our fate? It is not when the life is ended that it conducts us here or there; it operates during the lifetime; when we cease to live, our death hands over to another principle this energy of our own personal career. That principle [of the new birth] strives to gain control, and if it succeeds it also lives and itself, in turn, possesses a guiding spirit [its next higher]: if on the contrary it is weighed down by the developed evil in the character, the spirit of the previous life pays the penalty: the evil-liver loses grade because during his life the active principle of his being took the tilt towards the brute by force of affinity. If, on the contrary, the Man is able to follow the leading of his higher Spirit, he rises: he lives that Spirit; that noblest part of himself to which he is being led becomes sovereign in his life; this made his own, he works for the next above until he has attained the height. For the Soul is many things, is all, is the Above and the Beneath to the totality of life: and each of us is an Intellectual Kosmos, linked to this world by what is lowest in us, but, by what is the highest, to the Divine Intellect: by all that is intellective we are permanently in that higher realm, but at the fringe of the Intellectual we are fettered to the lower; it is as if we gave forth from it some emanation towards that lower, or, rather some Act, which however leaves our diviner part not in itself diminished.
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Themes
Body As Obstacleanthropology

The material body viewed as a prison, tomb, or source of error that hinders spiritual knowledge and return.

Matter and later production are described as 'lifeless' and 'utter Indetermination,' reflecting a view of the material realm as deficient.

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Correspondencecosmology

The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.

The text notes that the boundaries of Higher Existents run into the boundary of the Lower, implying a structural connection.

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Divine Simplicitytheology

The doctrine that God has no parts, divisions, or composite attributes; pure undivided being.

[auto] The description of the 'Absolute Unity' remaining at rest implies an undivided, simple first principle distinct from generated multiplicity.

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Emanation Hierarchycosmology

A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.

[auto] The passage explicitly outlines a downward flow from Absolute Unity and Intellectual-Principle through Soul to Nature and lifeless matter.

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Evil As Privationtheology

Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness.

Matter is characterized as 'utter Indetermination' and lifeless, representing a lack of the form and life found in higher existents.

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Logoscosmology

The divine reason, word, or ordering principle through which the universe was created; mediates between the transcendent God and the material world.

The 'Intellectual-Principle' functions as the divine reason or ordering principle mediating between the Unity and the Soul.

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Monadcosmology

The absolutely simple, undivided first principle from which all multiplicity and existence flows.

[auto] The text identifies 'Absolute Unity' as the resting source from which other existents and hypostases come into being.

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Return To Sourcesoteriology

The soul's journey back to its divine origin, reversing the fall into matter through stages of purification or illumination.

The text notes that engendered things take form by 'orientation towards its author,' implying a dynamic of return or dependence on the source.

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Unity Of Beingtheology

The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim.

[auto] All existence described is oriented towards a single author and supporter, implying an ultimate unity of origin.

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Related passages · 8 parallels
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