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Select Works of Plotinus · 304 of 752 · tr. Thomas Taylor

Select Works, Section 292

Section 5 5. But what place is left for the particular souls, yours and mine and another's? May we suppose the Soul to be appropriated on the lower ranges to some individual, but to belong on the higher to that other sphere? At this there would be a Socrates as long as Socrates' soul remained in body; but Socrates ceases to exist, precisely on attainment of the highest. Now nothing of Real Being is ever annulled. In the Supreme, the Intellectual-Principles are not annulled, for in their differentiation there is no bodily partition, no passing of each separate phase into a distinct unity; every such phase remains in full possession of that identical being. It is exactly so with the souls. By their succession they are linked to the several Intellectual-Principles, for they are the expression, the Logos, of the Intellectual-Principles, of which they are the unfolding; brevity has opened out to multiplicity; by that point of their being which least belongs to the partial order, they are attached each to its own Intellectual original: they have already chosen the way of division; but to the extreme they cannot go; thus they keep, at once, identification and difference; each soul is permanently a unity [a self] and yet all are, in their total, one being. Thus the gist of the matter is established: one soul the source of all; those others, as a many founded in that one, are, on the analogy of the Intellectual-Principle, at once divided and undivided; that Soul which abides in the Supreme is the one expression or Logos of the Intellectual-Principle, and from it spring other Reason-Principles, partial but immaterial, exactly as in the differentiation of the Supreme.
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Themes
Apophatic Theologytheology

Describing the divine only by negation—God transcends all positive categories and concepts; the via negativa.

The text defines the soul by negation, stating it is not subject to part or magnitude.

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Body As Obstacleanthropology

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

Equating quantitative magnitude with body suggests materiality is a degradation of the soul's true nature.

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Divine Simplicitytheology

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

[auto] It asserts the soul lacks quantitative parts and remains an undivided whole unlike material magnitudes.

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Kingdom Withinanthropology

The claim that the divine realm is present inside the individual, accessible without external mediation.

[auto] The analogy of science implies the whole reality is potentially present within each individual constituent proposition.

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Opposites Transcendedanthropology

The dissolution of binary oppositions (male/female, inner/outer, above/below) as a mark of spiritual completion.

[auto] The phrase 'partition without severance' explicitly transcends the binary opposition between division and unity.

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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] The passage argues that individual souls are not fragments but entireties of the All-Soul, maintaining ontological unity despite apparent partition.

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Related passages · 7 parallels
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Shared concept: Apophatic Theology — Describing the divine only by negation—God transcends all positive categories and concepts; the via negativa. (derived)
christian_mysticism|Pseudo-Dionysius: The Divine Names|Chapter 2, Section 1a
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Shared concept: Unity Of Being — The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim. (derived)
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Shared concept: Unity Of Being — The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim. (derived)
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Shared concept: Unity Of Being — The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim. (derived)
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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)
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And as in the most holy of the mysteries, they say, that the mystics at first meet with the multi form, and many-shaped genera, which are hurled forth before the gods, but on entering the temple, unmoved, and guarded by the mystic rites, th…”
Shared concept: Body As Obstacle — The material body viewed as a prison, tomb, or source of error that hinders spiritual knowledge and return. (derived)