Select Works of Plotinus · 510 of 752 · tr. Thomas Taylor
Select Works, Section 487
Section 9 9. Let us, then, make a mental picture of our universe: each member shall remain what it is, distinctly apart; yet all is to form, as far as possible, a complete unity so that whatever comes into view shall show as if it were the surface of the orb over all, bringing immediately with it the vision, on the one plane, of the sun and of all the stars with earth and sea and all living things as if exhibited upon a transparent globe. Bring this vision actually before your sight, so that there shall be in your mind the gleaming representation of a sphere, a picture holding sprung, themselves, of that universe and repose or some at rest, some in motion. Keep this sphere before you, and from it imagine another, a sphere stripped of magnitude and of spatial differences; cast out your inborn sense of Matter, taking care not merely to attenuate it: call on God, maker of the sphere whose image you now hold, and pray Him to enter. And may He come bringing His own Universe with all the Gods that dwell in it- He who is the one God and all the gods, where each is all, blending into a unity, distinct in powers but all one god in virtue of that one divine power of many facets. More truly, this is the one God who is all the gods; for, in the coming to be of all those, this, the one, has suffered no diminishing. He and all have one existence while each again is distinct. It is distinction by state without interval: there is no outward form to set one here and another there and to prevent any from being an entire identity; yet there is no sharing of parts from one to another. Nor is each of those divine wholes a power in fragment, a power totalling to the sum of the measurable segments: the divine is one all-power, reaching out to infinity, powerful to infinity; and so great is God that his very members are infinites. What place can be named to which He does not reach? Great, too, is this firmament of ours and all the powers constellated within it, but it would be greater still, unspeakably, but that there is inbound in it something of the petty power of body; no doubt the powers of fire and other bodily substances might themselves be thought very great, but in fact, it is through their failure in the true power that we see them burning, destroying, wearing things away, and slaving towards the production of life; they destroy because they are themselves in process of destruction, and they produce because they belong to the realm of the produced. The power in that other world has merely Being and Beauty of Being. Beauty without Being could not be, nor Being voided of Beauty: abandoned of Beauty, Being loses something of its essence. Being is desirable because it is identical with Beauty; and Beauty is loved because it is Being. How then can we debate which is the cause of the other, where the nature is one? The very figment of Being needs some imposed image of Beauty to make it passable and even to ensure its existence; it exists to the degree in which it has taken some share in the beauty of Idea; and the more deeply it has drawn on this, the less imperfect it is, precisely because the nature which is essentially the beautiful has entered into it the more intimately.
A form of meditation that uses imagery, imagination, or symbolic thought rather than purely empty stillness.
The passage is an explicit instruction in imaginative contemplation: 'make a mental picture of our universe,' 'bring this vision actually before your sight,' 'imagine another, a sphere stripped of magnitude.'
The material body viewed as a prison, tomb, or source of error that hinders spiritual knowledge and return.
Matter and body are explicitly cast out as hindrance: 'cast out your inborn sense of Matter, taking care not merely to attenuate it' and the bodily powers are described as 'petty' and in 'process of destruction.'
The doctrine that the divine is present within all things and the universe itself, pervading creation rather than remaining solely transcendent above it. Distinct from unity_of_being (the general claim that all existence is one substance, agnostic about whether that substance indwells its parts) and from kingdom_within (the divine present specifically IN THE INDIVIDUAL human, accessible without mediation) — divine_immanence is the general pervading-presence claim applied to all of creation, not a human-specific indwelling.
The divine pervades all: 'What place can be named to which He does not reach?' and the gods are 'distinct in powers but all one god in virtue of that one divine power of many facets' present throughout.
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 descending chain from Nature-Principle through Soul and Intellectual-Principle to the ultimate Prior source.
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.
The material world's evil is framed as absence of true power: 'it is through their failure in the true power that we see them burning, destroying, wearing things away' — evil as lack rather than positive force.
Direct address to the divine, whether petitionary, contemplative, or liturgical; speech and silence offered upward.
The passage explicitly instructs prayer as the means of divine encounter: 'call on God, maker of the sphere whose image you now hold, and pray Him to enter.'
The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim.
The passage's central claim is that all existence is ultimately one: 'He and all have one existence while each again is distinct' and 'all is to form, as far as possible, a complete unity.'