Customer Reviews (1)

A Short Outline of Plotinus' Realm of Mind & Universal Mind
This book gets somewhat detailed in semantics and sometimes reminds me of Kantian language, only slightly, in its obscurity. In this, Porphyrys acknowledges his speculations and vague conceptions, which cannot be grasped by imagination. There are instances of sentences that repeat the same word 6 times over in different arrangements that gets confusing and the "One" and universal soul becomes the Kantian "thing in itself," an absolute. Overall, however, the book is not Kantian and relatively understandable.

Some of the points raised are: The "One" is absolute, being everything and nothing, and therefore cannot be conceived by the mind, ultimately, it is a negation. It neither exists nor non-exists, as it is All. There are different levels of reality, the "One" non-changing Mind and true Being and the sensory changing realm of mind. I've been interpreting it through out the book as the moving transitory intelligible/thinking mind and the unchanging perfect intelligence/the consciousness - the soul - which is part of a greater consciousness that makes up the whole. The idea is unity in multiplicity and in this there are differences between parts and faculties. This takes on Plato's transient world of fleeting forms with limits, the Monad and the unlimited world of perfect forms, the Dyad.Four type of virtue to achieve connection with the soul over the mind,To achieve the super-intellectual principle is better viewed by an absence of thought (p.39). For different reasons the soul either turns toward perfection to the producer, or both the producer and the product or to the lower imperfection, the product. The non-discursive intelligence, or consciousness, thinks all thoughts simultaneously, a continuous of movement, an actualization, while the discursive intelligence, the mind, divides as it thinks only from point to point. And this non-discursive intelligence or consciousness perceives the sense object, by intuition (pp. 52-53).

Interestingly the individual souls retain their distinctness despite being a part of a much larger universal soul. "Individual souls, as well as the universal Soul, subsist independently of bodies, without the unity of the universal Soul absorbing the manifoldness of individual souls, and without the manifoldness of the latter splitting up the unity of the universal Soul." (p. 61). "Its diversity implies both division and union . . . diversity is born of the development of the power of unity" (pp. 64-65). The soul is neither a body, nor in the body, but is only the cause of the body, because she is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere in the body. (p. 66) The body, Porphyry writes, is actually in the soul.

This is about an inward search. When you will have achieved the nature of existence in itself and become assimilated to eternal existence you will seek nothing beyond yourself. If you do not seek anything (including your habitual mind) beyond yourself (your consciousness), "if you shrink within yourself and into your own nature (your consciousness - not mind) you will become assimilated to universal Existence, and you will not halt at anything inferior to it. (p. 67) It's a matter of not being caught up with this life of sensory perception, caught up in what to eat, what to wear, what games to play for sensory desires but instead an inward search of the self, the consciousness apart from the limited sensory mind, then you will discover your true self, the universal existence. Most people do not withdraw into their inner selves, they are ignorant of themselves in this way, they do not know themselves. I've read this by later sages, that to withdraw to the self does not require solipsism, but one can both live in this world and apart in the self simultaneously. It's all about a self-knowledge of a deeper more profound silent self that has nothing to do with the sensory world, nor with discursive doctrinal thinking.

With all this said, only a mere segment, it reminds me of what Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D., calls morphic fields, how biologists cannot find proof of information stored in the human brain, but instead he perceives the brain acting as tuners, tuning into what he calls morphic fields in what he calls morphic resonance of existing habitual patterns in a collective, larger information source. In this we are more in tune with the universe as opposed to the common mechanistic Newtonian view of laws that separates us and the Darwinian view that only equates us from molecules. Rather we are in tune with a larger organism. Creativity is our ability to create new patterns/habits that will enter the morphic fields. A great point on yin and yang; how both are actually part of a trinity, where the duality exists within a circle, an absolute, the ground of being, which represents the third element or the whole that contain both. Each ground then becomes part of a larger ground along with its opposite. ... Read more

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As early as the time of Plato an effort had been made to understand the inner meaning of the writings of Homer. The philosophers of the Platonic and Neoplatonic school favored the idea that Homer's blindness was symbolical. It indicated not his inability to see on the objective level, but that he had voluntarily turned his sight inward to the contemplation of those things normally invisible. The Neoplatonists, by their own natural and mystical inclination, found mysticism in all things because they were convinced that there was a common denominator to human knowledge, they sought this in all the writings of ancient people.The five-part archival audio tape series upon which this pamphlet series is based ("Doctrines of Neoplatonism," transcribed by Clarke E. Johnston), was given by Manly P. Hall in 1983 to students who were interested in learning more about the ancient wisdom. It seemed to have been one of his favorite subjects down through the years, for he spoke and wrote about it frequently during his long career. In fact, the foreword to his book "Lectures on Ancient Philosophy" declared that the basis of it was Neoplatonism.In the last few years of his life, Mr. Hall said that after years of study and reflection, he had come to believe that the doctrines of Neoplatonism had descended to us in a purer form than nearly any other philosophical system. This system seemed more suitable to we active, extroverted Western people. He believed this was true because though it was as deep and thorough as any other approach to enlightenment, its precepts were more easily understood and their relative simplicity tended to impel an interested person to put them into practice by beginning to learn to live a more philosophic life.The material in this series provides an excellent overview of Neoplatonism that we hope those who read it may be inspired to study the subject themselves. As anyone who has spent time in such study and learned its value will tell you, it is worth a ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is a journal article from Chemie der Erde - Geochemistry - Interdisciplinary Journal for Chemical, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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The Gumushane area near Artvin is highly characteristic due to a significant hydrothermal alteration zone genetically associated with a microdiorite stock and its late-stage derivatives in the form of porphyry plugs that intruded into all the pre-Middle Eocene lithologies. The porphyry intrusion is multi-stage, intermediate to felsic in composition, and divided into pre-ore feldspar porphyries and quartz-feldspar porphyries, syn-ore feldspar-amphibole porphyries, and post-ore feldspar porphyries. Sericitic alteration is dominant, but K-silicate alteration is also observed and is characterised mainly by secondary feldspars, biotites, quartz, anhydrite, magnetite and pyrite veinlets. The central part of the alteration and the porphyry system where syn-ore feldspar-amphibole porphyry outcrops coincides with intense quartz stock-working with anomalous but uneconomical Cu and Au values. In this zone, pyrite is ubiquitous and is accompanied by chalcopyrite and lesser sphalerite, sulphosalts, molybdenite, bornite and magnetite. Chemical analyses of surface and drill core samples show that overall Au and Cu values are around 0.5ppm and 0.3%, respectively, and that they are in the ranges of 1-2ppm and 0.3-0.4%, respectively, in the densest stock-work zones. Multi-phase intrusion of porphyries into Late Cretaceous limestone also caused replacement fronts along re-crystallised limestone and porphyry contacts. This type of mineralisation is enriched in Mn, Zn, Cu, Au and Ba, and contains on average 4.7% MnO, 3.2% FeO, 3.1% Zn, 0.95% Cu, 0.3% Pb, 200ppb Au, 900ppm Bi and 660ppm Ba, present in Fe- and Mn-oxides, pyrite, chalcopyrite, sphalerite and lesser bornite, sulphosalts and gold. Supergene oxidation is well developed in these zones. Hydrothermal alteration mass change calculations reflect an intimate relationship between the two types of mineralisation. The lithologies near mineralised fronts are highly depleted in MnO and Zn, and the intensity of depletion is reduced away from the contact into the porphyry. The leached elements are added to the re-crystallised limestone block in which MnO and Zn show an 81-fold and 472-fold increase, respectively, over the least altered limestone. Au and Cu are enriched along the contact both in the porphyry and in the limestone, implying that they may have been derived either from other lithologies in the vicinity or the magma itself. ... Read more

Book Description
1926. This edition contains both Volume I and II of this work. Plotinus is considered to be the founder of Neo-Platonism. Taking his lead from his reading of Plato, Plotinus developed a complex spiritual cosmology involving three hypostases: the One, the Intelligence, and the Soul. The philosophy of Plotinus is represented in the complete collection of his treatises, collected and edited by his student Porphyry into six books of nine treatises each. For this reason they have come down to us under the title of the Enneads. See other works available by this author from Kessinger Publishing. Other volumes in this set are ISBN(s): 1419185063. ... Read more

Book Description
THIS 20 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: Theurgia or the Egyptian Mysteries, by Iamblichos . To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 076610088X. ... Read more