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Plotinus often refers to the methods and problems involved in attaining union with the One. For the sake of convenience we might distinguish three stages in reaching this goal: (1) the return to one's true selfas soul; (2) attaining the life of divine intellect; (3) union with the One.

1. Starting from what is likely to be the position ofmany ofus, Plotinus seeks to remind us ofwhat we are. Reaching this insight presupposes that we are in control ofour bodily passions, a control achieved through the practice ofwhat Plotinus calls the ‘civic’ virtues (I. 2 [19]. 1–2), that is, the virtues ofwisdom, courage, moderation, and justice as defined by Plato in the Republic (4. 428b–444a). This control allows us to detach ourselves mentally from material preoccupations (I. 2. 3–6: this detachment corresponds to the purificatory virtues mentioned in the Phaedo, 69bc) so that we discover our selves as soul, a divine reality independent ofbody and prior to it, which makes body and gives it its goodness and beauty. We are led on the path to this self-discovery by arguments (such as those summarized above in Ch. 1) showing the constitution ofthe world and its origin in soul:

Therefore there must be a two-part explanation given to those who are disposed in this way, if one will turn them toward opposite things and things which are first and lead them up to the highest and one and first. What then are these [two] parts? One shows the little value ofthe things that soul now values—this we will do at greater length elsewhere [Plotinus does not seem to have done this in the Enneads—the other teaches and reminds soul ofher origin and worth. (V. 1 [10]. 1. 22–8)

Thus Plotinus' arguments about the distinction between soul and body, the dependence ofbody on soul, are not merely arguments: they are methods for bringing the soul back to itself. ‘And the ways whereby this was demonstrated were a kind ofleading up’ (I. 3[20]. 1. 5–6). Soul's forgetfulness of itself in the material world is not a simple oversight on its part; it is a degradation of its life in so far as knowledge is a higher kind of life for it. To bring soul to know itself is to transform its life, to bring it to focus its life at a level close to the Good. To know is to live at a higher level.

2. The arguments lead us even further. They not only show soul what it is; they also lead it to see that the knowledge it has is derivative, that it derives from a higher form of thinking, the divine intellect which, unlike it, does not need to work through long logical processes, but possesses knowledge in a different and superior way (see above, Ch. 3). These arguments, like those bringing soul to self-discovery, are techniques of transformation of the self: the soul is put on the road to thinking in another way, that characteristic ofdivine intellect. It thus becomes intellect; it is what it now does.

Plotinus refers to this state of becoming divine intellect in a famous passage:

Many times, awakened to myself away from the body, becoming outside all else and within myself, seeing a wonderful and great beauty, believing myself then especially to be part of the higher realm, in act as the best life, having become one with the divine and based in it advancing to that activity, establishing myselfabove all other intelligible beings, then going down from this position in the divine, from intellect down to discursive reasoning, I am puzzled how I could ever, and now, descend, and how my soul has come to be in the body. (IV. 8 [6]. 1. 1–10)

Many readers (ancient and modern) have taken this text to refer to an experience of union with the One that Plotinus would have experienced a number oftimes. However, the expression ‘many times’ at the beginning ofthe passage relates, not to a number ofexperiences ofunion, but to a number ofstates ofperplexity (‘Many times . . . I am puzzled . . . ’).¹² Furthermore the actual experience described in this passage is that ofunion with intellect. It is the force ofhabit that brings us to assume that all experience ofunion in Plotinus is experience ofunion with the One and thus to read this passage as ifit exemplified the latter.

It should be noted that if the transformation of our lives that comes with becoming intellect is facilitated by philosophical arguments, these arguments must also be left behind: they make use of logical processes and are not required in the perfect knowledge ofintellect. The reader ofthe Enneads must put these arguments aside on outgrowing their use.

3. This applies even more to the last stage, union with the One. The reasoning that brings us to self-knowledge as souls and points the way to becoming intellect can play no role in the ultimate step ofunion with the One. Reasoning can even get in the way of reaching a form of life above reasoning. As the One is beyond all knowledge and language (see above, Ch. 5), Plotinus can say little about union with it:

Therefore ‘it cannot be said’ or ‘written’, he says [Plato, Letter 7, 341c], but we speak and write, sending on to it and wakening from words [or explanations] towards contemplation, as if showing the way to him who wishes to see something. For teaching extends to the road and the passage, but the vision is the work ofhim who has decided to see. (VI. 9 [9]. 4. 11–16)

Plotinus can only recommend purification of oneself as intellect, the removal of all obstacles or differences that might separate us from the One (VI. 9. 7; see I. 6. 9), a waiting in silence (see VI. 7 [38]. 34). To visualize what happens we can refer to the initiation ceremonies

12 Compare the standard phrase ‘Many times I have wondered’, which is used as a stylistic device for beginning a book or section (as in our Plotinian passage) in, for example, Xenophon, Memorabilia 1. 1 or in Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 12. 4.

ofthe Greek mystery cults (VI. 9. 11). But such comparisons are inadequate:

Therefore analogies teach, as do negations and knowledge of what comes from it [the One], and certain steps upwards. But what conveys us are purifications, virtues, and setting in order, and approaches to the intelligible, establishing ourselves there and feasting in what is there. Whoever has himself become contemplator and object contemplated, both ofhimselfand ofthe others, becoming being and intellect and the ‘complete living animal’

[Plato, Timaeus, 31b], no longer looks outside; having become this he is near, and the next is it [the One], already shining in proximity on all the intelligible. Now leaving behind all learning, educated up and established in the beautiful, in which he is, up to this stage he thinks. But carried out by the wave, as it were, of intellect itself, lifted up high by it as it swells, so to speak, he suddenly saw, not seeing how, but the sight, filling the eyes with light, does not make him see another through itself, but the light itself was the sight seen. (VI. 7. 36. 6–21)

The union with the One raises a number ofdifficult questions, particularly ifwe wish to compare it with various types ofreligious mystical experience. As compared for example with the experience ofChristian mystics, union with the One might be thought to entail annihilation ofthe self, whereas in the Christian version the distinction between creator and creature must remain, whatever the intensity ofthe experience ofunification. Ifsuch issues merit a much more extensive discussion than can be attempted here, it might at least be noted that Plotinus himselfdoes not think that the total union ofthe selfwith the One entails the annihilation ofthe self(see VI. 7. 34).