Sphere-visualization exercise in Plotinus:
Then let us grasp this world by means of discursive reason, with each of its parts remaining what it is without confusion, brought into one whole ‘all together,’ as far as is possible, so that when any one part appears, for example the sphere which is outside the world, there immediately accompanies it a representation of the sun as well, together with the other stars; and the earth, sea and all living creatures are seen, just as everything could in fact be seen in a transparent sphere. Let there be in your soul a luminous representation of a sphere, containing in it everything whether moving or still, in fact definitely what is both moving and what is still. And while you keep hold of this representation take another beside you [into your self], but with the mass removed. And remove both the places and the image of matter in yourself; and do not be tempted to take another sphere that is smaller than it in mass, but call on the god who made the sphere whose image you have and pray for him to come. May he come, bringing his own world with all the gods which are within it, he who is one and all; and each of them is all coming together in one; they are different powers, but all are one by that single multiple power. Rather, the one is all; for he himself is not deficient by the fact that all those gods come into existence. They are all together and each is separate as well in a non-spatial fixity since none has any perceptible shape – if it did one would be here and another there, and each would not be the whole in itself; nor does any have parts different from other parts or from itself [as a whole]; nor is each like a power that has been cut up and is co-extensive with the enumerated parts, but each one is the entire power, extending to infinity and powerful to infinity. And that god is so great that even his parts are infinite, for where can you name anything that he has not already reached?. …
– 𝘌𝘯𝘯. V.8.9.1-28 [‘𝘖𝘯 𝘐𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘉𝘦𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘺’], trans. A. Smith, 2017.
“In 𝘌𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘴 V.8 Plotinus presents a thought experiment involving visualization of the sphere:
“Let us grasp this world by means of discursive reason, with each of its parts remaining what it is without confusion, brought into one whole ‘all together,’ as far as is possible…”
Here, Plotinus suggests that the reader try to perceive the world as unified within thought, to think of the world as a single object of thought, yet as retaining all of the features of its different members. Consider, he tells the reader, how any conditions of awareness whatsoever are confronted by you, the knower. These directions are a way of calling attention to the most general features involved in any encounter with the world, any possible object of awareness. We might paraphrase these instructions as follows: consider the total possible field of objects of awareness – that same field is simply what I mean by ‘world.’
It is fair to call this passage a meditation because it involves two features often employed in meditation techniques: the active but directed use of the imagination, and the sustained presence of this imaginative construction as a method of changing habitual modes of thought or self-awareness:
“So that when any one part appears, for example the sphere which is outside the world, there immediately accompanies it a representation of the sun as well, together with the other stars; and the earth, sea and all living creatures are seen, just as everything could in fact be seen in a transparent sphere.”
This meditation involves a very careful direction of the mind and imagination of the student. Holding the simple image, the sphere, before the mind’s eye, the reader is to fill up the space of that image entirely, exerting herself to the utmost to picture the entire universe of sentient and non-sentient beings in all of their diversity. Certainly one would need at least some practice and effort to carry out all of the conditions of the meditation successfully.
All of these components of the picture must be held in an even gaze. All sentient beings are visible within the diaphanous sphere at a single glance: 𝘦𝘶𝘵𝘩𝘶𝘴. An important feature of the meditation is the training of the student’s concentration and attention. The practice of this exercise leads both to a focusing capacity, an intense direction of the mind’s eye to a single object, without letting any feature of that object dominate in the moment, and to a detachment. None of the beings, either animate or inanimate, either human or nonhuman, is to have priority within the meditation. All are equally and completely subsumed within the general category of content of the sphere. All are, we might say, equidistant from the center. This equidistance is what Plotinus is hinting at by saying that the elements are, as it were, upon the surface of the sphere.
~ Sara Rappe, 𝘙𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘕𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘮: Non-discursive Thinking in the Texts of Plotinus, Proclus, and Damascius (CUP, 2000), p.79-80.
Although the sphere is envisioned as transparent, it is not empty. Holding the simple image, the sphere, before the mind’s eye, the reader is to fill up the space of that image entirely, to picture the entire universe of sentient and non-sentient beings in all of their diversity. The reader has before the mind’s eye a vast field consisting in the panoramic sweep of the entire cosmos that is simultaneously intricate in its detail and specification. The purpose of this interior visualization is to call attention to the quality of interior vision itself, and in particular, to its capacity to be at once unitary and multifaceted in a way that exterior vision is not. This facet of the image, its appearance as an integral totality, functions as a balance upon the monolithic quality of the initial visualization. It also introduces a third stage in the developing vision:
“Let there be in your soul a luminous representation of a sphere, containing in it everything whether moving or still, in fact definitely what is both moving and what is still. And while you keep hold of this representation take another beside you [into your self], but with the mass removed. And remove both the places and the image of matter in yourself; and do not be tempted to take another sphere that is smaller than it in mass…”
The reader, trying to contract the teeming morass of all sentient beings into this tiny sphere, must ruthlessly compress the entire universe. Instructions for this form of imaginary compression are included in the exhortation to ”remove [the places].” Here Plotinus suggests that the student try to picture the world as existing within his imagination, that is, to confront the world solely as it is apprehended in awareness.
– ibid., p.104-5.
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You have to remember Plotinus’ doctrine of the undescended soul/self here – that is why the soul does not need to leave the body as such – as we are already ‘in Nous’ (in effect, we are Nous; cf. the sphere-visualization exercise at 𝘌𝘯𝘯. V.8.9.1-28) and so “ascent” is an inward turn; there was no need for theurgy, etc. This view of the soul/self was categorically rejected by Iamblichus/Proclus (and subsequent later Platonists) for whom theurgy was needed – among other things – in order to purify the soul’s pneumatic vehicle (𝘰𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘮𝘢 𝘱𝘯𝘦𝘶𝘮𝘢) precisely so that the soul could ascend in this lifetime (albeit temporarily); for them the soul was fully descended.
And, that which is most astounding of all, that although the theurgists order [us] to bury the body except the head in the most mystical rites, Plato, moved by the gods themselves, has anticipated this: ‘Being pure,’ he says, ‘and not entombed in this thing which we now carry around with us and call a body [𝘗𝘩𝘢𝘦𝘥𝘳𝘶𝘴 250c4-6], we obtained this most blessed initiation and highest initiation being full of intelligible light. For the pure ray symbolically shines the intelligible light on us. Thus, we possess the life in the Intelligible, which is completely separated from the body.’ Raising the head of our charioteer toward the place outside we are filled with the mysteries there and intelligible silence. [cf. 𝘗𝘩𝘥𝘳. 248a2-3].
~ Proclus, 𝘗𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘤 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘺 4.9. 30.17-31.5 (trans. Finamore 2004).
The gods have a wondrous knowledge of the universe of figures and a potency capable of generating and supporting all secondary things; the figures in the realm of nature have the power of creating appearances, though they are devoid of knowledge and intelligent comprehension; individual souls have immaterial thought and spontaneous knowledge, but not the generative and activating cause. Therefore just as nature stands creatively above the visible figures, so the soul, exercising her capacity to know, projects on the imagination, as on a mirror, the ideas of the figures; and the imagination, receiving in pictorial form these impressions of the ideas within the soul, by their means affords the soul an opportunity to turn inward from the pictures and attend to herself. It is as if a man looking at himself in a mirror and marveling at the power of nature and at his own appearance should wish to look upon himself directly and possess such a power as would enable him to become at the same time the seer and the object seen. In the same way, when the soul is looking outside herself at the imagination, seeing the figures depicted there and being struck by their beauty and orderedness, she is admiring her own ideas from which they are derived; and though she adores their beauty, she dismisses it as something reflected and seeks her own beauty. She wants to penetrate within herself to see the circle and the triangle there, all things without parts and all in one another, to become one with what she sees and enfold their plurality, to behold the secret and ineffable figures in the inaccessible places and shrines of the gods, to uncover the unadorned divine beauty and see the circle more partless than any center, the triangle without extension, and every other object of knowledge that has regained unity. Clearly, then, the self-moved figure is prior to what is moved by another; the partless is prior to the self-moved; and prior to the partless is the figure which is identical with unity. For all figures attain consummation in the henads, the source from which they all entered into being.’
~ Proclus, Commentary on the First Book of Euclid’s 𝘌𝘭𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴 [𝘐𝘯 𝘌𝘶𝘤.] 140.22 – 142.7, trans. Morrow, 1992, p.112-3.
Corpus Hermeticum, XI, 20. [‘𝘔𝘪𝘯𝘥 [𝘕𝘰𝘶𝘴] 𝘵𝘰 𝘏𝘦𝘳𝘮𝘦𝘴’]:
Become Aiôn, and you will understand God [Αἰὼν γενοῦ καὶ νοήσεις τὸν θεόν]… Gather all the sensations of creation in yourself; fire and water, dry and moist, and that you are at once everywhere; in earth, in water, in heaven, that you have not yet been born, that you are in the womb, young, old, dead, beyond death; and when you have understood all of this at once—times, places, things, qualities, quantities—then you are able to understand God.
~ trans. C. H. Bull, ‘𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘏𝘦𝘳𝘮𝘦𝘴 𝘛𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘮𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘴’ (Brill, 2018), p.282.
– see also Rappe (2000), p.128-9.
The gods that guard the poles have been assigned the function of assembling the separate and unifying the manifold members of the whole, while those appointed to the axes keep the circuits in everlasting revolution around and around. And if I may add my own conceit, the centers and poles of all the spheres symbolize the wry-necked gods (τῶν ίυγγικῶν θεῶν) by imitating the mysterious union and synthesis which they effect; the axes represent the connectors (συνοχάς) of all the cosmic orders … and the very spheres are likenesses of the perfecting divinities (τῶν τελεσιουργῶν θεῶν) …
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