/lit/ - Literature

>>13587587
how can i be like him

>>13587587
he was ugly

>>13587587
He failed to develop as systematic a practice for attaining liberation/bliss/union with the One as one finds in eastern thought, instead he had only a few temporary instances of attaining this that he returned from. His thought and efforts were certainly admirable but he didnt go as far and didn't penetrate as deeply into the nature of existence as eastern thinkers.

>>13588822
Are you faulting Plotinus for not doing more, or Porphyry for taking such shitty notes?

>>13588822
Thoughts on Proclus?

>>13588952
Almost all the essays are letters Plotinus humbly sent to Porphyry.

>>13588822
That's because no single eastern thinker has ever entered the last becoming of being beyond, alone with the alone, entering the Adytum of God. All they talk about is Brahman (Nous) and Atman (Soul), or worse 'only' the World Soul like stoics.
Just as the Middle-Platonists were confused, the Brahmins confuse the Ineffable-One-King OF All with Being itself (the All/Nous). Even if they've seen the rising of the One like the sun out of the ocean of darkness, they have been incapable to divide the lines and comprehend the hierarchy since they lack dialectics, they mistake the absolute transcendent as something that negates the infinite and limited.

>Like a child begging for both, he must declare that reality or the sum of things is both at once – all that is unchangeable and all that is in change.

The Hen is all things
but not a single one;
for the arche of all things is not all things,
but in that particular way it is all things, that is to say thither they run.
Rather, they do not yet exist, but they will be.

>>13588955
Based but too autistic, he was too "multiplicitous", the beauty of Plotinus' truth is his intuitive systematic simplicity; but Proclus is essential, being a fantastic guide for understanding, much like Aristotle he's Daemonical but not Divine prophets like Plato or Plotinus.

>>13589203
Let us therefore comprehend, out of all his functions, first his power to perfect, from the fact that he makes visible the objects of sight in the universe, for through his light he perfects them; secondly, his creative and generative power from the changes wrought by him in the universe; thirdly, his power to link together all things into one whole, from the harmony of his motions towards one and the same goal; fourthly, his middle station we can comprehend from himself, who is midmost; and fifthly, the fact that he is established as king among the intellectual gods, from his middle station among the planets. Now if we see that these powers, or powers of similar importance, belong to any one of the other visible deities, let us not assign to Helios leadership among the gods. But if he has nothing in common with those other gods except his beneficent energy, and of this too he gives them all a share, then let us call to witness the priests of Cyprus who set up common altars to Helios and Zeus; but even before them let us summon as witness Apollo, who sits in council with our god. For this god declares: " Zeus, Hades, Helios Serapis, three gods in one godhead!" Let us then assume that, among the intellectual gods, Helios and Zeus have a joint or rather a single sovereignty. Hence I think that with reason Plato called Hades a wise god. And we call this same god Hades Serapis also, namely the Unseen ] and Intellectual, to whom Plato says the souls of those who have lived most righteously and justly mount upwards. For let no one conceive of him as the god whom the legends teach us to shudder at, but as the mild and placable, since he completely frees our souls from generation: and the souls that he has thus freed he does not nail to other bodies, punishing them and exacting penalties, but he carries aloft and lifts up our souls to the intelligible world. And that this doctrine is not wholly new, but that Homer and Hesiod the most venerable of the poets held it before us . . .

>>13589257
Zeus was the first, Zeus last, the lightning's lord,
Zeus head, Zeus centre, all things are from Zeus.
Zeus born a male, Zeus virgin undefiled;
Zeus the firm base of earth and starry heaven;
Zeus sovereign, Zeus alone first cause of all:
One power divine, great ruler of the world,
One kingly form, encircling all things here,
Fire, water, earth, and ether, night and day;
Wisdom, first parent, and delightful Love:
For in Zeus' mighty body these all lie.
His head and beauteous face the radiant heaven
Reveals and round him float in shining waves
The golden tresses of the twinkling stars.
On either side bulls' horns of gold are seen,
Sunrise and sunset, footpaths of the gods.
His eyes the Sun, the Moon's responsive light;
His mind immortal ether, sovereign truth,
Hears and considers all; nor any speech,
Nor cry, nor noise, nor ominous voice escapes
The ear of Zeus, great Kronos' mightier son:
Such his immortal head, and such his thought.
His radiant body, boundless, undisturbed
In strength of mighty limbs was formed thus:
The god's broad-spreading shoulders, breast and back
Air's wide expanse displays; on either side
Grow wings, wherewith throughout all space he flies.
Earth the all-mother, with her lofty hills,
His sacred belly forms; the swelling flood
Of hoarse resounding Ocean girds his waist.
His feet the deeply rooted ground upholds,
And dismal Tartarus, and earth's utmost bounds.
All things he hides, then from his heart again
In godlike action brings to gladsome light.

>For every street, every market-place is full of Zeus.
>Even the sea and the harbour are full of this deity.
>Everywhere everyone is indebted to Zeus.
>For we are indeed his offspring

>>13589203
Any books you'd recommend?

>>13589320
Early Greek Philosophy by Barnes.
Theaetetus-Sophist-Statesman, Symposium, Phaedrus, Republic, Philebus, Timaeus, Parmenides.
Neoplatonic Philosophy: Introductory Readings.
Carabine - The Unknown God (Or if you have lot's of money/feel brave: Damascius' Problems and Solutions concerning First Principles)

>Not counting the obvious like Enneads, Iamblichus' De Mysteries, Proclus' Commentaries and his Theology of Plato
There's also Algis Uzdavinys' work (Philosophy as a Rite of Rebirth; Orpheus and the Roots of Platonism; his anthology) if you want to behold how the Golden Chain has reached across millennia.
I recommend Prometheus Trust.
The books by Lloyd Gerson and John Dillon are also golden.

>>13587587
he thought that cum is soul juice

>>13589587
implying it isn't

>>13589691
so whenever I jack off I'm improving my soul regeneration skills

>>13589823
i guess but if so it also means you're also jerking off your soul

>>13589587
>>13589691
>>13589823
>>13589831

The act alone is meaningless, and one barely feels the orgasm he has, never mind anything at all before and after, if one approaches it as all but extrinsic.

>>13589823
No.

>>13589203
You have no idea what you are talking about, you already got BTFO in the last two threads when you posted that nonsense and never replied or offered a rebuttal, I don't know why you keep posting blatantly incorrect information. Evidently you have a very fragile ego and can't handle people criticizing Neoplatonism, it's embarrassing to watch you repeat your misunderstandings of Indian thought as if they were a rebuttal of it.

>All they talk about is Brahman (Nous) and Atman (Soul), or worse 'only' the World Soul like stoics.
This is completely wrong, as I explained to you before in the last thread, in Advaita Vedanta there is a division and hierarchy of Nirguna (unqualified) Brahman and Saguna (qualified) Brahman (also called Hiranyagarbha/Prajapati) which corresponds to the One and the Nous respectively;there is also a cosmic intelligence called Buddhi which could be considered the Nous as well. Like the One of Plotinus, Nirguna Brahman is self-sufficient, passive, undivided, and is the source and contains the possibilities of all existence. Like the One, Nirguna Brahman is not itself the 'creator' of multiplicity but rather just like with how Plotinus assigns creation to the Nous the creation of multiplicity and phenomena belongs to Saguna Brahman/Prajapati which is not the same as Nirguna Brahman.

>Just as the Middle-Platonists were confused, the Brahmins confuse the Ineffable-One-King OF All with Being itself (the All/Nous).
Again this is wrong, Nirguna Brahman (the One) in Advaita is not equated with the all/Nous. In Advaita the realm of manifestation, the universe, Buddhi, the psycho-physical aggregate (including the intellect) are all part of Saguna Brahman (Nous), and are NOT Nirguna Brahman. Nirguna Brahman is NOT equated with manifestation/the universe but is considered to be completely distinct from it. This is why Gaudapada writes in his Karika about the Upanishads negating the worship of Hiranyagarbha (Nous) to point to the Nirguna Brahman instead.

>>13590302
>Even if they've seen the rising of the One like the sun out of the ocean of darkness, they have been incapable to divide the lines and comprehend the hierarchy since they lack dialectics,
All wrong, Advaita has an extensive hierarchy that models the various levels/states of existence. Its also false that they lack dialectics, this is an especially brainlet thing to write. There are dialectal discussions about the soul/God in the early Brihadaranyaka Upanishad that predate Plato, Shankara uses dialectics extensively throughout most of his commentaries and the post-Shankara Advaita thinkers use dialectics heavily as well (see the book for example: Post-Samkara Dialectics of the Advaita Vedanta - Shastri)

> they mistake the absolute transcendent as something that negates the infinite and limited.
Also wrong, Advaita affirms empirical validity to the manifest universe and criticizes schools of thought which deny this, the manifest is just considered to be not ultimately real as in not being the ultimate reality, which belongs to Nirguna Brahman alone, this does not negate the manifest/Nous/Saguna Brahman but just accords to the manifest its own proper and befitting place in the hierarchy of existence.

>>13589384
excellent, this should occupy me for some time

>>13588952
Plotinus for not doing more, for all the elegance and subtleness of his system, based on the records of his thoughts and descriptions we have of him he failed to reach any sort of permanent union with the One, falling short of anything approaching the Jivanmukti in Hinduism or the Al-Insān al-Kāmil of Sufism. Plotinus is described as having attained a temporary ecstatic union several times, which would be considered an important but still only a preliminary and non-final attainment in eastern schools of thought. He is heavy on theory but somewhat lacking in praxis, the Bhagavad-Gita alone contains more applicable spiritual practices than most of the Enneads IMO. I still appreciate him a lot but I think it's a mistake to take anyone as some sort of final authority on metaphysics if they didn't even reach the final heights of spiritual realization themselves.

>>13587699
develop a mommy milk fetish

>>13591596
what about milf traps?

>>13591667
kys

>>13591704
cringe

>>13591729
cope

>>13591749
yikes

>>13591799
have sex

>>13591805
dilate

>>13591820
I'm not a tranny so your insult is worthless, to answer your question though Plotinus was described by his contemporaries as having a fixation about breastfeeding his mother while still a young lad, well past the stage of infanthood; there is nothing recorded about him being a homosexual. If you wanted to be more like him then you could develop said mommy milk fixation to pass through some of the same stages he did, thus setting you on the path to the same realizations. His early focus on the One that gave birth to him in a way is like a mirror image of his later metaphysics.

>>13590302
Aren’t Saguna Br. Ishvara, which is Divine Will and Prajapati/Hiranyagarbha pure being and thus the first determined (unity) and the realm of manifestations (both formal and formless)?

>>13591848
looks like I care?
stop being creppy on philosopher's lives

>>13591951
you were the one who asked how to become more like him to begin with, if you cant handle the heat then get outta the kitchen son

>>13589384
Did you like Thomas Taylor's translations for the selected version of the Enneads? I was told it was translated better.

>>13591915
Prajapati/Hiranyagarbha/Virat are all basically the same thing (sometimes the names are used as different aspects of it but they are almost interchangable), which is Saguna Brahman. The undivided and unchanging Nirguna Brahman alone is the absolute reality, that there even appears to be a Saguna Brahman is due to Maya, which is a subordinate power of Nirguna Brahman. Under the veil of His own power of Maya Nirguna Brahman appears as Saguna. In (absolute) reality there is no manifestation or lack thereof in Nirguna B, the existence of manifestation and its division into manifest and unmanifest and subtle vs gross etc all owe their appearence to Maya just as Saguna Brahman does. In the Brihadaranyaka Up. it describes how at the beginning of every cycle of universal manifestation Prajapati both creates the universe and all beings, gods etc and at the same time becomes them, through a self-sacrifice Prajapati himself creates the universe by becoming it. Will and thoughts/feelings are attributed in the Upanishads to Prajapati, but not to Nirguna B.

>>13592450
'Unity' and 'Being' have different meanings when applied to Nirguna B versus Saguna B/the universe. In one sense, unity can be applied to Nirguna B in the sense of It being the limitless and undivided reality/bliss/consiousness which is the only thing that really exists, there being no 'other' that could break its unity. The universe and Saguna B appear *within* this unity due to Maya and in that sense are a part of it, but Nirguna B is not them and is distinct from them, so they are not included in the reality of its undivided unity. The unity *within* this universe is that it and all of (un)manifestation are Saguna B, but this is different from the infinite unity of Nirguna B which is *beyond* all of this despite them being inside It. Similarly, 'Being' can have different contexts; either as pure unqualified existence, or as consious presence 'in time' registered through the intellect and sensory data. The first would apply to Nirguna Brahman, that It is pure, unqualified and eternal, distinctionless bliss/consiousness that is beyond the extremes of (manifest) existence (as we perceive it) and non-existence, but nevertheless as It is "not nothing", it can be regarded as 'being' or 'existing' in a sense so long as we remember that the sense our minds give these concepts doesnt actually delimit or accurately apply in reality to Nirguna B, since we can only truly understand these concepts through how they apply to the manifested universe, through the lenses of the intellect which is a part of it. The latter sense of being would only apply to Prajapati etc which is the first consious being characterized by volition and experiencing itself as something other than Nirguna Brahman (although Nirguna Brahman as the Atma is the inner Self of Prajapati and all other beings, but under the influence of Maya there appears to be the subjective experience of otherwise). Shankara mostly uses Ishvara to refer to Saguna B, the Upanishads and Shankara's writings switch between talking about Nirguna and Saguna B under their various names, although once you get a feel for his writing it becomes clear from the context what's being discussed.

>>13592384
By who?

>>13589384
>(Philosophy as a Rite of Rebirth; Orpheus and the Roots of Platonism

absolutely based

>>13592457
old professor

>>13592522
>>13592457
Ken Wheeler

>>13592101
You should get insulted more

>>13590302
>>13590308
I'm obviously bantering on Eastern Thought (obviously some of them have experienced true Henosis).
With Dialectics in this scenario I meant the Divided Line, the correct Division of Nature (all reality), the Hierarchy; it is still true that Advaita is negative towards plurality—when the whole point of Neoplatonism and The One is affirmation of multiplicity: the One is the principle of everything, it is what gives individuality (literally) to all. It's because he is what he is that we are. Yes the Final Cause of all things us to unify with One, and in effect transcend your individuality; but this is a choice, and a Soul being to hasty to leave the heaven of Soul for Nous, or Being for the One will once more fall even deeper into the mud.

>>13592927
based take

>>13592384
Taylor is a gold mine not because of his translations but his matrix of cross-references, in all his translations he compares and connects additional notes with other Platonists, like Damascius or Simplicius. And his introductions are fantastic. But I would pick Gerson latest editorial achievement of the Enneads, there you'll have all the now standardized and consistent terminology; their internal footnotes are also unbeatable (multiple footnotes on every page referencing every other page that says something similar).
Alternatively if you have money to spend, the same guys that worked on this edition are also producing a huge series of commentaries on each treatise of the Enneads. 'Parmenides Publishing'.

>>13590600
>some time
Years?

>>13587587
what are these spells?