Greco-Christian stream·Enneads·Ennead IV — On the Soul·IV.1 — On the Essence of the Soul (1)
Soul as intermediate between the divisible and indivisible
Opens the great Plotinian psychology. The essence of soul stands midway between the indivisible nature of Intellect and the divisible nature of bodies — partly each, wholly neither.
Source context
- Theme
- the essence and ontological status of the individual soul
- Soul-faculty
- Consciousness Soul
Steiner
- GA 74, 1920-05-22Steiner notes that Plotinus shows, in a way neither Plato's dialogues nor Aristotelian philosophy fully achieves, how the whole soul is implicated in the philosophical ascent — treating the soul's essence as the central problem of late Greek thought.
- GA 30Steiner identifies Neo-Platonism's characteristic move as substituting contemplation of the human inner world for speculation about a transcendent beyond, with the state of ecstasy marking the soul's return to its source — a structural limitation Steiner distinguishes from the self-conscious soul-development sought in anthroposophy.
Cross-tradition
- Vedanta (Atman doctrine)Cross-tradition congruence appears in the Advaita identification of the individual soul (jīvātman) with the universal Self (Brahman-Ātman), structurally paralleling Plotinus's derivation of the individual soul from the World-Soul and its ultimate identity with the One.
- Kabbalah (Neshamah)The Kabbalistic tripartite soul-doctrine locates the highest principle, Neshamah, as a direct emanation of the divine — a cross-tradition congruence with Plotinus's account of soul as hypostatic emanation from Nous and the One.
FIRST TRACTATE
FIRST TRACTATE.
ON THE ESSENCE OF THE SOUL (1).
Section 1
Section 1
1In the Intellectual Kosmos dwells Authentic Essence, with the
Intellectual-Principle [Divine Mind] as the noblest of its content, but containing also souls, since every soul in this lower sphere has come thence: that is the world of unembodied spirits while to our world belong those that have entered body and undergone bodily division. There the Intellectual-Principle is a concentrated all- nothing of it distinguished or divided- and in that kosmos of unity all souls are concentrated also, with no spatial discrimination. But there is a difference: The Intellectual-Principle is for ever repugnant to distinction and to partition. Soul, there without distinction and partition, has yet a nature lending itself to divisional existence: its division is secession, entry into body. In view of this seceding and the ensuing partition we may legitimately speak of it as a partible thing. But if so, how can it still be described as indivisible? In that the secession is not of the soul entire; something of it holds its ground, that in it which recoils from separate existence. The entity, therefore, described as "consisting of the undivided soul and of the soul divided among bodies," contains a soul which is at once above and below, attached to the Supreme and yet reaching down to this sphere, like a radius from a centre. Thus it is that, entering this realm, it possesses still the vision inherent to that superior phase in virtue of which it unchangingly maintains its integral nature. Even here it is not exclusively the partible soul: it is still the impartible as well: what in it knows partition is parted without partibility; undivided as giving itself to the entire body, a whole to a whole, it is divided as being effective in every part.
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