MacKenna-Plotinus: Intelecções

Thus we have marked off what belongs to the Couplement from what stands by itself: the one group has the character of body and never exists apart from body, while all that has no need of body for its manifestation belongs peculiarly to Soul: and the Understanding, as passing judgement upon Sense-Impressions, is at the point of the vision of Ideal-Forms, seeing them as it were with an answering sensation (i.e, with consciousness) this last is at any rate true of the Understanding in the Veritable Soul. For Understanding, the true, is the Act of the Intellections: in many of its manifestations it is the assimilation and reconciliation of the outer to the inner. Enneads   I,1,9

The novice must hold himself constantly under some image of the Divine Being and seek in the light of a clear conception; knowing thus, in a deep conviction, whither he is going - into what a sublimity he penetrates - he must give himself forthwith to the inner and, radiant with the Divine Intellections [with which he is now one], be no longer the seer but, as that place has made him, the seen. Enneads V,8,11

Being, therefore, and the Intellectual-Principle are one Nature: the Beings, and the Act of that which is, and the Intellectual-Principle thus constituted, all are one: and the resultant Intellections are the Idea of Being and its shape and its act. Enneads V,9,8

What we have called the perceptibles of that realm enter into cognisance in a way of their own, since they are not material, while the sensible sense here - so distinguished as dealing with corporeal objects - is fainter than the perception belonging to that higher world; the man of this sphere has sense-perception because existing in a less true degree and taking only enfeebled images of things There - perceptions here are Intellections of the dimmer order, and the Intellections There are vivid perceptions. Enneads VI,7,7

But why are they not at man’s level of reason: why also the difference from man to man? We must reflect that, since the many forms of lives are movements - and so with the Intellections - they cannot be identical: there must be different lives, distinct intellections, degrees of lightsomeness and clarity: there must be firsts, seconds, thirds, determined by nearness to the Firsts. This is how some of the Intellections are gods, others of a secondary order having what is here known as reason, while others again belong to the so-called unreasoning: but what we know here as unreasoning was There a Reason-Principle; the unintelligent was an Intellect; the Thinker of Horse was Intellect and the Thought, Horse, was an Intellect. Enneads VI,7,9