MacKenna-Plotinus: emanation

But it has been observed that the Couplement, too especially before our emancipation is a member of this total We, and in fact what the body experiences we say We experience. This then covers two distinct notions; sometimes it includes the brute-part, sometimes it transcends the brute. The body is brute touched to life; the true man is the other, going pure of the body, natively endowed with the virtues which belong to the Intellectual-Activity, virtues whose seat is the Separate Soul, the Soul which even in its dwelling here may be kept apart. [This Soul constitutes the human being] for when it has wholly withdrawn, that other Soul which is a radiation [or EMANATION] from it withdraws also, drawn after it. Enneads   I,1,10

In that case they can purvey only heat or cold if cold from the stars can be thought of that is to say, any communication from them will affect only our bodily nature, since all they have to communicate to us is merely corporeal. This implies that no considerable change can be caused in the bodies affected since emanations merely corporeal cannot differ greatly from star to star, and must, moreover, blend upon earth into one collective resultant: at most the differences would be such as depend upon local position, upon nearness or farness with regard to the centre of influence. This reasoning, of course, is as valid of any cold EMANATION there may be as of the warm. Enneads II,3,2

The Intellectual Principle, then, in its unperturbed serenity has brought the universe into being, by communicating from its own store to Matter: and this gift is the Reason-Form flowing from it. For the Emanation of the Intellectual Principle is Reason, an EMANATION unfailing as long as the Intellectual Principle continues to have place among beings. Enneads III,2,2

It is not because the world existed that Souls are here: before the world was, they had it in them to be of the world, to concern themselves with it, to presuppose it, to administer it: it was in their nature to produce it by whatever method, whether by giving forth some EMANATION while they themselves remained above, or by an actual descent, or in both ways together, some presiding from above, others descending; some for we are not at the moment concerned about the mode of creation but are simply urging that, however the world was produced, no blame falls on Providence for what exists within it. Enneads III,2,7

For the Soul is many things, is all, is the Above and the Beneath to the totality of life: and each of us is an Intellectual Kosmos, linked to this world by what is lowest in us, but, by what is the highest, to the Divine Intellect: by all that is intellective we are permanently in that higher realm, but at the fringe of the Intellectual we are fettered to the lower; it is as if we gave forth from it some EMANATION towards that lower, or, rather some Act, which however leaves our diviner part not in itself diminished. Enneads III,4,3

The Heavenly Aphrodite, daughter of Kronos who is no other than the Intellectual Principle must be the Soul at its divinest: unmingled as the immediate EMANATION of the unmingled; remaining ever Above, as neither desirous nor capable of descending to this sphere, never having developed the downward tendency, a divine Hypostasis essentially aloof, so unreservedly an Authentic Being as to have no part with Matter and therefore mythically “the unmothered” justly called not Celestial Spirit but God, as knowing no admixture, gathered cleanly within itself. Enneads III,5,2

For the parent-Soul was a Real-Being sprung directly from the Act of the Hypostasis that ranks before it: it had life; it was a constituent in the Real-Being of all that authentically is in the Real-Being which looks, rapt, towards the very Highest. That was the first object of its vision; it looked towards it as towards its good, and it rejoiced in the looking; and the quality of what it saw was such that the contemplation could not be void of effect; in virtue of that rapture, of its position in regard to its object, of the intensity of its gaze, the Soul conceived and brought forth an offspring worthy of itself and of the vision. Thus; there is a strenuous activity of contemplation in the Soul; there is an EMANATION towards it from the object contemplated; and Eros is born, the Love which is an eye filled with its vision, a seeing that bears its image with it; Eros taking its name, probably, from the fact that its essential being is due to this horasis, this seeing. Of course Love, as an emotion, will take its name from Love, the Person, since a Real-Being cannot but be prior to what lacks this reality. The mental state will be designated as Love, like the Hypostasis, though it is no more than a particular act directed towards a particular object; but it must not be confused with the Absolute Love, the Divine Being. The Eros that belongs to the supernal Soul must be of one temper with it; it must itself look aloft as being of the household of that Soul, dependent upon that Soul, its very offspring; and therefore caring for nothing but the contemplation of the Gods. Enneads III,5,3

This, then, is a union of Reason with something that is not Reason but a mere indeterminate striving in a being not yet illuminated: the offspring Love, therefore, is not perfect, not self-sufficient, but unfinished, bearing the signs of its parentage, the undirected striving and the self-sufficient Reason. This offspring is a Reason-Principle but not purely so; for it includes within itself an aspiration ill-defined, unreasoned, unlimited it can never be sated as long as it contains within itself that element of the Indeterminate. Love, then, clings to the Soul, from which it sprung as from the principle of its Being, but it is lessened by including an element of the Reason-Principle which did not remain self-concentrated but blended with the indeterminate, not, it is true, by immediate contact but through its EMANATION. Love, therefore, is like a goad; it is without resource in itself; even winning its end, it is poor again. Enneads III,5,7

We conclude that this Being is limitless and that, in all the outflow from it, there is no lessening either in its EMANATION, since this also is the entire universe, nor in itself, the starting point, since it is no assemblage of parts [to be diminished by any outgo]. Enneads III,8,8

In its character as Life, as EMANATION, as containing all things in their precise forms and not merely in the agglomerate mass for this would be to contain them imperfectly and inarticulately it must of necessity derive from some other Being, from one that does not emanate but is the Principle of Emanation, of Life, of Intellect and of the Universe. Enneads III,8,9

The last we may figure to ourselves as a revolving circle, or rather a sphere, of a nature to receive light from that third realm, its next higher, in proportion to the light which that itself receives. Thus all begins with the great light, shining self-centred; in accordance with the reigning plan [that of EMANATION] this gives forth its brilliance; the later [divine] existents [souls] add their radiation some of them remaining above, while there are some that are drawn further downward, attracted by the splendour of the object they illuminate. These last find that their charges need more and more care: the steersman of a storm-tossed ship is so intent on saving it that he forgets his own interest and never thinks that he is recurrently in peril of being dragged down with the vessel; similarly the souls are intent upon contriving for their charges and finally come to be pulled down by them; they are fettered in bonds of sorcery, gripped and held by their concern for the realm of Nature. Enneads IV,3,17

15. Conferring but how? As itself possessing them or not? How can it convey what it does not possess, and yet if it does possess how is it simplex? And if, again, it does not, how is it the source of the manifold? A single, unmanifold EMANATION we may very well allow how even that can come from a pure unity may be a problem, but we may always explain it on the analogy of the irradiation from a luminary but a multitudinous production raises question. Enneads V,3,15

The explanation is that what comes from the Supreme cannot be identical with it and assuredly cannot be better than it what could be better than The One or the utterly transcendent? The EMANATION, then, must be less good, that is to say, less self-sufficing: now what must that be which is less self-sufficing than The One? Obviously the Not-One, that is to say, multiplicity, but a multiplicity striving towards unity; that is to say, a One-that-is-many. Enneads V,3,15

We may take it as proved that the EMANATION of the Transcendent must be a Not-One something other than pure unity, but that it is a multiplicity, and especially that it is such a multiplicity as is exhibited in the sequent universe, this is a statement worthy of deliberation: some further enquiry must be made, also, as to the necessity of any sequel to the First. Enneads V,3,15

But how from amid perfect rest can an Act arise? There is in everything the Act of the Essence and the Act going out from the Essence: the first Act is the thing itself in its realized identity, the second Act is an inevitably following outgo from the first, an EMANATION distinct from the thing itself. Enneads V,4,2

Soul must be sounded to the depths, understood as an EMANATION from Intellectual-Principle and as holding its value by a Reason-Principle thence infused. Next this Intellect must be apprehended, an Intellect other than the reasoning faculty known as the rational principle; with reasoning we are already in the region of separation and movement: our sciences are Reason-Principles lodged in soul or mind, having manifestly acquired their character by the presence in the soul of Intellectual-Principle, source of all knowing. Enneads VI,9,5