Here's an unexpected, but welcome, surprise from Jason Youngman — his video review of "Return to the One," my book about the teachings of Plotinus, a Greek mystic philosopher, that was published in 2004 (in 2009, having gotten the rights back, I re-published it via Amazon's Create Space).
Youngman did a good job enscapsulating Plotinus' (or, if you like, Plotinus's) teachings in a few words and images. "Letting go" is a nice way of describing how Plotinus viewed a return to the One — the impersonal highest reality.
My Facebook cover photo got morphed into an image in the video, as shown above. Below is the unaltered image of me rocking a mask that I'd bought at the marvelous Oregon Country Fair in Veneta.
In the twelve years since "Return to the One" was published, my views about the nature of the cosmos have changed quite a bit. But I still resonate with the notion of One.
It seems unarguable that something has always existed. Most religions refer to this something as God. Most scientists call this something nature, the laws of nature, the multiverse, or such.
Plotinus speaks of the One. I like to think of this something as Existence, a subject I've tackled (but never brought to ground) in various blog posts. See, for example, here, here, and here.
Regardless of the name we humans give to primal reality, I enjoy pondering its imponderableness. So did Plotinus. We have that much in common. Along with a beard.
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