Posted inPersonal/Stories Plotinus

Stuck at Lake Partway — I revisit my Plotinus analogy through atheist eyes

Today I came across a passage in Robert Saltzman's book, Depending on no-thing, that reminded me of how I ended my book about the teachings of Plotinus, a 3rd century mystic Greek philosopher, Return to the One. Saltzman wrote in reply to a question from someone: You seem to imagine that suggestion as "negative." I don't see it that way, although it is related to the so-called via negativa, the traditional process of neti neti [not this, not that]. If someone actually wants to awake -- many more say they do than actually mean it -- that begins, in my…
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Posted inPlotinus Reality Universe

Some thoughts about what oneness is, and isn’t

Oneness comes in for quite a bit of discussion in comment conversations on this blog. Not surprisingly, there's no consensus about whether oneness exists or what form it takes. That's to be expected, since debates over whether reality is inherently marked by unity or duality have been raging for thousands of years.  Though I've written a book called "Return to the One," which describes in a lot of detail the teachings of Plotinus, a 3rd century Neoplatonic Greek philosopher, I don't feel like I have anything genuinely wise to say about oneness.  Nonetheless, here's some non-genuinely-wise thoughts on the subject.…
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Posted inPlotinus Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Plotinus, a Greek philosopher, spoke a lot about the One

My previous post was about the current guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas referring to oneness, rather than duality, as being a characteristic of God. So much so, the guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, says that you can't get to God through meditation if you think that God is there and I am here. Osho Robbins, who messaged me about Dhillon's remarks, viewed this as being in accord with the teachings of Advaita, an Indian philosophical system centered on the notion of not-two, the meaning of Advaita. Which does indeed sound a lot like One. However, I believe that Dhillon's discussion…
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Posted inPlotinus Radha Soami Satsang Beas Reality

Dibloggenes explains the universe in a mere 1,070 words

Here's the second comment from Dibloggenes that I've elevated to the profound status of a Church of the Churchless blog post. (I can hear the typing of Dibloggenes as he redoes his resume to include this newfound honor; the first elevated blog post is here.) I admire any and all attempts to explain the universe, especially when they clock in at a sparse 1,070 words. The Bible, Newton's Principia, and Darwin's Origin of Species are all much longer. And, without the occasional bursts of humor that make Dibloggenes' treatise more sparkly than it would otherwise be. One reason I like…
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Posted inBooks Plotinus

I’m re-reading the book I wrote about Plotinus with a fresh eye

Recently I started re-reading the book I wrote about Plotinus' teachings, Return to the One, because someone had told me they'd ordered it, and I wanted to see if I still agreed with what I said about this Neoplatonist Greek mystic philosopher. After all, I hadn't taken a look at the book for several years. It brings in a modest amount of Amazon royalties each month, but when I'm occasionally asked about the book, my typical response is along the line of "I still agree with much of it, but my views have changed quite a bit since I wrote…
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Posted inPlotinus

My response to someone wanting to know how my views on Plotinus have changed

I hate to let an interesting question emailed to me and my (hopefully) interesting response go unused, so here they are as a blog post.  Greg, my correspondent, said in his message that he had been initiated into a different form of Sant Mat than the RSSB version I was a member of for 35 years. That explains why my response mentions Sant Mat.  He also said that he lives in Ashland, a town in Oregon close to the California border, so I figured he would recognize my mention of the 2021 ice storm, even though it didn't affect southern…
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Posted inPlotinus Radha Soami Satsang Beas

My talk about the One at a RSSB National Satsang Weekend

It's a discovery! Not of buried treasure, unfortunately, but of a post I wrote for my HinesSight blog a few months before I started this Church of the Churchless blog.  I came across a link to it while looking through early churchless posts to include in a second book of post compilations. Since there has been recent discussion about oneness on this blog, I figured it would be good to share this May 2004 post. Since I'd written a book about Plotinus' teachings, Return to the One, it was easy for me to talk on this subject. Not lost in…
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Posted inBooks Plotinus

I’m pleased that my ideas about God have changed

I just had an enjoyable hour-long phone conversation with a man who wanted to talk with me about my book, "Return to the One: Plotinus's Guide to God-Realization."  It has been so long since I'd picked up the book, I read through it really quickly this morning to refresh my memory about what I'd written. I have to say that I was impressed. Hey, I made a lot of sense!  However, early on in our phone conversation I had to tell this guy that my views about both Plotinus, and spirituality in general, have changed quite a bit since I…
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Posted inBooks Plotinus Reality

“The Realm of the Wise” is a book I both agree and disagree with

A while back I got an email from Marc Deprey, who shares my interest in Greek philosophy -- notably Plotinus' conception of the One as being both the fountainhead and essence of existence.  Deprey said that he'd written a book, "The Realm of the Wise," that has quite a bit in common with my book about Plotinus' teachings, "Return to the One."  Bookaholic that I am, I couldn't resist ordering a copy from Amazon. The Realm of the Wise is appealingly short -- just 134 pages.  There is very little, if any, overt religiosity in Deprey's book, another plus. He…
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Posted inPlotinus

Cool! A video review of my “Return to the One” book about Plotinus

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…
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Free readings from Swami Abhayananda

Someone sent me an email that says: A brief Message from Swami Abhayananda: I am making all my books, proems, and articles available for free download for the benefit of all interested spiritual seekers. To download any of the books, proems, or articles listed on my website, please click on this link: http://themysticsvision.weebly.com/downloads. Yes, "proem" is a word. It means introduction/preface. I've learned a new word.  Don't know anything about the Swami. By chance I clicked on one of his essays, "The Ascent of the Soul," that focused on Plotinus, the Greek philosopher I wrote a book about. So, hey, we've…
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Posted inPlotinus Radha Soami Satsang Beas

My letter to a supposed Godly guru

As noted in my previous post, devotees of various Indian "Sant Mat" movements believe that the gurus who head up these groups are GIHF -- God in human form. If such were true, Jesus is alive and well in various bearded, turbaned male bodies. Including that of Gurinder Singh, guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB). I was an active member of RSSB for over thirty years. Near the end of my involvement with the organization I had quite a bit of personal contact with Gurinder Singh.  I had several private interviews with the guru, and met with him in…
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Posted inPlotinus Reality

Why materiality? What’s the point?

One of the reasons I love my blogging gig, even though I get paid precisely nothing, and even have to pay for the privilege of doing what I do, is getting email messages like this: I'm in the process of reading Return to the One which led me to your website and blogs.  Your writings have made me question, think, and laugh.  Thanks! I have spent many a year searching for something to satisfy this deep longing within.  I've known for sometime that I wasn't going to find "it" in the material world and have read zillions of books and tried various…
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Posted inPlotinus Taoism/Tai Chi

Time…the essence of enlightenment?

Einstein showed that we live in spacetime, a continuum comprised of the familiar three dimensions of space and the much more mysterious dimension of time.Nobody knows what time is really all about. Not scientists, not philosophers, not mystics. And certainly not theologians. We have a sense of it passing. But the theory of relativity proves that this sense differs for people in different circumstances.Two events, simultaneous for some observer, may not be simultaneous for another observer if the observers are in relative motion. Moving clocks are measured to tick more slowly than an observer's "stationary" clock.Astronomers look up into the…
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Posted inPlotinus Science

Ken Wilber is wrong about Plotinus

I've got a love-hate thing going with Ken Wilber, a prolific writer and creative thinker who relentlessly preaches the marvels of an Integral approach to understanding reality.Sometimes I like what Wilber says (see here and here). Sometimes I don't (see here and here).His misunderstanding of Plotinus, a Neoplatonist Greek philosopher, is especially irritating to me. I wrote a book about Plotinus, "Return to the One." I spent several years reading just about every book in English that describes and analyzes Plotinus' teachings. So when I saw how Ken Wilber mangled Plotinus in an attempt to demonstrate that Plotinus' outlook is…
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Posted inPlotinus

Platonic Zen exercises

Not many people find a connection between Zen and Platonism. I do, though these themes are more implicit than explicit in my book about the Neoplatonist philosopher, Plotinus. So it was a pleasure to hear from someone who resonates with a Greek'ish blend of rationality and mysticism. That would be Nicholas Coleman, head of religious education at Wesley College in Melbourne, who wrote to me recently. He had kind things to say about "Return to the One," which attracted me to him right off the bat. Thank you very much for writing Return to the One. The margins of my…
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Posted inPlotinus Radha Soami Satsang Beas

My inside look at RSSB books

It's interesting that currently churchless me once was so involved in writing books for a decidedly churchy organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB). A couple of years ago I blogged about "How writing a book rewrote me." This was the third, and last, major RSSB book project that I was involved with. The end result was "Return to the One: Plotinus' Guide to God-Realization." But it wasn't published by RSSB, even though the plan all along was that this would be the first in a Mystics of the West series. I have to give credit to Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the…
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Posted inPlotinus

Marcus Aurelius’ meditations move me

In my previous post about death and Stoicism, I didn't give my main Stoic man, Marcus Aurelius, the blog time that he deserves. So yesterday I found my well-thumbed copy of his Meditations, a hard to find 1964 translation by Maxwell Staniforth, and re-read some of Marcus' marvelous observations on living a good life. And dying a good death. I'm putting this post in my "Plotinus" category because both of these philosophers, one of whom I've written my own book about, shared a fundamental Stoic philosophy. Which moves me. Now, that's sort of a contradiction, because Stoicism holds (along with…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Plotinus

Plotinus and I make so much sense

Today I made a lot of sense to myself. Per usual. When I heard myself explaining how Neoplatonism relates to Christianity and why not-knowing is the highest form of religion I was totally convinced that I knew what I was talking about. This afternoon it was nice to have two captive audiences: me, whom I can’t seem to ever get away from, and a man with whom I have a business relationship, who was trying to entice me to sign up for additional services. We’d never met, as he’d taken over our account from another guy, so this was a…
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Posted inGod Mystics Plotinus

Simple spirituality

I’m attracted to simplicity. My mind is complex, like most minds are. So in spite of this, or because of this, a great big “Yes!” resonates in my psyche when I come across seriously simple summations of spirituality. (Guess I should make that a “Yes-s-s-s!”) “God is love.” Pretty good. But that’s too simple for me. And overly Hallmark cardish. I prefer Meister Eckhart’s way of putting it. A wonderful blend of simplicity and profundity. The eye with which I see God is exactly the same eye with which God sees me. My eye and God’s eye are one eye,…
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