that other, know that it is none of these, but a nobler principle than anything we know as Being;
fuller and greater; above reason, mind, and feeling; conferring these powers, not to be
confounded with them." *
Thus when we are "divinely possessed and inspired" we see not only nous, but also the One.
When we are thus in contact with the Divine, we cannot reason or express the vision in words;
this comes later. "At the moment of touch there is no power whatever to make any affirmation;
there is no leisure; reasoning upon the vision is for afterwards. We may know we have had the
vision when the Soul has suddenly taken light. This light is from the Supreme and is the
Supreme; we may believe in the Presence when, like that other God on the call of a certain man,
He comes bringing light; the light is the proof of the advent. Thus, the Soul unlit remains
without that vision; lit, it possesses what it sought. And this is the true end set before the Soul,
to take that light, to see the Supreme by the Supreme and not by the light of any other
principle--to see the Supreme which is also the means to the vision; for that which illumines the
Soul is that which it is to see just as it is by the sun's own light that we see the sun.
"But how is this to be accomplished? "Cut away everything." â€
The experience of "ecstasy" (standing outside one's own body) happened frequently to Plotinus:
Many times it has happened: Lifted out of the body into myself; becoming external to all other
things and self-encentered; beholding a marvellous beauty; then, more than ever, assured of
community with the loftiest order; enacting the noblest life, acquiring identity with the divine;
stationing within It by having attained that activity; poised above whatsoever in the Intellectual
is less than the Supreme: yet, there comes the moment of descent from intellection to reasoning,
and after that sojourn in the divine, I ask myself how it happens that I can now be descending,
and how did the Soul ever enter into my body, the Soul which even within the body, is the high
thing it has shown itself to be. ‡
* Enneads, V, 3, 14. McKenna's translation.â
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Enneads, V, 3, 17.â
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