The Sage sees things very differently from the average man; neither ordinary experiences nor pains and sorrows, whether touching himself or others, pierce to the inner hold. To allow them any such passage would be a weakness in our soul. ~ Plotinus, Enneads
In the Letter on the High Priestess, Valentin Tomberg recommends the study of Platonism as a preparation for understanding the encounter of Jesus with Nicodemus. He wrote:
This is the Platonic conception of consciousness, the thorough study of which can serve by way of introduction to the nocturnal conversation of the Master with Nicodemus on the reintegration of consciousness or the aim of Christian yoga.
He points to a specific passage from Plotinus in the Enneads to illustrate his point:
This is what Plotinus says concerning the duality underlying all forms and every level of consciousness, namely the active principle and its mirror.
The reference is to Plotinus, Ennead I, Tractate IV, Section 10. To aid in understanding, I include two versions, slightly different from the A H Armstrong translation. The first is translated directly from the French text. This is the part that Tomberg wants to emphasize.
The second is from the Stephen Mackenna translation; this includes the surrounding text to put it in context.
Tomberg’s Version
But if the mirror is absent or is not as it needs to be, the image is not produced although the action exists: Thus when the soul is in a state of calm, it reflects the images of the thought and intellect; but when it is disturbed by the disorder produced in the harmony of the body, the thought and the intellect think without the image, and the act of intelligence takes place without being reflected.
Mackenna’s Translation
Perhaps the reason this continuous activity [i.e., the activity of the Intellectual-Principle] remains unperceived is that it has no touch whatever with things of sense. No doubt action upon material things, or action dictated by them, must proceed through the sensitive faculty which exists for that use: but why should there not be an immediate activity of the Intellectual-Principle and of the soul that attends it, the soul that antedates sensation or any perception? For, if Intellection and Authentic-Existence are identical, this “Earlier-than-perception” must be a thing having Act.
Let us explain the conditions under which we become conscious of this Intellective-Act.
When the Intellect is in upward orientation that [lower part of it] which contains [or, corresponds to] the life of the Soul, is, so to speak, flung down again and becomes like the reflection resting on the smooth and shining surface of a mirror; in this illustration, when the mirror is in place the image appears but, if the mirror is absent or out of gear, all that which would have acted and produced an image still exists; so in the case of the Soul; when there is peace in that within us which is capable of reflecting the images of the Rational and Intellectual-Principles these images appear. Then, side by side with the primal knowledge of the activity of the Rational and the Intellectual-Principles, we have also as it were a sense-perception of their operation.
When, on the contrary, the mirror within is shattered through some disturbance of the harmony of the body, Reason and the Intellectual-Principle act unpictured: Intellection is unattended by imagination.
In sum we may safely gather that while the Intellective-Act may be attended by the Imaging Principle, it is not to be confounded with it.
Commentary
Although there is a duality, they are intimately related: the undisturbed mirror reflects the Intellect, although they are not the same. That is because the Intellect is active, even when the mirror does not reflect it exactly. Although the Intellect is the source of Wisdom, it is not necessary to be conscious of its activity. Plotinus explains:
A man unconscious of his health may be, none the less, healthy: a man may not be aware of his personal attraction, but he remains handsome none the less: if he has no sense of his wisdom, shall he be any the less wise? ~ Section 9
In an analogous way to sense impressions which produce an image in the mind, the Intellect also produces an image. We can say, also, that the Intellect is the “Superconscious” because it is unconscious without the mirror. Moreover, it is the Self, since our physical life is not the source of the Self.
We have here a parallel to what happens in the activity of the physical or vegetative life in us which is not made known by the sensitive faculty to the rest of the man: if our physical life really constituted the “I”, its Act would be my Act: but, in the fact, this physical life is not the “I”; the “I” is the activity of the Intellectual-Principle so that when the Intellective is in Act, the “I” is in Act.
It would be a quite revelation to the wretched mankind to realize there is no moral imperative in the practice of asceticism, for the whole practical idea is to become free of the dis-information and illusion provided to us by “the world”. For as much as we are free of the world inside and out of us, we are open to another world: the Kingdom which is ever-present and cannot be erased. This is what the late children of Tradition are mant to bring into the world. “The origin of my Kingdom is not of this world.”
Paul said: Now we see as if through a class, darkly. Our senses are as if made up to cloud the clear perception of things. When we ascend into the celestial world, into the world of ideas, our senses must be in balance. if there is un-harmony in the balance of the scale, our perception will be become clouded. The Intellect is made up of pure shining light, and if there is a shadow clouding it, which is our own darkness, and we cannot see the s´Sun in its wholeness; this is what makes our shadow both spiritually and psychologically. It is by way of enhancing the light qualities in our life that we become connected with the spiritual and material source of life and creation.
Thanks for this – I have been pondering the intellect/mirror relationship recently also.
Tomberg writes about concentration without effort and the gnostic sense as though they are two stages that come one after another, but they seem dependent on one another. He writes, for instance, that “it is the state of concentration without effort (taught by the first Arcanum), followed by a vigilant inner silence (taught by the second Arcanum), “. Isn’t inner silence the prerequisite for the concentration also, as he writes in Letter I? Tomberg moreover writes that concentration/Intuition requires the stilling of the waters of thought and imagination, which is the same what he describes for gnosis in Letter II. It seems like a bit of a chicken and egg dilemma.
Approaching it with personal experience, I often have frequent awareness of the real “I” and even a certain degree of persistent inner silence during my activity in the world, such that I am able to perform many actions without “effort”, and also maintain a degree of impassivity toward negative emotions like anger, lust, etc. Sometimes this state is all I can achieve during meditation also, but there is another deeper state which I have experienced (rarely) in meditation which is a much more real silencing of thought and imagination. Returning from that state afterwards to the normal state of consciousness feels like the process of falling asleep, as my consciousness submerges back into a stream of arbitrary thoughts and imaginations.
Although as I mentioned above, it’s hard for me to work out the difference logically, from the above experience it appears to me that it is indeed possible to have intuition, to be able to concentrate without effort, and to “suppress mental oscillations”, without having that more profound silence of the “waters” that produces the “reflection” needed for gnosis and that more elevated state of consciousness.
Is this physical not being the source of the self somehow related to “the stones cry out”?