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THE JAINA GAZETTE
profundity of his intellect and the purity and elevation of his life. He lived the life of an ascetic, austerely simple in his habits. By his gentle and affectionate nature and his sympathy with all that is good and beautiful in the world, he won all hearts. His countenance, naturally, handsome, seemed__s0 Porphyry tells us to radiate light and love when he discoursed with his friends. He was a great mystic. He not only knew the truth of what he taught but also the reality of it. The world of Sense held no attractions for him save in so far as it could express the world of Spirit.
He began writing in the year 252 A.D., but apparently without any intention of developing a comprehensive System. Altogether he produced 54 treatises which later were arranged by his disciple Porphyry into six sets of nine each, hence the six Enneads. Humanity owes much to the genius and untiring labours of the learned Porphyry, for without his work it is doubtful whether the Teaching of Plotinus would have been transmitted to posterity.
According to Plotinus soul is a centre. It is a focussing point for manifestation. It is a Unity and a Plural-Unity. It produces form. It is a Self-Motive Principle and a Self-Vital Principle. It is also a self-subsisting formative principle of essence. It is universal, essentially pure, perpetually active, incorporeal, infinite, indivisible, and indestructible. All souls are equal in essence but not in activity. When it is divine, it is truly itself, no longer a thing among things. It abandons beings in order to become a Beyond-being. He who knows himself to have become such, knows himself now as an Image of the Supreme, and when the Image has returned to the original, the journey is achieved.
The Plotinian Path to Liberation is threefold, viz., via the True, the Good and the Beautiful. In the Truth the intelligible unity of all things is revealed: in the Good the harmony and order of all life is manifested; but in the Beautiful is the final perfection and consummation of all. All ideals are latent within the soul. Hence it rejoices when it beholds Truth,
and is happy when it is in harmony with the Good : but its Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
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