Physics as a spiritual exercise can also take on the form of an imaginative
"overflight,'' which causes human affairs to be regarded as of little importance.134 We encounter this theme in Marcus Aurelius: Suppose you found yourself all of a sudden raised up to the heavens, and that you were to look down upon human affairs in all their motley diversity. You would hold them in contempt if you were to see, in the same glance, how great is the number of beings of the ether and the air, living round about you. 135
The same theme occurs in Seneca:
The soul has attained the culmination of happiness when, having crushed underfoot all that is evil, it takes flight and penetrates the inner recesses of nature. It is then, while wandering amongst the very stars, that it likes to laugh at the costly pavements of the rich . . . But the soul cannot despise [all these riches] before it has been all around the world, and casting a con temptuous glance at the nnrrow globe of the earth from above, snys to itself: "So thiN i11 the pin-1min1 which 1111 n11111 y n111 iun11
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divide among themselves with fire and sword? How ridiculous are the boundaries of men!"1l6
In this spiritual exercise of the vision of totality, and elevation of thought to the level of universal thought, we can distinguish a third degree, in which we come closer to the Platonic theme from which we started out. In the words of Marcus Aurelius:
Don't limit yourself to breathing along with the air that surrounds you; from now on, think along with the Thought which embraces all things.
For the intellective power is no less universally diffused, and does not penetrate any the less into each being capable of receiving it, than the air in the case of one capable of breathing it . . . you will make a large room at once for yourself by embracing in your thought the whole Universe, and grasping ever-continuing Time.137
At this stage, it is as though we die to our individuality; in so doing, we accede, on the one hand, to the interiority of our consciousness, and on the other, to the universality of thought of the All.
You were already the All, but because something else besides the All came to be added on to you, you have become less than the All, by the very fact of this addition. For the addition did not come about from being - what could be added to the All? - but rather from not-being. When one becomes "someone" out of not-being, one is no longer the All, until one leaves the not-being behind. Moreover, you increase yourself when you reject everything other than the All, and when you have rejected it, the All will be present to you . . . The All had no need to come in order to be present. If it is not present, the reason is that it is you who have distanced yourself from it. "Distancing yourself" does not mean leaving it to go someplace else - for it would be there, too. Rather, it means turning away from the All, despite the fact that it is there. 1Js
With Plotinus, we now return to Platonism. The Platonic tradition remained faithful to Plato's spiritual exercises. We need only add that, in Neoplatonism, th.e idea of spiritual progress plays a much more explicit role than in Plato's writings. In Neoplatonism, the stages of spiritual progress corresponded to different degrees of virtue. The hierarchy of these stages is described in many Neoplatonic texts, 1.111 serving in particular as the framework for Marinus' Life 1fl'mdus.1�11 Porphyry, editor of Plotinus' Enneads, systematically arranged his m11ster'M work accord ing to the stages of this spiritual progress. First, the soul WllK puri fied hy i111 1(1'11clu11I dctnchmcnt from t he body; then came the
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knowledge of, and subsequent passing beyond, the sensible world; finally, the soul achieved conversion toward the Intellect and the One. HI Spiritual exercises are a prerequisite for spiritual progress. In his treatise On Abstinence from Animate Beings, Porphyry sums up the Platonic tradition quite well. We must, he tells us, undertake two exercises (meletai): in the first place, we must tum our thought away from all that is mortal and material.
Secondly, we must return toward the activity of the Intellect. m The first stage of these Neoplatonic exercises includes aspects which are highly ascetic, in the modem sense of the word: a vegetarian diet, among other things. In the same context, Porphyry insists strongly on the importance of spiritual exercises.
The contemplation (theoria) which brings happiness, he tells us, does not consist in the accumulation of discourse and abstract teachings, even if their subject is true Being. Rather, we must make sure our studies are accompanied by an effort to make these teachings become "nature and life" within us. 141
In the philosophy of Plotinus, spiritual exercises are of fundamental importance. Perhaps the best example can be found in the way Plotinus defines the essence of the soul and its immateriality. If we have doubts about the immortality and immateriality of the soul, says Plotinus, this is because we are accustomed to see it filled with irrational desires and violent sentiments and passions.
If one wants to know the nature of a thing, one must examine it in its pure state, since every addition to a thing is an obstacle to the knowledge of that thing. When you examine it, then, remove from it everything that is not itself; better still remove all your stains from yourself and el·amine yourse/j; and you will have faith in your immortality. 144
If you do not yet see your own beauty, do as the sculptor does with a statue which must become beautifuclass="underline" he removes one part, scrapes another, makes one area smooth, and cleans the other, until he causes the beautiful face in the statue to appear. In the same way, you too must remove everything that is superfluous, straighten that which is crooked, and purify all that is dark until you make it brilliant. Never stop sculpting your own statue, until the divine splendor of virtue shines in you . . . If you have become this . . . and have nothing alien inside you mixed with yourself . . . when you see that you have become this . . .
concentrate your gaze and see. For it is only an eye such as this that can look on the great Beauty.HS
Here we can see how the the demonstration of the soul's immateriality has been transformed into experience. Only he who liberates himself 1md purifies himself from the passions, which conceal the true reality of the 11oul, can understand that the soul i1t immn1eriul nnd immortal. Hrm\ knowledge Is u
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spiritual exercise. 146 We must first undergo moral purification, in order to become capable of understanding.