ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Plotinus' account of the self-transformation of a person in the process of ascending that ladder, or, in a metaphor adapted from Plotinus, traversing a river from delta to source. It focuses on Plotinus' depiction of self-transformation against the background of his metaphysics and psychology. For Plotinus, the reality beneath ordinary experience is multilayered. Plotinus' ‘psychology,’ or views about the soul and self, was a subject of special interest to his contemporaries. Plotinus suggests various visualization or ‘negative imagery’ exercises to help the reader get at the phenomenal character of nous. Plotinus maintains that there is one reality—and deity—‘higher’ than, or ‘prior’ to, nous. One of the ways of getting at the external activity of unity for Plotinus, and its broader meaning, is to consider relatively mundane cases first. From an ethical vantage point, it is also interesting to stress that Plotinus also analyzes henosis as true freedom, and indeed as the only kind of genuine freedom.
