Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatonism, was born around 205 CE in Lyco or Lycopolis, Egypt. At the age of 28, he moved to Alexandria, which was under Roman rule, to study philosophy under Ammonius Saccas. There is some debate about whether he was of Egyptian, Greek, or mixed descent, but scholars agree that he had a Greek education and was proficient in Greek.
During his time, the famous Library of Alexandria was still operational, and the city was a center of contemporary knowledge. Later, he moved to Rome and began teaching. We know more about Plotinus than many other ancient philosophers due to his student Porphyry’s biography and the preservation of his works, particularly “The Enneads.” Plotinus is considered one of the most influential philosophers of late antiquity, often placed alongside figures like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in terms of his impact on philosophical thought.
There are reasons to consider Plotinus akin to the figure of Luqman the Wise in the Quran. His masterpiece lies in integrating mysticism with philosophy, reconciling Aristotle, Plato, and Stoicism, and founding the school now known as Neoplatonism. He believed in the concept of ‘The One,’ a singular ultimate source of existence, which influenced early Christian, Jewish, and Islamic theologians. His philosophical system was based on the idea of ‘The One,’ an ultimate source of all existence, often described as the Good or the Simple.
One might argue that the roots of a type of a process theology are present in Plotinus’ thought. He proposed that the sensory world emanates from ‘The One’ through a series of hierarchical emanations, and all existence ultimately seeks to return to this divine source.
His influence on Islamic thought was significant, especially through the translation of his works into Arabic. Some parts of the Enneads were mistakenly attributed to Aristotle, leading Muslim philosophers to discuss Plotinian ideas under the guise of Aristotelian theology. Avicenna (Ibn Sina) was among the few who recognized and questioned this attribution.
In Plotinus’ philosophy, ‘Nous’ is often translated as ‘intellect,’ but it is more accurately understood as the ‘divine mind’ or ‘intellectual principle,’ representing the first emanation from ‘The One’ and the source of the Forms. Christian theologians familiar with Plotinus adapted his concepts to help articulate the doctrine of the Trinity: equating ‘Nous’ with Christ, ‘the One’ with God, and the ‘Soul’ with the Holy Spirit. This mishandled adaptation – diverged significantly from Plotinus’ original philosophical system – profoundly altered original Christian theology and resulted in serious contradictions.
Plotinus believed that ‘The One,’ ‘Nous,’ and ‘Soul’ existed beyond time and space, serving as the foundational principles of all existence. The One is infinitely simple, defying all definitive descriptions. It transcends numerical classification, as counting implies divisibility, and The One is indivisible. Being beyond all attributes, it cannot be described positively; rather, it is known through what it is not. While The One is not being itself, all being emanates from it, uniting being and non-being in a transcendent source or what we may today call, the point of singularity.
This approach is known as apophatic or negative theology, which describes The One by negating positive attributes and emphasizing the limitations of human understanding. It highlights that the essence of The One is beyond even experiential knowledge.
While Plotinus’ framework stops here, my development of a “Singularitarian” process cosmology extends this concept further. Plotinus’ concept of ‘The One’ can be loosely compared to the modern notion of a singularity, a point of infinite potential and the origin of all existence. I propose that in the point of singularity, infinite possibilities exist, and this infinite possibility has infinite time to manifest in various forms across infinite potential worlds. Our universe is one of these manifestations. Each time it manifests, it begins a process of evolution from absolute simplicity (a singular point of the Big Bang) and, in its return to singularity, reaches ultimate grandeur, complexity, and the realization of absolute consciousness.
This process might not be completed within the lifespan of a single universe. Instead, multiple universes may emerge from the previous ones. The death of each universe marks a return to the point of singularity, and the birth of the next emerges from this point. In each instance, the information from the previous universe forms the basis for the next, but at a higher level.
Everything starts from singularity and returns to it. The phrase “Inna Lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un” (“We belong to God and to Him we shall return”) signifies that we are perpetually returning to God through life, not just through death.
