The Chant of Plotinus

From the introduction: “My own experience, from frequent and prolonged reading of the various works of Plotinus, is that it often appears as if I am listening to a dialogue, an interior dialogue, between the man and his deepest self; but at other times it is as if he is talking directly to the soul of the reader, calmly yet firmly demanding a kind of clarity of thought and concentration which is both rare and to a certain degree unnecessary in ordinary daily life; and yet at other times it is as if he is chanting to an audience, either present or imagined, intimate yet vast, and drawing it into a truly psychical world of profound investigation and dialectic inspection. He does not seem to write merely for the sake of necessity, but because he desires from his soul to talk with whoever is willing and ready to listen and engage with him – and I can only imagine that he wrote as he thought and as he spoke: which is one reason why his pieces are so vibrant and vital, as one is engaged with a whole soul immediately present.”