The Sage sees things very differently from the average man; neither ordinary experiences nor pains and sorrows, whether touching himself or others, pierce to the inner hold. To allow them any such passage would be a weakness in our soul. ~ Plotinus, Enneads
In the Letter on the High Priestess, Valentin Tomberg recommends the study of Platonism as a preparation for understanding the encounter of Jesus with Nicodemus. He wrote:
This is the Platonic conception of consciousness, the thorough study of which can serve by way of introduction to the nocturnal conversation of the Master with Nicodemus on the reintegration of consciousness or the aim of Christian yoga.
He points to a specific passage from Plotinus in the Enneads to illustrate his point:
This is what Plotinus says concerning the duality underlying all forms and every level of consciousness, namely the active principle and its mirror.
The reference is to Plotinus, Ennead I, Tractate IV, Section 10. To aid in understanding, I include two versions, slightly different from the A H Armstrong translation. The first is translated directly from the French text. This is the part that Tomberg wants to emphasize.
The second is from the Stephen Mackenna translation; this includes the surrounding text to put it in context.
Tomberg’s Version
But if the mirror is absent or is not as it needs to be, the image is not produced although the action exists: Thus when the soul is in a state of calm, it reflects the images of the thought and intellect; but when it is disturbed by the disorder produced in the harmony of the body, the thought and the intellect think without the image, and the act of intelligence takes place without being reflected.
Mackenna’s Translation
Perhaps the reason this continuous activity [i.e., the activity of the Intellectual-Principle] remains unperceived is that it has no touch whatever with things of sense. No doubt action upon material things, or action dictated by them, must proceed through the sensitive faculty which exists for that use: but why should there not be an immediate activity of the Intellectual-Principle and of the soul that attends it, the soul that antedates sensation or any perception? For, if Intellection and Authentic-Existence are identical, this “Earlier-than-perception” must be a thing having Act.
Let us explain the conditions under which we become conscious of this Intellective-Act.
When the Intellect is in upward orientation that [lower part of it] which contains [or, corresponds to] the life of the Soul, is, so to speak, flung down again and becomes like the reflection resting on the smooth and shining surface of a mirror; in this illustration, when the mirror is in place the image appears but, if the mirror is absent or out of gear, all that which would have acted and produced an image still exists; so in the case of the Soul; when there is peace in that within us which is capable of reflecting the images of the Rational and Intellectual-Principles these images appear. Then, side by side with the primal knowledge of the activity of the Rational and the Intellectual-Principles, we have also as it were a sense-perception of their operation.
When, on the contrary, the mirror within is shattered through some disturbance of the harmony of the body, Reason and the Intellectual-Principle act unpictured: Intellection is unattended by imagination.
In sum we may safely gather that while the Intellective-Act may be attended by the Imaging Principle, it is not to be confounded with it.
Comment
Although there is a duality, they are intimately related: the undisturbed mirror reflects the Intellect, although they are not the same. That is because the Intellect is active, even when the mirror does not reflect it exactly. Although the Intellect is the source of Wisdom, it is not necessary to be conscious of its activity. Plotinus explains:
A man unconscious of his health may be, none the less, healthy: a man may not be aware of his personal attraction, but he remains handsome none the less: if he has no sense of his wisdom, shall he be any the less wise? ~ Section 9
In an analogous way to sense impressions which produce an image in the mind, the Intellect also produces an image. We can say, also, that the Intellect is the “Superconscious” because it is unconscious without the mirror. Moreover, it is the Self, since our physical life is not the source of the Self.
We have here a parallel to what happens in the activity of the physical or vegetative life in us which is not made known by the sensitive faculty to the rest of the man: if our physical life really constituted the “I”, its Act would be my Act: but, in the fact, this physical life is not the “I”; the “I” is the activity of the Intellectual-Principle so that when the Intellective is in Act, the “I” is in Act.