EROS AND SELF
throughout the emanation into complexity, all entities maintain their inclusion in the One, as nothing can be outside the principle of totality; the One itself would be incomplete if it did not embrace multiplicity
- all Being is thus conditioned by a necessary momentum toward differentiation, and also a deep affiliation of every entity for its ultimate Source (the One), which it shares with every other entity at every level; these dual impulses, expanding toward the Many and contracting toward the One, drive the circular course of emanation and dissolution
- Iamblichus used the term Eros to label this dynamic; repulsions and attractions of every kind, from inanimate processes to human emotions, are myriad expressions of the One’s erotic pulsations
- every entity can be said to have two identities – an individual self comprising its differentiated state, and a unitive self comprising its unbroken continuity with the One; neither of these identities is illusory or less real than the other
- humans typically experience a world of discrete objects, the extreme end of the continuum of emanation from the One; the barrage of features presented via the senses occupies the attention, and amplifies the sense of a discrete (individual) self as cognizer of these discrete objects
- the individual person also has an implicit unitive identity; the erotic impulse toward the One manifests in all forms of yearning for union, from sexual to mystical; but, because of the vividness of the sensory world, the "signal" of the unitive self tends to be drowned out by the "noise" of the individual self and its concerns; a clear awareness of the unitive self tends to be fleeting