Plotinus: A Philosophy of Simplicity

Finding Perfect Unity in Neoplatonism

The interior of the dome of Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque, Esfahan, Iran. A radiating pattern draws the eye to the center, conveying a sense of unity. Photo by Faruk Kaymak on Unsplash

T.S. Eliot’s last masterpiece, the Four Quartets, conveys a sense that our experience of time is the fragmentation of a timeless unity at the heart of our changing world.

Much of the book was written during the chaos of the Second World War. The poet remained in London during the Blitz, where he served as a volunteer fire watchman tasked with preventing blazes from consuming buildings.

German bombers droned over the city, laden with high explosive and incendiary bombs designed to terrorise the British into submission. As the sound of sirens pierced the air, punctuated with bomb blasts pounding buildings into rubble, the poet’s mind had turned to divinity.

The speaker of the poem longs for the sacred tranquility and simplicity of the “still point of the turning world” — the middle of the axis of the turning universe in which we can find unity with the divine.

Eliot described it as,

Neither flesh, nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered.

Eliot strips away time and space, leaving a feeling vacated of positively defined expression and…