Born in Egypt
Born in Lycopolis in Roman Egypt, by the account of his student Porphyry.
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Plotinus took Plato and made him vertical. From the One, beyond being and beyond words, flows the Intellect; from Intellect flows Soul; from Soul, the visible world, each level a fainter echo of the source. We are amphibians, partly sunk in matter and partly able to turn inward and ascend. His student Porphyry, who edited his disorganized notes into the Enneads, says Plotinus reached union with the One four times in the years they knew each other. Neoplatonism became the philosophical air that Augustine, the Sufis, and the medieval mystics all breathed.
