Solar Wind

Man: God or Beast

“Humanity, in reality, is poised midway between gods and beasts, and inclines now to the one order, now to the other; some men grow like to the divine, others to the brute, the greatest number stand neutral. But those that are corrupted to the point of approximating to irrational animals and wild beasts pull the mid-folk about and inflict wrong upon them; the victims no doubt better than the wrongdoers, but are at the mercy of their inferiors in the field in which they themselves are inferior, where, that is, they cannot be classed among the good since they have not trained themselves in self-defense.
”A gang of lads … in good physical training, attack and throw another set, … and make off with their food and their dainty clothes. What more is called for than a laugh? And surely the lawgiver would be right in allowing the second group to suffer this treatment, the penalty of their sloth and self-indulgence. … But the evil-doers also have their punishment.” ~Plotinus

Man truly is poised between god and beast, and is the only life form on Earth that can decide which side of that equation to pursue. The dog can only be a dag, the same for the horse or cat or bug. Only man has the ability to choose to be something greater, or worse.

In a sense, Plotinus is correct in saying that most choose neutrality in this, neither trying to be more spiritual, more godlike, nor trying to be more barbaric and more animal. In the long term, however, there can be no neutrality in this since those who fail to awaken and use their spiritual faculties are doomed to descend into the animal kingdom when they die. The idea that a person becomes worthy of going to Heaven, the highest of spiritual realms, simply because he has dropped dead is nonsense. Even if a person has committed no great evil in his life, if he has failed to awaken his spirit and soul while alive, he cannot head toward heaven when he dies anymore than the man who cannot swim can escape the pursuing barbarians by swimming across a wide river. Of course, the evil person is in even worse shape than the neutral one. Not only can he not go to heaven, but he must face karma throughout this life and beyond for his evil deeds.

In some places, spiritual people seem to frown upon physical and intellectual development. Plotinus points out the foolishness of this attitude with regard to the physical, and the same is true of the intellectual. Some think that developing the physical body, making it strong and healthy is behaving too much like that beast-man, but it isn’t. Being physically strong and healthy is good for the spiritual person, Plotinus says, so he can defend himself from the evil barbarians. That is true, but it is not the only reason. One of the duties of an advanced spiritual person is to teach others what she has learned and help them to grow spiritually as well. This can be done better by a strong, healthy person than by one who is weak and sick all the time. This doesn’t mean that you need to be an Arnold Schwarzenegger with huge muscles, but you can be reasonably strong and healthy without becoming a total materialist—which is, of course, undesirable.

We also need to develop our intellect as well, even if we are spiritual people. For one thing, a person with a good education can get a better job, and most of us need to do that. Second, Satan and his minions use intellect as their main method of controlling others and getting them to stay trapped in materialism and a life of fear and empty pursuits. When Satan spoke with Jesus in the Desert and tried to convince Him to give up all that spiritual nonsense, he gave up after a relatively short time. Why? Because the answers Jesus gave him told Satan that Jesus had just as sharp an intellectual mind as he had a spiritual one and could not be tricked with intellectual arguments. That is another reason, probably the most important reason, to pursue intellectual development. Just as with the physical, however, one should not get too carried away with it and drop his spiritual growth by the wayside to develop the intellect to its fullest.

3 legged stool

You can think of it as a three-legged stool. If one leg is weaker or shorter than the others, or is missing entirely, the stool cannot stand very well. Granted, you may be able to get a two-legged, or even one-legged stool to balance briefly, but they are easily knocked over. The stool with three strong legs: physical, mental, spiritual; is the most stable and will stand better than the others. And choose to be a god, not a beast.