“How are we to explain the omnipresence of the soul? Does it depend upon the definite magnitude of the material universe coupled with some native tendency in soul to distribute itself over material mass, or is it a characteristic of soul apart from the Body? …
“If soul spread thus wide before material extension existed, then as covering all space it would seem to be of itself a thing of magnitude, and in what mode could it exist in the All before the All was in being, before there was any All? And who can accept a soul described as partless and massless and yet, for all the absence of extension, extended over a universe? …
“We cannot think of soul being diffused as a quality is, say sweetness or color, for while these are actual states of the masses affected so that they show that quality at every point; none of them has an independent existence; they are attributes of body and known only as in body. …
“Obviously, we must take hold of the question from the very beginning in the hope of finding some clear and convincing theory as to how soul, immaterial and without magnitude, can be thus broad spread, whether before material masses exist or as enveloping them. Of course, should it appear that this omnipresence may occur apart from material things, there is no difficulty in accepting its occurrence within the material.” ~Plotinus
Spirit or Soul
Some talk about the spirit, others about the soul. Are they different, or just two names for the same things? First, we must realize that humans are much more complex than most of us believe, and we have, in fact, two souls. We have a mundane soul that is attached to the material world and we share that soul in common with the animals of the world, and possibly even plants. We also have a Divine Soul, which is the one most spiritual writers and teachers are talking about when they say “the Soul.” Plotinus saw Man as consisting of a physical body, intellect or mind, and a soul. It is clear, then, that to him spirit and soul are the same, and he isn’t wrong. What we all have in us is a spirit. When that spirit is Awakened and fully developed until it gains full Consciousness, it becomes a Divine Soul. You might think of it as spirit being a child, and Divine Soul being the adult.
Omnipresence
The spirit or soul is omnipresent, just as Plotinus said, but only a person who is tied up with the limitations of matter would find that hard to comprehend. Actually at the end of the section of his talk on the soul quoted above, he answers many of his own questions about who it could be. Suffice it to say that spirit/soul is not limited by either time or space, so is not confined to the material universe, nor to the physical body of any individual. Likewise, it was not born when we were born physically, but is ageless. It has always been, and always will be.
Before the All
If by “the All,” Plotinus means God, then the question of where was the soul before the All existed is meaningless because there was never a time when God didn’t exist. God is spirit and exists outside of time and space. God was not created by any other force or being. If Plotinus means the material universe when he says “the All,” then the answer is that soul was part of the spiritual universe, as was everything else. When the fallen angels, or Demiurge, created the realm of matter, they didn’t create from nothing as the true God does, they created it by changing spirit into matter. The goal of God and the Angels is to reverse that process and turn it all back into spirit, but God won’t do that until most humans want it.
Soul Diffused
Plotinus is correct in thinking that the soul does not get diffused as it expands throughout the All. This seems to amaze him because he thinks too much in terms of matter. The soul, being spirit, is much like a living hologram. Just as the entire picture in a hologram can be generated from a small part of the original hologram, so also with the soul. While the soul can’t be broken into pieces as in the Harry Potter stories, if it could, each piece would be like the whole. It wouldn’t even be smaller because being spirit, it is everywhere at once. It has no size, no age, and no limit. It truly is omnipresent.
From the SUN TALK collection by Harold Boulette