Finally, do the Neoplatonists, Neopythagoreans and other pagan philosophers of the early centuries after Christ owe any debt to India?  Many of them were consciously endeavouring to arrest the progress of Christianity by transforming philosophy into a non-Christian religion.  They gladly welcomed every proof that the higher life was not to be found exclusively or most perfectly in Christianity.  Hence bias, if not accurate knowledge, led them to respect all forms of eastern mysticism.  Apollonius is said to have travelled in India:[1141] in the hope of so doing Plotinus accompanied the unfortunate expedition of Gordian but turned back when it failed.  We may surmise that for Plotinus the Indian origin of an idea would have been a point in its favour, although his writings show no special hostility to Christianity.[1142] So far as I can judge, his system presents those features which might be expected to come from sympathy with the Indian temperament, aided perhaps not by reading but by conversation with thoughtful orientals at Alexandria and elsewhere.  The direct parallels are not striking.  Plato himself had entertained the idea of metempsychosis and much that seems oriental in Plotinus may be not a new importation but the elaboration of Plato’s views in a form congenial to the age.[1143] Affirmations that God is [Greek:  to hou] and [Greek:  to heu] are not so much borrowings from the Vedanta philosophy as a re-statement of Hellenic ideas in a mystic and quietist spirit, which may owe something to India.  But Plotinus seems to me nearer to India than were the Gnostics and Manichaeans, because his teaching is not dualistic to the same extent.  He finds the world unsatisfying not because it is the creation of the Evil One, but because it is transitory, imperfect and unreal.

His system has been called dynamic pantheism and this description applies also to much Indian theology which regards God in himself as devoid of all qualities and yet the source of the forces which move the universe.  He held that there are four stages of being:  primaeval being, the ideal world, the soul and phenomena.  This, if not exactly parallel to anything in Indian philosophy, is similar in idea to the evolutionary theories of the Sankhya and the phases of conditioned spirit taught by many Vishnuite sects.

For Plotinus neither moral good nor evil is ultimate:  the highest principle, like Brahman, transcends both and is beyond good [Greek:  uperagathon].  The highest morality is a morality of inaction and detachment:  fasting and abstinence from pleasure are good and so is meditation, but happiness comes in the form of ecstasy and union with God.  In human life such union cannot be permanent, though while the ecstasy lasts it affords a resting place on the weary journey, but after death it can be permanent:  the divine within us can then return to the universal divine.  In these ideas there is the real spirit of India.

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