Plato's Realm of Forms

Neo-Platonists such as Plotinus who wrote seven hundred years after Plato understood Plato's thinking about as well as possible I would guess. I am not being too technical here with a reply; philosophy has so many books and topics, and life has so many diversions that it isn't possible to be continually immersed in one particular philosophical subject.

Plotinus read Plato and studied at Alexandria Egypt amongst other places, and wrote a group of tractates called 'The Enneads' or groups of essays in six books of nine each. A free version of the enneads by McKenna and Page is available on the internet.

Plato's realm of forms is an abstract aspect of the Universe or beyond the Universe. One might consider Plotinus' explanation and development of the realm of forms like Dante’s trilogy about the Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradisio in that it is a sort of cosmogony or cosmological map of how things are.

Interestingly Plotinus' ideas fit in rather well for modal logic deliberations on Christianity and Quantum Cosmology...I wrote a little book of essays that just tried to survey some of the Genesis/Cosmology/Physics issues in 'Creation and Cosmos; The Literal Values of Genesis'.

Plotinus had a belief that God or 'The One' is absolutely perfect and contains everything that could ever be sort of non-spatially, non-developed if one might imagine a Shannon entropy totality like a black hole of all knowledge compacted to a singularity yet without dimension at all. The One is absolutely perfect and can't be described very well.

The One in some way (here is the tough part for physicists) emanates 'ideas' effortlessly outward, perhaps one can imagine 'radiation' of knowledge and reality into a new extension of God called 'The Intellect'. The Intellect is the realm of forms. It has everything that could every be throughout all time, and everything that ever was sort of as an abstract and non-material idea. Plotinus' 'The Intellect' or Plato's realm of forms has virtue, goodness and every sort of quality too. Maybe one could think of it as the realm of perfect blueprints.

'The Soul' is the next or third stage of 'The One'. The Soul is equivalent to the Universe, perhaps that created by a big bang or the Spirit in Genesis with the 'let there be light' command.

Plato's allegory of the cave is about mankind living in the material world of The Soul and unable to see the true light higher up beyond the cave (the cave is the Universe). Plato probably developed the theory of the realm of forms to explain and relate particulars and universals, time and change, and of course built upon the pre-Socratic philosophical ideas. Plato's realm of forms was a concept of pure genius that hasn't been surpassed or made obsolete today.

If one reads the April 2006 Scientific American book review on page 100 of 'Beyond the Standard Model', or reads Green's 'the Fabric of the Cosmos' multi-dimensional universe theory as a consequence of M-Theory can be considered briefly with books like Adam's 'The Five Ages of the Universe'?. Plotinus would have the material world as the farthest from 'The One', and of course Satan and other created or even agnostic or atheist beings in the imperfect and broken material world/universe that chose to not return to The One would quite naturally have a long cruel time on their own in a way as far from order and reason as possible. Jesus Christ is the expressway to The One through his atoning sacrifice (I just had to write that...it will be helpful eventually for believers anyway).

The material universe may have a big bang or a big crunch, but for immortal souls being in the wrong protocol will be quite difficult.

Souls too are of The One, it’s simply a matter of being in the right theo-space-time coordinate relationship that the difficulties and progress arise. Trying to understand the realm of forms with referring to it within a theistic and spiritual context is de trop...It’s all about spirit.