Plotinus extended Plato into a full metaphysical vision: from the One beyond being emanates Intellect; from Intellect, Soul; from Soul, the manifest world. The soul’s task is to turn back through this cascade to rest in its source.
His student Porphyry reports that Plotinus achieved the experience he described — union with the One — at least four times in his life. The Enneads remained among the most influential texts of late antiquity and shaped Christian Mysticism through Augustine, pseudo-dionysius, and beyond.