Travels with Plotinus
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A Journey in Search of Unity
Published by Unicorn Publishing, 2025
In Travels with Plotinus, Moin Mir follows Plotinus’s 1,780-year-old journey of personal discovery across India, Egypt, Italy, Greece and Turkey as he tries to understand the core concept of Plotinian thought, derived from studying the Upanishads – ‘Unity and Oneness’. He uses Plotinus’s philosophy to observe how the free will of intellect uses ‘Unity’ for good and evil. Intimate conversations with refugees escaping war, innocent boatmen drifting down the Nile, simple farmers and monks in Greece along with observations of ancient art and modern technological accomplishments inform his thoughts and writing on the concept of the oneness of humankind – its immense power to bring good and yet its vulnerability to the stealth of intellect to destroy and self-destruct.
Quotes
In Travels With Plotinus Moin Mir takes us on an enthralling journey in the footsteps of the elusive 3rd century CE philosopher regarded as the founding father of neo Platonism. From the streets of Old Rome, to the banks of the Nile, from Athens to Alexandria to the island of Patmos, Mir describes with brio his whirlwind intellectual quest for the meaning of Plotinus's central concept of 'The One.
Andrea Di Robilant
Retracing the footsteps of Plotinus, the ancient Greek philosopher whose dream was to reach India and study the Upanishads, Moin Mir takes us on a meditative, poetic and evocative journey in search of Oneness and Unity. Nearly 1800 years separate the author from his subject, but surely this would have been immaterial had they met.
Alba Arikha
In his celebrated novel The Lost Fragrance of Infinity Moin Mir retraces the steps of a group of Sufi travellers on their Westward journey from India to Spain and in the process brings to life the richness and beauty of one of the great spiritual traditions of mankind. In his new work Travels With Plotinus the author embarks on an Eastward journey, together with one of the founding fathers of that very tradition: Plotinus, the Alexandrian philosopher who had hoped to visit India but never reached it. Now Moin Mir has come to take him there. A voyage like no other awaits.
Stefan Sperl –Emeritus Professor in Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies, SOAS, University of London
Mir makes a powerful case for the beauty and significance of Plotinus as a spiritual and ethical, not just conceptual thinker. Mir’s earnest quest for unity, both human and metaphysical is also moving and his writing at its best has an appealing sincerity. His account at the beginning of the book of a lone starling calling out to summon the unity of murmuration, in which hundreds of birds become a sublime shifting unity is rather lovely. His enthusiasm is infectious and I enjoyed his writing.
The Critic