as spiritually given birth
within himself to divinity, to the divine spirit which became man, to
the Logos, Christ. In this sense knowledge was, for Philo and those
who thought like him, the birth of Christ within the world of spirit.
The Neo-Platonic philosophy, which developed contemporaneously with
Christianity, was an elaboration of Philo's thought. Let us see how
Plotinus (A.D. 204-269) describes his spiritual experiences:

"Often when I come to myself on awaking from bodily sleep and, turning
from the outer world, enter into myself, I behold wondrous beauty.
Then I am sure that I have been conscious of the better part of
myself. I live my true life, I am one with the divine and, rooted in
the divine, gain the power to transport myself beyond even the
super-world. After thus resting in God, when I descend from spiritual
vision and again form thoughts, I ask myself how it has happened that
I now descend and that my soul ever entered the body at all, since, in
its essence, it is what it has just revealed itself to me. What can
the reason be for souls forgetting God the Father since they come
from the beyond and belong to Him, and, when they forget Him, know
nothing of Him or of themselves? The first false step they take is
indulging in presumption, the desire to become, and in forgetfulness
of their true self and in the pleasure of only belonging to
themselves. They coveted self-glorification, they rushed about in
pursuit of their desires and thus went astray and fell completely
away. Thereupon they lost all knowledge of their origin in the beyond,
just as children, early separated from their parents and brought up
elsewhere, do not know who they themselves and their parents are."
Plotinus delineates the kind of life which the soul should strive to
develop. "The life of the body and its longings should be stilled, the
soul should see calm in all that surrounds it: in earth, sea, air, and
heaven itself no movement. It should learn to see how the soul pours
itself from without into the serene cosmos, streaming into it from all
sides; as the sun's rays illuminate a dark cloud and make it golden,
so does the soul, on entering the body of the world encircled by the
sky, give it life and immortality."

It is evident that this vision of the world is very similar to that of
Christianity. Believers of the community of Jesus said: "That which
was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with
our eyes, whic