Plotinus

He refused to sit for a portrait. To paint the body, he said, was to make a copy of a copy — and the philosopher's work was to climb in the other direction. His Enneads, edited posthumously by his student Porphyry, describe the One as the source from which all multiplicity flows and to which the soul, in rare moments, returns. He claimed to have achieved this union four times in his life. Porphyry, who lived with him for years, claimed once.