This paper reconsiders the role of memory in Plotinus' philosophy, in view of the mystical unity (hénosis) of the soul with intelligible truths, and a less desirable unification with its objects of memory during its earthly existence. As a rule, the mystical experience precludes memory, since the latter is related to time and binds a man to his individuality. Nevertheless, the capacity to remember remains an important part of the philosophical áskesis leading to this experience, since the memory is the only faculty of the soul that is able to travel through time, even though it is part of the process of discursive thinking and consequently is in a way imprisoned in time. Memory therefore turns out to be a double-edged power, which leaves us to question when we can regard it as an instrument of preserving what is inherent to us, and when, on the other hand, it is simply chaining us to the lower reality of the sensible world. The difference between the anagogical power of the Platonic recollection (anámnesis) and the memory as the state keeping us from unity with the intelligible world is important for identifying the moment when a man must let go of what he has been clinging to. This moment, however, is not set in time, but depends on the moral disposition of a man's soul leading a timeless existence outside, as well as inside, the body
