There's going to be this realm of Platonic forms and then there's going to be this single mind, the 'nous', which grasps them.

Sometimes clichés are true.

Before the 3rd century you're having several philosophical schools still as a going concern. You have not only the Platonists and the Aristotelians but you have Scepticism, you have Stoicism, you even have a little bit of Epicureanism. And what happens after Plotinus is that everybody becomes a Neo-Platonist. So if we then go forward to the Islamic world for example, Plotinus is immensely influential, and Neo-Platonism becomes at least one major component of mainstream Islamic philosophy as well.

In fact Plotinus does believe in divine providence, though when he talks about divine providence, he talks about that providence being exercised by the intellect and the soul of the world, rather than the One.

Soul puts the determination or forms or images of forms, into matter.

The importance of Plotinus is not only his own philosophical ideas which are quite interesting, but his historical impact as the founder of neo-Platonism which is the main philosophical tradition of late antiquity.

Your soul existed before your birth, your soul will exist after your death.