Homer on the Platonic Tripartite Soul

Homer on the Platonic Tripartite Soul:
The Adultery of Aphrodite and Ares in the Odyssey

Eric S. Fallick


The Odyssey is a symbolic, allegorical, anagogical description of contemplative ascetic, renunciant spiritual practice through successive reincarnations in the soul’s journey back to its origin from its fallen state. All systems or descriptions of spiritual practice presuppose and assume (whether they are conscious of it or not and have understood it or not) a metaphysics or description of the nature of Reality. In the case of the Odyssey, the assumed and understood metaphysics and nature of Reality is the same as that expounded by Plato and Plotinus. Most of the Odyssey is detailing practice, stages on the Path and experiences that have to be undergone and things that have to be done by the contemplative ascetic practitioner, with the metaphysics and spiritual Reality involved already understood and presupposed without the need for specific exposition per se. There are, however, some places where a digression is made for explicit exposition of certain metaphysical topics and facets of spiritual Reality. In an earlier essay, I attempted to explain one such passage covering the three Platonic hypostases. Another expository passage, this time presenting the understanding of the Platonic tripartite soul, is found in the colorful and much discussed song of Demodocus relating the adultery of Ares and Aphrodite at Book 8, lines 266 to 366. Let me attempt to explain the undermeaning of this famously controversial story, which will turn out to be not at all so scandalous as has sometimes been supposed by those not penetrating beneath the surface level of the text.

In the Republic (and the Phaedrus myth), the soul in its fallen embodied condition imprisoned in individuated sensate existence in space-time is described, for functional purposes, as having three parts. The first and most important part, which is the true and separable soul, belonging both to this world, in a sense, and the higher noetic world, is the rational and divine part of the soul, nous, logos or ‘intellect’ or understanding. The other two parts are only attached to this true and higher soul when it is embodied and fallen and stuck here in individuated sensate existence in space-time and are produced from the soul’s mixture with ‘matter’, material and bodily existence and darkness. These are the spirited or passionate or energetic part of the soul and the desiring and sensual part of the soul. These last two form the animal soul, so to speak, in opposition to the divine soul. These can’t be completely eliminated as long as the soul remains in embodied sensate existence, until it has attained release and liberation from rebirth and re-union with the One, but in the contemplative ascetic and more accomplished practitioner they are controlled by and strictly subordinate to the divine rational soul, to one degree or another as best as possible (part of the Path is the constant struggle to control these and subject them to the divine soul), and used only as needed to maintain the psycho-physical organism until it can be transcended. In ordinary worldlings, the animal soul is most powerful and exerts control and is only moderated to some degree by the divine soul and often only to the degree necessary to keep it from self-destructing the whole organism and keep it, and particularly the desiring part, being satisfied and able to attain its desires to some degree. In the more accomplished practitioner, the spirited passionate part is subject to the divine part and used to control the desiring part and protect the divine part from outside hindrances; in mundane people, it is in the service of the desiring part and its own passions, and fights for them against the divine rational part.

In the symbolic description in the story of the adultery of Aphrodite and Ares in the Odyssey, Hephaestus represents the divine, rational part of the soul, Ares represents the spirited, passionate part, and Aphrodite represents the desiring, sensual part of the soul. Hephaestus, representing intelligence and the divine soul, is ‘famed for art’ and ‘of great good sense’. He is also ‘lame’ and ‘not firm on the feet’ representing the non-involvement of the rational soul in the material world and its being separable and really separate therefrom, and is ‘slow’ since intellect isn’t caught up in impulse and immediate passion. Ares, on the other hand, representing the spirited, passionate and angry part of the soul, is ‘destructive’ and ‘hateful’, is ‘handsome’ because this part appeals to worldly desires, is the ‘fastest’ of the gods on account of its mercurial nature, and is ‘sound and swift of foot’ since it is part of this world and functions only within it. Aphrodite, the desiring and sensual part of the soul, is ‘golden’ and ‘fair-crowned’ and ‘smile-loving’ representing the apparent but illusory pleasures of the senses, like a honey coated razor blade.

Aphrodite is lawfully married to Hephaestus. In the good soul, the desiring part is subject to the rational part and not supported or encouraged by the spirited part. However, as the story begins, while Hephaestus is absent, while the rational part is occupied with its own proper activity of noetic contemplation apart from the sense world, Ares enters Hephaestus’ house and wooing Aphrodite with gifts commits adultery with her in secret, the spirited part usurps the rational part’s position in the soul while the latter is unaware and presenting the lures of helping the unintelligent desiring part to fulfil its desire for sensual pleasures joins with the desiring part and makes it autonomous rather than subject to the rational part as is proper. Hephaestus is, however, immediately informed by Helios, the sun, of the goings on. The divine part of the soul in contemplation is informed by the light of the Absolute, the Source of all knowledge, and realizes that the lower parts of the soul are still acting on and out of delusion and immersion in the material world. Hephaestus goes to his smithy and fashions fine bonds that are invisible to others and spreads them around his bed. The rational part of the soul consults its intellectual resources and spiritual understanding and develops the means to reveal and immobilize the lower parts of the soul in their unskilful functioning and deploys them throughout the soul as a whole. Hephaestus then pretends to go off to Lemnos, ‘the well-built city’ that is ‘much dearest to him of all lands’, but really turns back when Helios, who has kept watch, tells him that Ares, who was keeping watch, has seen him leaving and taken Aphrodite to bed. The rational part turns to contemplation of the well-ordered noetic realm that it prefers to this world, but is now aware that it has to keep an eye on the lower parts, and, when in the seeming absence of rational control the spirited part again tries to join with the willing desiring part, he knows it through the light of the Absolute and the knowing it provides. This time, however, the rational soul has prepared things and the misalignment and malfunctioning of the animal soul is revealed and the lower two parts are immobilized in their misconduct through the understanding of the divine soul that they can’t perceive; the invisible bonds made by Hephaestus fall on Ares and Aphrodite and they are caught and bound and are unable to move.

Hephaestus now reappears at his house, the rational soul now makes its presence obviously known again throughout the whole soul, and calls all the other gods to witness, the lower parts of the soul are revealed for what they are and have done in the light of the divine Ideas and the noetic order. Hephaestus demands the return of his bridal gifts and the assembled gods (the goddesses stay back out of modesty, the animal soul is still required to function to a certain limited extent in maintaining the psycho-physical organism prior to liberation) exclaim that justice always prevails and that Ares owes the penalty for adultery, the divine order requires that the parts of the soul be properly aligned and stay in their proper roles, otherwise negative karma is created that must be worked out as regulated by providence. The gods laugh at the scene and joke with each other, the divine order rejoices at the rational soul’s retaking control and the soul’s being recalibrated back to its proper order. Poseidon, however, does not laugh and keeps entreating Hephaestus to release Ares and eventually promises that either Ares or himself will pay the debt for adultery. Poseidon represents ‘matter’, non-being and darkness. He is the ‘earth-holder’ and ‘earth-shaker’ since he governs much of the material world and is the lord of the ocean of material existence and birth and death. He is thus on the side of Ares, material darkness and bondage desires and requires the malfunctioning of the animal soul, and thus assures that karmic retribution will continue since the divine order of things keeps compensating for the mess-up of ‘matter’ and non-being by bringing things back into order through the working out of the karma taken on by souls mixed up with the material sense world. Hephaestus finally agrees and releases the bonds and Ares and Aphrodite at once spring up and depart for their respective separate preferred locations. The rational soul, as long as it is still stuck in embodied existence, has to concede some continued limited functioning to the animal soul, but this now, through the intervention of understanding illuminated from the Good, is more in accord with the workings of the divine order and karma and the two lower parts of the soul are now separated from their illicit collusion and are assigned to their separate proper places.

Thus, Homer and his divine Muse have expounded and detailed by means of the undermeaning of a myth the same tripartite nature of the embodied, bound mortal soul and its proper and necessary alignment and functioning as has the divine Plato in the Politea in a more immediately explicit and accessible fashion.


© 2018 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (at) (gee)mail (dot) com

Homer on the Three Platonic Hypostases

Homer on the Three Platonic Hypostases:
The Proteus episode of the Odyssey

by Eric S. Fallick


The Odyssey of Homer is a most marvelous transhistorical transmigratory allegorical guidebook to contemplative ascetic, renunciant spiritual practice detailing the soul's journey in successive rebirths to return to its true home in the noetic realm and the Absolute. All spiritual and religious systems and systems of practice take as their basis and presuppose a metaphysics or ontological (and axiological) understanding of the nature of reality, whether they explicitly recognize it or not. The metaphysics underlying the Odyssey is exactly the same as that presented by Plato and Plotinus—the system of the three Platonic hypostases. (Plato and Plotinus both teach precisely the same metaphysical, spiritual and soteriological system, even though many spiritually imperceptive modern scholars here in the dark ages are unable or unwilling to see this. In the much more illumined pre-modern world, this was more obvious to many.) The three hypostases or levels of existence or reality are the One or the Good, the Absolute, the Source and Ground of everything, from which everything comes and to which everything returns and which encompasses everything; Nous or the Divine Mind-thought, the noetic realm of the Ideas or Forms, eternal and unchanging; and the level of Soul, of space and time and individuation. Only the One or the Good is wholly real and perfect and knowing. The other two hypostases or levels are descending levels of increased darkness and unreality and nescience within, so to speak, the One. The level of soul includes various aspects such as the nature and faculties and function of both our souls and the World Soul, the production of space and time, the workings of Dike (justice) or Adastreia (necessity) or karma or providence, the struggles of the soul on the Path, and so forth. The Odyssey is particularly concerned, by its nature, with detailing the processes of this level, although the higher realities are always, of course, presumed in the background. It is not, therefore, especially concerned with giving systematic metaphysical expositions. The most explicit and systematic exposition of the three Platonic hypostases, combined, of course, with instructions for the Path, occurs in the Proteus episode related by Menelaus to Telemachus in Book 4. In this essay I will attempt to briefly explicate the undermeaning of this part of the text.

Telemachus represents the conceptual or discriminating understanding and discernment of the practitioner's soul. This understanding is born of the combination of the true, higher soul, Odysseus, and the lower, embodied soul, Penelope. Penelope, the lower soul, dwells in Odysseus' house, the body, the embodied state of individuated sensate existence in space-time, harassed by and barely fending off the evil suitors, the passions and defilements and worldly emotions and desires, who unlawfully and against her will and that of Telemachus, the understanding, occupy the domain/house of the lower soul. They unlawfully consume their livelihood, that is, they use up the lower soul's physical, emotional and mental energies to feed themselves instead of conserving and allowing these energies to be used, having been turned by the higher soul, to proper divine and holy and ascetic purposes of contemplation and striving towards liberation from becoming, genesis. Throughout the Odyssey, the disturbing image of the sacrificing and eating of animals (the faculties and energies of the lower, animal soul) and the libation and drinking of wine (the unavoidable pleasant or painful experiences of the senses) represent the maintenance and use of the physical and emotional and lower mental faculties of the soul and the senses that unfortunately have to be constantly attended to as long as we are still in becoming, in embodied sensate existence, but should be always only used as necessary for and totally dedicated to divine ascetic contemplative purposes, sacrificed to the gods before being consumed, and are by divine and holy higher souls committed to the Path, but are misused by the defilements and worldly deluded souls only for worldly purposes and pleasures, sacrificed to the gods in name only in the misguided attempt to obtain worldly advantages. The reason for the choice of the grotesque and horrific symbols and images of killing and eating of animals and consuming of alcohol, so revolting to the true contemplative ascetic and renunciant, is to serve as a continual reminder of how gross and painful and horrible and contemptible and miserable and burdensome and dark sensate existence and continued rebirth and physical and embodied life really is compared to the inconceivable bliss and brightness and knowing of the Absolute and re-union with and re-absorption therein, and to constantly inspire the renunciant with revulsion from this world and life and with desire for liberation and the Good and impel him to constantly strive for release and re-union, for the Absolute only. Penelope, the lower soul, and Telemachus, the conceptual understanding, long for the return of Odysseus, the true higher divine soul and the true contemplative ascetic practitioner, who, fully purified and developed and divininized by his long trials and adventures, will destroy the defilements, etc., the suitors, and be reunited with the lower embodied existence and take proper care of it and eventually get rid of it by drawing it up fully into the higher levels. (Of course, they can never actually be separate during the course of the Path, and Odysseus, the higher soul and contemplative ascetic, is always really present there, but for much of the Path the two seem to be separate in that the constant need to maintain the psycho-physical organism and deal with its attendant passions, etc. seems to be separate from and always cause problems for and drag one away from contemplation and holy practice. Note that in the Odyssey the trials of Odysseus, Penelope and Telemachus are all actually going on at the same time.)

At the beginning of the Odyssey, as the conditions are becoming ripe for Odysseus' return, Telemachus, the cognitive understanding, has now developed to the point that it understands more what is actually going on and that the suitors, the defilements, have to be ejected and destroyed, the world needs to be renounced, the higher soul needs to return, and liberation only needs to be striven for. Athena, divine wisdom, in the guise of Mentes and Mentor (both meaning “Reminder”) sends the understanding, Telemachus, on a journey of learning. First, he learns piety and asceticism, but without philosophia, from Nestor. Then he travels to see Menelaus. Here he sees noetical beauty, Helen, and, eventually, in response to his inquiring about Odysseus, Menelaus relates the Proteus episode that forms the main subject of this essay and provides a more structured exposition of the three hypostases. Even if I won't be able to explicate the undermeaning of every detail, the main features are clear.

Menelaus represents a soul that has made quite significant progress on the Path, but is still far from the end and will be detained for a while. He has firmly regained the vision of intelligible beauty, he has regained Helen, and has had a glimpse, however brief, of the One, he has had an encounter with Proteus, “the First”, and has learned a great deal from these and his practice so far. He has, however, not gone through all the necessary trials and practice for ultimately attaining the telos and destroying the defilements that Odysseus has. He still has many of his ships and his men, which, unlike Odysseus, he brought back with him, the various aspects and views and burdens of the lower self that need to be destroyed, however painfully, on the Path. He has not learned all the things that Odysseus has learned in the various episodes that occur later in the Odyssey. He has, however, progressed and learned enough and has a good enough lower self, also represented by Helen, that he was not destroyed by a bad lower self and the defilements and passions and wrong views upon prematurely returning like Agamemnon, he has avoided 'the fate of Agamemnon', referred to repeatedly in the text and related by Proteus, as mentioned below. At the end of their discussion, Proteus assures him, he knows from his vision of the Absolute, that he won't fall totally back into genesis, becoming, won't die and meet his fate in horse-grazing Argos, but will go to the Elysian plane of unchanging, pleasant and easy life and weather, will remain in contact with the noetical realm, the second hypostasis, since he has the vision of noetical beauty, Helen, daughter of the divine order of things, Zeus. He is, therefore, still around in the sensate lower level of soul and individuated phenomena in space-time to be able to give instruction to the understanding, Telemachus (sort of like the writers of essays?), unlike the fully completed soul that has fully attained the telos and no longer perceives this world at all but has become only the Absolute. Thus, in Menelaus and his situation, details, activities, etc. we have expounded, illustrated and disclosed the third hypostasis, the level of soul, both ours and the World Soul.

Menelaus' relation of the Proteus episode begins with him and his ships and men stuck on a desert island not too long after beginning his journey from the lower this-world of Egypt to his return to Lacedaemon, stuck at a single and difficult and unpleasant place in his practice, because he did not offer sufficient complete hecatombs, sacrifices, to the gods before departing, he did not sufficiently practice asceticism, piety, holiness and total devotion to the divine, he did not adequately dedicate all his physical, emotional, and mental existence, all the powers and faculties of the lower animal soul to the Divine and the attaining thereof. Thus, his lower faculties are perishing and are hungry, having been deprived of their true use and good. At this point, though, he is able to enter into contemplation of and contact with in contemplation of the Divine Mind-Thought, the noetic realm, the second hypostasis, which is expounded and represented here by the goddess Eidothea, “Contemplation of Form” and the seals and their counting. (So two of the three hypostases have been accounted for.) He meets Eidothea, significantly while wandering alone, in contemplation without the burden of his lower self, his men and ships, and enters into interaction with her, with the noetic realm, the Divine Mind-Thought. From this he learns that to find out what is going on, why he is stuck in his practice, he will have to at least briefly ascend to the One in contemplation and that the Divine Mind-Thought itself will facilitate this.

Proteus, “the First”, represents the One, the Absolute, Itself, the first Platonic hypostasis (so we now have all three hypostases revealed and presented in orderly fashion). Proteus, the One, is here presented in reverse fashion to emphasize His being the underlying source and ground of all phenomena, even the lowest. Thus, he is described, backwards, as of and under Egypt, the sea and Poseidon, all of which represent hyle, the body and bodily and sensate existence. Eidothea's instructions on how to 'catch' her Father Proteus, the approach to the Good revealed through contact with the Divine Mind-Thought, and the events as they actually unfold largely coincide and so will be explicated together without distinction here.

Proteus emerges from the sea at high noon. The One is seen during and as and is the greatest illumination. Along with Him emerge and He is seen among, at the head of and beyond the Ideas or Forms, the seals. He counts the seals by fives showing the rational order of the Ideas and the beginning approach to the noetic through number and mathematics (shades of the Politea!). Menelaus and his few compatriots (this practicing soul is not yet to the point where he can enter this contemplation without any of the faculties of the lower soul remaining with him) are disguised by the Divine Mind-Thought as seals, as Ideas; that is, it is through entrance into and identification with the noetic realm, Nous, that the ascent can be made to seeing the Good. For this soul as yet still burdened from behind, the entrance into and abiding in Nous would be more than he could bear, the smell of the seals would be terrible, were it not for the pleasure of the noetic beauty, the ambrosia that Eidothea places under their noses (compare Phaedo 109 e6 where the nature must be sufficient to bear the contemplating). When they grab Proteus, when they make the approach to the One, He turns into all manner of forms of animals and plants and physical elements, but they have to hang on and not let go until He returns to His actual form. The Absolute has to be discerned and kept in sight as beyond and throughout the experience of all the diversified phenomena (compare Politea 534 b8-d1 where the one who knows the Idea of the Good has to be able to abstract It from all things as in battle and know it truly in reality, not just in opinion).

The first thing, and that for which this has all been undertaken, that Menelaus learns from Proteus is that he is stuck on the island because he did not perform satisfactory sacrificial offerings to Zeus and the gods before leaving Egypt and that he has to return to Egypt and do it before the gods will allow him to proceed safely and successfully on his way. This is highly significant. The first thing that the practitioner, that the soul, learns in having a true vision or contemplation of the Absolute, however brief, is the absolute necessity of full-blown, pure renunciation and asceticism and piety and holiness and total, single-minded devotion to the Divine in order to proceed truly and successfully on the Path of contemplation and return home. Returning to the bodily, sensate realm, he must uncompromisingly sacrifice and dedicate all the powers, maintenance and faculties of the lower self, of the animal soul, of bodily life to the single divine and holy purpose of attaining re-union with the Absolute, of attaining liberation. The stream of all his energies must be wholly and holy-ly directed to the Divine without any diversion into the channels of worldly desires and the pursuit of sensual pleasures and the things of this world. His maintenance of the psycho-physical organism, however greatly this occupies so much of our time and energy and attention in this world, must be solely for the purpose of, be dedicated to, the Divine Path and aspiration. This, as discussed above, is the undermeaning of the symbol of offering satisfactory hectacombs, sacrifices or offerings. This is most important to understand, especially now in these dark times in the modern secular world where there are many who claim to have known the Absolute, God, Enlightenment, etc. and to teach others to attain this in 'meditation' but display understanding, teaching and behavior that indicate that they couldn't possibly have true accomplishment. Anyone who has truly had even a little contact with the One in contemplation and in reality knows the absolute necessity of renunciation, purity, holiness and asceticism for and as the Path. Contemplative asceticism is the very manifestation and reflection of the Absolute, of God, etc. in this world. Anyone who claims to have contemplative attainment, to have attained Union, Realization, Enlightenment, etc. and is not a pure contemplative ascetic, is not celibate, vegetarian, teetotaling, poor, abstaining from sensual and social pleasures, etc., and does not understand or teach this, or teaches people that they can attain this without being renunciants and without giving up this world can, ipso facto, be dismissed as a fraud. Again, Homer, along with Plato and Plotinus, continually teaches true contemplative asceticism of the purest and most abstract and austere sort as the only and only possible Path to liberation and realization of the Absolute, as integral with and the flip side, as it were, in this world of the Absolute Divine Reality Itself. To become God, the soul must become godlike.

This theme is further reinforced by the remaining subsidiary part of Proteus' revelation in which He relates the fate or status of three of the chiefs of the Achaeans who made it out of Troy. Aias perished in the sea of hyle, of bodily sensate existence, on the Path home, because he departed from and closed himself to divine wisdom, he was hated by Athena, and because he fell from holiness and a proper supernatural understanding of the Path and into a naturalist, humanist understanding of reality and the Path arrogating to himself the ability to accomplish a telos without the Divine, he boasted, in his blindness, that he had been saved from the sea against the will of rather than because of the gods. Thus, he was re-engulfed by hyle and material bodily existence, believing this and purely human action to be real, and fell back into the ocean of birth and death, falling completely from the Path (at least for the time being). Next, He relates the 'fate of Agamemnon', the destruction or loss or falling from the Path (for the time being, at least) of the soul that returns home, that attempts to ascend to the higher hypostases and thinks that it has, without at all adequate preparation, understanding, practice or condition. He returns with all his ships and men, without at all having freed himself from the burden of the lower soul by going through the painful trials, purifications and learnings of Odysseus, and with a bad lower self overcome by the passions and delusions and defilements, his wife overcome and surrendered to Aegisthus, not at all practicing holiness, morality, humility, asceticism and renunciation, that puts an end to the higher soul's attempts at liberation and plunges it back into the lower areas of rebirth. (One need only look around, both in the past and especially in the present, to see examples of these two lamentable fates.) Finally, He relates that Odysseus, the true ascetic practitioner and higher soul, is still alive, is still on the Path, has lost all his ships and men, has been purified of the burden of the lower soul and the things of this world, as is necessary, but is temporarily stuck on the island of and is detained by Calypso, “the Concealer”, sensate life and sensory existence, but is longing and ready to return, the telos is getting nearer, though there is still a long way to go. (The Path, viewed from the temporal side of things, is a very long, difficult and tricky journey—very few are they who make it all the way through to the end and liberation.)

Thus, it is clear that the Odyssey clearly and explicitly presents and presupposes the Platonic metaphysics of the three hypostases and their concomitant contemplative ascetic, renunciant practice, the exposition being interleaved with instructions on the Path. Homer (or, rather, the Muse) and Plato and Plotinus all teach the same Platonic Idealist metaphysic or structure and understanding of the nature of Reality and teach it as inseparable from the contemplative ascetic, renunciant spiritual Path and soteriology of re-union with the One or the Good and liberation thereby from the cycle of repeated birth and death or becoming of genesis. This is a most important lesson to learn. Idealist metaphysics and ontology of the Absolute and the lower manifestations contained in It and the contemplative ascetic and mystic spiritual practice and Path intrinsically go together and are inseparable. They are two sides of the same coin, the reflections of each other in the nontemporal, transcendent and temporal, immanent spheres. We may be grateful for the manifestation of the Absolute in our present experiential fields as the Homeric Muse for teaching us this.


© 2015 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (at) (Gee) mail (period) com

Q. and A. on Karma

Q. and A. on Karma



Greetings Eric. In past emails we touched upon the subject of karma several times. For instance, why we view phenomena the way we do, while others do not. I want to clear any erroneous notions I might have, regarding how karma works within the Platonic system. I once heard the late Advaita Vedanta teacher Ramesh Balsekar say, "there is no individual doer of any deed, everything is just a happening. The Will of God or Cosmic law." You also know, the Jains and Buddhist understand karma completely different from him, and each other. Is everything predetermined by karma? What is the difference between fate and karma? Is the human will completely in bondage to karma? I do not wish to sound Augustinian, I just desire clarity. What is the proper hierarchy between intellect and will? Which Ennead and Platonic dialogue should I read, which would point to the correct understanding, concerning freedom of the will or the lack thereof? Thank you in advance for your reply


These are questions of great importance and involved and hard to cover extensively in an email reply, but I will try to do so briefly. Ennead VI.8 is "On Free Will and the Will of the One" and deals with this. You might also want to read the beginning of Ennead V.1. It would take a very long time for me to go through all the Enneads and try to cite all the passages and parts related to this. There isn't a specific Platonic dialogue I can refer you to for this. In passing, let me mention that modern so-called Advaitins are generally most all actually full-blown theists of almost an Abrahamic type and I wouldn't necessarily go by what they say as actually representing the actual earlier Advaita school. Karma is not determinism, fate or pre-destination and we are not Augustinians or Calvinists. The human will is not completely in bondage to karma or else liberation would not be possible. Everything is determined by karma but not pre-determined. At every moment, we have the free will to move either towards liberation and re-union with the One or further into multiplicity and greater bondage. Some of the confusion may be due to a realist (in the modern, not the opposite medieval, sense) and physicalist/materialist perspective on things that conceives of objects and events existing apart from perceiving subjects, where in reality there is just experience and Mind as a unitary whole. Karma is only relevant at this lowest level of Soul and individuated sensate existence in space-time that is a weak projection or faint reflection or darkening of the higher hypostases of Nous and the Good. At this level, subject and object have apparently broken up, but still cannot exist apart from each other, by definition. The Soul of the All experiences this All as a whole and all time and space, which are only created by soul, simultaneously and all our individual souls are within its experiential field. Our individual experiential fields include all our individual relative worlds and experiences that we experience appearing as a temporal and spatial series of past, present and future and translation in space and all our sense-perceptions of objects and events and other souls, etc. At each moment, we experience given things and happenings as our experiential field and we act volitionally on this basis. Our volitional actions and choices and thoughts modify our experiential field and sometimes that of others we are interacting with. All the modifications of our experiential field and those of all other souls modify the experiential field of the Soul of the All. These modifications of the experiential field of the All in turn then modify our experiential field and those of all other souls. The Soul of the All experiences all this in a single moment of time, as it were, and a single place, as it were, but we experience all these modifications of our experiential fields as a temporal series.

Thus, all the modifications that we have done by volitional thought and action in what we perceive as the past modify, through the Soul of the All and its experience of both our modified experiential fields and those of all other souls, what we perceive and experience as our present and future experiential fields. This is what we call karma. There is no such thing as fate in the sense of experiences that don't occur as a result of our volitional choices, but there is providence in that all this works in accordance with righteousness and necessity and is a reflection or unfolding in space-time of the eternal relations of Nous. At each moment, we have the choice of our will being that of the higher soul--of that in contact with Nous and the Good and, ultimately, really of Nous and the Good themselves--which moves us in the direction of divinity and liberation or our will being that of the lower or animal soul bound in with the body and sense-perception and this world, which moves us further into bondage and sense-experience. Even though the conditions, circumstances, perceptions, desires, passions, emotions, defilements, involuntarily arising thoughts, etc., etc. that we experience and that constitute our experiential field at a given time are determined by karma, we always have the ability to whatever extent to then react to them or act and think, even if only a little bit, based on the higher soul and higher hypostases rather than the lower and thus create positive karma and, more specifically, karma leading to release. As I have indicated before, this striving for liberation and renunciation and acting according to the true higher self is really the One acting through us and working to re-realize and re-unify Itself through us, though It has actually never become de-unified and all this is actually only happening or apparently happening at our level which is less real and only a subtraction and darkening that doesn't affect the Light at the level of the Good, which is completely unchanged. Words and purely discursive understanding maybe begin to fail at this point in my explanation. When this happens, when one is truly renouncing and correctly striving for release, the modification of the experiential field of the Soul of the All includes that the Light is starting to reappear in and through a particular soul and its experiential field is being thus modified, and so that soul's experiential field keeps being modified in a way to allow it to keep going to liberation, but also brings forth the deluded modifications that it previously effected and have to be used up, but now in a manner that, while perhaps difficult and not pleasant, doesn't permanently or really hinder its continued progress towards the telos. Ordinary deluded worldlings, on the other hand, just experience modifications to their experiential field based on previous deluded volitions based on the lower self and just react to them again on the basis of the lower self and just then create more such modifications and just keep going in an endless cycle of shifting low level experiential fields of rebirth as humans and non-humans until and if somehow they begin to see through it and begin to act from the higher soul and the Absolute begins to remanifest through them. Why this movement towards release has started in a few souls but not in most at any given point, I don't know. As I have said, this is all kind of involved and not necessarily easily graspable at soul-level. The most important thing is to renounce the world and strive wholeheartedly for re-union with the Good, the source of all knowing and knowledge, at which point this won't be a problem.

I hope this explanation is at least somewhat intelligible and helps to answer your questions and give you greater clarity, at least to a reasonable degree. Perhaps, I should also mention that my answers are, frankly, based on my own contemplative experience and understanding, and I can't necessarily cite written authorities for my way of putting things.

Maximus of Tyre, Dissertation 33

Maximus of Tyre, Dissertation 33, “What is the object of philosophy?”

translated from ancient Greek by Eric S. Fallick


It is difficult to find a true reasoning—for the human soul runs the risk, through facility of thinking, to be at a loss for judgment. The other arts going forward through discovery become more successful, each concerning its own works—but philosophy, whenever it would be most abundant, then it is filled full of reasonings opposed and equally balanced, and it resembles a farmer suffering more fruitless earth whenever he would come to be in a surplus of many implements. Therefore, votes and the number of jurors and the opinions of public speakers and the (show of) hands of the people govern political suits—but, here, what judge will be present to us and by what vote will we judge the truth? By reason? But you would not have a reasoning to say for which you would not find the opposite reasoning. Emotion? But this is an untrustworthy judge. By the multitude (of people saying so)? But the very ignorant ones are more. By opinion? But the worse things are more held in esteem.

At once in this present problem, pleasure is contending and being measured against virtue—is not pleasure, pushing aside virtue, strong in (people's) opinion and surpassing in multitude of witnesses and having power in accordance with emotion? But that which is the only remaining ally of virtue, reason, is also split and divided, and some help to pleasures could also be discovered from it, and someone speaks finely speaking on behalf of pleasure, and holding virtue cheap, and transposing the rule from the men's quarters to the women's quarters—and dresses himself in the dress of a philosopher, and would claim to hold the name of a philosopher. Give it up, human being, the name also with the reasoning. You transgress the law about the foundations. There is nothing in common between wisdom and pleasure—the lover of pleasure is one person, the lover of wisdom is another—the names have been divided, the deeds have been divided, the races have been divided, as the Laconian things from the Attic, as the barbarian things from the Hellenic. But if saying you are a Spartan and a Hellene and a Dorian and a Heraclean, you esteem a Median tiara and a barbaric dining-table and a Persian covered carriage, you have gone Persian, you have gone barbarian, you have destroyed Pausanias—you are a Median, you are Mardonius—put aside the name with the race.

Thus, I bear the multitude singing the praises of pleasure—for their soul is vulgar and having been excluded from reason, pitiable in emotion, pardonable in ignorance—but I do not bear Epicurus on account of (his having) the name (of 'philosopher'), nor do I bear philosophy being wanton. For neither do I bear a general deserting the ranks and leading the flight, nor do I bear a farmer setting the crops on fire, nor do I bear a steersman being very fearful of the sea—it is necessary for you to sail, it is necessary for you to command, it is necessary for you to farm—these things are full of hard toils, but nothing noble comes to be through ease. But if pleasure follows the noble things, I grant it—let it follow, but let the noble lead in every way:
Let there be one ruler, one king, to whom it has been given
by Zeus to rule. But if you would transpose the order, and pleasure would rule, but reason would follow, you give to the soul a bitter and implacable tyrant, to whom it is necessary to be a slave and to serve with services indeterminate and of every sort, even if it would order ugly things, even if it would order unrighteous things. For what would be the limit of pleasure laying hold of license for desires? For this tyrant is insatiable, and disdainful of the things present and desirous of the things not present, being inflamed through abundance, rising through expectation, and waxing wanton through plenty. This tyrant makes the base things rise against the noble things, this one makes ready unrighteousness against righteousness, excess against moderation. Since certainly the need of the body fills up its appetites without difficulty. Is someone thirsty? There are springs everywhere. Is someone hungry? There are acorns everywhere. The sun is the warmest of cloaks. The meadows are the most variegated of spectacles. The flowers are natural fragrances. To go as far as these is to take need itself as the limit of pleasures. But if you step beyond these things and go on further, you give an unceasing run to pleasures and wall out virtues.

This begets greedinesses; this makes tyrannies. For the Pasargadae territory and the cardamom of Cyrus are not enough for the king of the Persians, but all of Asia divvies up lots to supply for the pleasures of one man. Media raises a Nisaean horse for him. Ionia sends Greek concubines. Babylon rears barbarian eunuchs. Egypt sends crafts of all kinds—the Indians ivory, the Arabs fragrance. And also the rivers supply for the pleasures of the king—the Pactolus gold, the Nile wheat, the Choaspes water. But not even these are enough for him, but he desires foreign pleasure, and through this comes to Europe, runs after the Scythians, dislodges the Paeonians, takes Eretria, sails against Marathon, and wanders everywhere. Most unfortunate one in poverty! For what would be poorer than a man desiring continuously? For when once a soul would taste pleasures beyond its need, it is held by satiety of the previous ones and desires others. And that then was the allegory of Tantalus—the continuous thirst of a pleasure loving man and the streams of pleasure coming up and going away again, and the flowing back of desires and the bitter pains having been mixed up with these, and the disturbances and fears. For on the one hand he is fearful lest pleasure being present would go away, but on the other hand he is distressed lest pleasure not being present would not come—so that it is a necessity for the one pursuing pleasure not to cease being pained, but also not to sense being pleased, but to live being confounded in much unclarity.

See what and what kind of tyrant you give to the soul: as Critias to the Athenians, thrusting away Solon; as Pausanias to the Lacedaemonians, thrusting away Lycurgus. But I, desiring freedom, have need of law, have need of reason. This will guard for me well-being true and unshaken and without fear and independent, but not base, not having been contrived by the arts of slaves, by which collecting for myself I will gather together that “great profit”, pleasure, begging not little bits, by Zeus, as in the begging in Homer, nor only swords and kettles, but things even stranger than these: relish from Mithaecus, wine from Sarambus, song from Connus, and a courtesan from Melesias. And what will be the measure of these things? What will be the limit of the “well-being” from pleasures? Where will we stop? To whom should we give the prizes of victory we are bearing? Who is this “blessed” man, vigilant and laborious, whom not even one pleasure escapes and goes unnoticed by, neither by night nor day, but whose soul stretching out all the senses, just as the marine octopus its tentacles, brings in through these from all sides all the pleasures together?

Let us form, if possible, an image of this sort: a man “well-off” in the “well-being” from pleasures, seeing the most pleasant colors, hearing the sweetest sounds, smelling the most delightful odors, tasting the most varied flavors, being warmed, and having sexual intercourse, all together. For if you would give time and separate the pleasures and would divide the sense-perceptions, you will cut short the “well-being”. For all which being present gladdens, being taken away gives pain. What soul could bear a mob of so many pleasures streaming in and being laid upon it and affording no cessation and respite at all? But would it not likely live most miserably and desire change and long for rest? For continuing pleasure produces pain. What would be more untrustworthy than a “well-being” to be pitied? Oh Zeus and the gods, fathers and makers of earth and sea and how many creatures there are of earth and sea, what kind of living being have you put in this place here and life, rash and hasty and boisterous, deficient in good, destitute of profit, being fed and won over by pleasures.
If only it had been unborn and perished unmarried
--that whole genus, if it will have nothing from you better than pleasure.

And how does it not have something better? For let us answer according to Homer on behalf of Zeus. For it has, it has, mind and reason, but its life has been mixed together from immortal and mortal things, as a certain living being assigned to the border and from mortal error having the body while from the immortal outflow receiving the mind. But pleasure is the characteristic thing of the flesh while reason is of the mind; and it has the flesh in common with the beasts, but the mind as its own proper thing. Here then seek the good of the human being, where its proper work is. There is its proper work, where its own proper organ is. There is its proper organ, where its preservation is. Begin from the thing saving it. Which is the preservative of which, body of soul or soul of body? Soul of body—you have found the saving thing. Seek the proper organ. What is the organ of soul? Mind. Seek the proper work. What is the proper work of mind? Wisdom—you have found the good. But if someone dishonoring that understanding and god-loving and god-loved part of the human being, says the person is only that despicable creature, the flesh, and would want to feed the incontinent part, the gluttonous part, the friend of pleasures, to what would I compare such a mode of living than to a myth, by Zeus?


The poets say that there are men in Pelion, a Thessalian genus, with strange bodies, from the navel trailing along the nature of a horse. But in the lack of harmony of such a sort of association, there is, at any time, every necessity to feed the bestial nature together with the human; to speak as a human being, but to eat as a beast; to see as a human being, but to copulate as a beast. Well done indeed, poets and sons of poets, fathers of an ancient and noble muse, how clearly then you have allegorized for us the bond of pleasures. Whenever bestial pleasures would rule the soul, maintaining a human appearance, they show by the service of their deeds that the one enjoying them has become a beast from a human being. That is the Centaurs, that is the Gorgons, that is the Chimaeras, the Geryon, the Cecrops. Take away the desire of the stomach, and you have taken away the beast from the human being. Take away the desire of the genitals, and you have cut through the beast. But as long as these things would live and be fed together in someone and he has inclined to their tendance, it is a necessity for the appetites of those to rule and the soul to cry out their sounds.



©2012 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (at) (Gee) mail (period) com

An Ancient Urban Hermit

An Excerpt from Damascius' Life of Isidore/The Philosophic History

translated from ancient Greek by Eric S. Fallick


Isidore made friends with this man who surpassed all people in piety and in a life of wholly loving wisdom, except for Isidore himself. And the man so greatly excelled in true way of life and speech that what is usually said in a proverb was fulfilled in deed by him: he lived hidden and unnoticed, so that I would expect none of the people then living, neither younger nor older, knew he was the sort of man I say. Nor would anyone else have known the kind of person this Sarapio was, nor would I myself know now, if the philosopher (i. e., Isidore) himself hadn't told me about him. For he said he couldn't ever persuade him to meet with another man; especially when he grew old, he no longer often came down from his own house, but he lived alone in a tiny house, having in reality taken up a solitary life, only having dealings with some of his neighbors for absolute necessities. He did, though, say that Sarapio was especially prayerful and in the manner of a common man wandered about to all the holy places when he was lead by the custom of a holiday, but mostly he spent the whole day at home living, not some human life, but one simply to be said to be divine, always recounting both aspirations and virtues in regard to himself or the Divine, but much more meditating in silence. Being devoted to the search for truth and contemplative by nature, he didn't think it worthwhile to waste time with the more technical details of philosophy, but stuck to more powerful and inspired understandings; on which account he possessed and read pretty much only the writings of Orpheus, always putting each arising question to Isidore, who was, so to speak, the utter tops in theological knowledge, and who was the only one he received and was acquainted with as a friend. And indeed it seemed to Isidore that he saw in Sarapio the life of the fabled Golden Age of Cronos. For he continuously did and said nothing else than collecting himself and always, as far as possible, concentrating on the inward and quite indivisible.

He thus very much looked down on money and property, so that he possessed nothing whatever besides two or three books, including also the poems of Orpheus. He thus very much looked down on the pleasures relating to the body, so that even from the first he indeed only provided the body with necessities, and was through his whole life undefiled by sexual pleasures. And he thus had no care for honor from people, so that not even his name was known in the city. Nor would it have been known afterward, if some god had not wished to favor humanity with an example of the life of the Golden Age of Cronos, in order that the story would not seem to be a myth, without history having been called to witness. For the so-called Cheiron stood rather at the boundary of the reigns of Cronos and Zeus, whence his double form. But this Sarapio known by the philosopher, let him have been recorded as of such a kind. He made Isidore his heir, not having any family, nor anyone else worthy to receive his property, by which I mean his two or three books.



Translation ©2003 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (at) (Gee) mail (period) com

Some Thoughts on the Great Problems of Manyness and Evil

Some Thoughts on the Great Problems of Manyness and Evil

by Eric S. Fallick


The One, the Good, the Absolute is completely perfect, changeless, whole, and one. Hyper-good, hyper-beautiful, hyper-existent, hyper-conscious, ultimately the only thing that really is—it is the Source of everything, by the support of which everything that has any kind of existence at all remains in whatever kind of existence it has. It is that to which everything looks and to which everything looks to return, whether aware of it or not. It is our source too. We seek to be re-united with It, love It more, or really only, than anything, and seek in It our only freedom. Yet, we find ourselves in a world of apparently many individuated, separate objects in space-time with much horror and suffering. We find ourselves as separate, individuated souls in space-time undergoing repeated cycles of birth and death as humans and non-humans, transmigrating and reincarnating since beginningless time, suffering endless misery and pain, seeing and experiencing all manner of evil, unless or until with tremendous effort over a very long time we free ourselves to re-become the changeless One. Even in the Nous, the Divine Mind-Thought, the noetic realm of the Platonic Ideas, which lies intermediate between the One and our present realm of Soul, though there is no evil per se except in so far as it falls short of the One and Its perfection, there is still a multiplicity of different things, the archetypal Forms, and the Divine Mind that thinks them without being separate from them, and subject and object, while not separated, are at least distinguished. How can this be? How and why can there be more than the One, especially when everything else is a descent from Its perfection? How and why do many things come from the One? Even more incomprehensible, how can evil, which is so evident and undeniable, arise from the Good Itself, and why should this be so? Indeed, compared to the One Itself, just the existence of anything else, even of those things we ordinarily describe as good, is evil in itself just as those things being other than the Good! Why are they then, and how can this be so? Why did our souls descend in the first place and the beginningless cycles of birth and death, genesis, samsara begin? These sorts of questions, and related variants according to different systems, have been considered and answered by many different people in many different systems of many varieties. No answer has satisfied everyone and perhaps there is no answer but to realize union with the Absolute through diligent contemplative ascetic practice, at which point both the question and the questioner cease or, to put it another way, the answer is obvious. Nevertheless, it may be worth expressing some thoughts on the matter from a thoroughgoing idealist and Platonist standpoint considering the vital notion of degrees of being and reality and pointing out a few erroneous thought/being patterns and habits that seem to me to impede our consideration of the issue and make it more of a problem than it actually is.

It must be recognized that we are thinking about this matter in our state as individuated souls at the lowest level of reality, which is what the world of soul and space-time and separate, individual subjects and objects is, and so our thinking and being is infested with erroneous habits and patterns concomitant with this world and, in some sense, creative of it. These patterns inhibit our thinking correctly about the great matters we are considering. The first of these habit patterns that I would like to point out is the very fact that we are wondering why there are many and evil things and events. There are no things and events. There is no physical world or world of objects and events that exists apart from subjects experiencing it. The subjects themselves are not something like object substances. There is only experience without referent, only spirit, only contemplation, only thought or knowing or knowledge or mind in the broadest and deepest senses of these words. This is all the more obvious at the higher two levels of reality or being. In Nous, though subject and object are distinguished, they are not separated, the Divine Mind cannot be separated from its Thoughts, the Forms, and there is no mistaking the Ideas for things, for realist objects. In the One, though ineffable, we may consider that subject and object are not distinguished at all, and that there is only pure knowing or knowledge or thought and nothing else. Again, all of Reality from top to bottom and beginning to end is experience, contemplation only. There is no realist's world or reality of things, physicality, objects, events, etc. Thus, the question we have been pondering has been incorrectly formulated from the beginning. It is unmeaning to ask why are there many things and souls and events and why is there evil. The question must be asked as why is there experience or contemplation or thought of multiplicity, of more or other than the One, and why is there experience or contemplation or thought of evil, of pain.

The second erroneous, upside down habit pattern that impedes our answering our question is thinking that the existence, which we now know means experience, of more than or other than the One and of evil is an addition to the One, that when there are many besides the One and evil besides the Good we now have a sum, have more than when there is just the One or the Good alone. Quite the contrary, it is a subtraction, many and the One are less than the One alone, evil and the Good are less than the Good alone. As we descend the scale from the One to the many, from the Good to evil, we descend from most real to least real. The experience of many and evil is a matter of not knowing, of knowing less, of increased nescience, of less clear thought, of a lack of knowledge, of clouded, dim, dreamy (or nightmarish) contemplation. Ignorance plus perfect Knowledge equals less knowledge, not more. Imperfect, multiple or evil experience plus perfect Experience equals lesser experience, not greater or additional. Dim contemplation plus perfect Contemplation equals dimmer contemplation, not clearer or added. So again our question has been incorrectly formulated. It is unmeaning to ask why there is experience of many and evil besides the experience of the One or the Good, why there is knowledge or contemplation of many and evil besides the knowledge and contemplation of the One or the Good. Rather, we must ask why is there less than whole or complete or perfect experience or knowledge within the perfect Experience or Knowledge, why is there ignorance within perfect Knowing, why is there unclear contemplation within perfect Contemplation.

The third erroneous habit pattern is our inveterate tendency to think in spatial and temporal terms when time and space appear at all only at this lowest least real level, and are only creations of the soul level nescient experience pattern. Indeed, even the very language we use, including the language used in this essay, speaking of “descent”, “higher”, “lower”, “coming from”, etc., reflects this limitation. But it is possible, especially at a higher level of contemplation, to exercise pure thought independent of spatio-temporal and picture and analogy and even linguistic thinking. The many of multiplex experience, the many “objects”, “events”, and souls that we experience at this level, the evil and pain that we observe and experience, and also the degree of multiplicity and distinguished items at the level of Nous, do not exist in space and time, they are not separated in space and time, but are only separated or distinguished by difference, or, more accurately, by awareness of difference. The different levels of reality that we have noted are not in any way spatially or temporally separated, but, again, are only distinguished by difference or awareness of difference, and by being more or less real. The difference between levels, which is only experience of levels, is only that of difference of degree or clarity or dimness of awareness, knowing, thought, or contemplation. The lower levels are less real because contemplation or thought of them is dimmer and weaker, they are weaker and foggier experience. Thus, when we think of the realities of the One, Nous, and soul and manyness and evil, we should not imagine that these exist in some sort of spatial relation with the One here, Nous there, and soul over there, or Nous and soul spreading out in space from the One or proceeding in time with the One being there first and then Nous coming from it and soul coming from that or the subtractions that make Nous and soul occurring in temporal and spatial sequence one after another. They are all actually simultaneously (unable to avoid using a temporal word!) present at the same point (unable to avoid using a spatial word!), as it were. Although we are unable to avoid speaking of our own spiritual and contemplative practice and either bondage or liberation in terms of movement and transition from one state to another, it is really a transition (again, unable to avoid using a spatio-temporal word!) from one state of knowing or contemplation or experience to another, not from one “place” to another, and does not actually occur in time, as much as it seems to to us.

Now we can formulate our question more correctly and attempt an answer. Why is there experience or contemplation or awareness or knowledge of many besides or actually less than the One and worse or evil rather than just the Good? Because complete and perfect Thought contains the thought within the laws of thought of thought that is less and worse than it. Complete and perfect Contemplation covers the contemplation within the possible realities of contemplation of lesser and worse and bad contemplation. Complete and perfect Experience comprehends that incomplete and unpleasant experience that is possible. Complete and perfect Knowledge knows also that knowledge that is lesser and worse and painful that is possible within the structural limits of knowledge, that is of knowledge that can in some sense be true even if far less and worse and less real than real ultimate Knowledge. This is so even though all this lesser and worse thought, contemplation, experience, and knowledge doesn't appear as such in the Absolute Thought, Contemplation, Experience, and Knowledge as such. The thought of calculus includes the thought of analytic geometry, trigonometry, arithmetic, and all lesser mathematics even though they don't appear in the thought of calculus as such, but it does not include the thought of invalid mathematics. The thought of a solid sphere necessarily includes the thought of two-dimensional circles, one-dimensional radii, and zero-dimensional points, without the sphere itself being anything other than just a sphere, but it does not include the thought of such figures as could not properly fit within a sphere. Thus, since the lesser levels of reality including manyness and evil are just subtractions from, limitations of, dimmings and incompletions of the Absolute, they necessarily are to a certain degree since the more comprehends the less, but they are limited by the overall structure, so to speak, or nature, so to speak, of the One or the Good, and fit, in a sense (non-spatially!), within in it and are determined by it. So, for example, this lowest realm of the many is still in a more limited way one since it comes from and is within the One, and the alleged realm of truly, really, absolutely separate objects, persons, and events of the pluralist, realist, or materialist is impossible. For example, evil in this lowest realm is still governed by the law of dike or karma since it is a subtraction from and within the Good, and the ungoverned evil of, for example, the eternal damnation of the Christians and others is not possible.

Will this simple solution to the great insoluble problem satisfy everyone or anyone? Probably not, but attempting to understand even conceptually is part of our path of spiritual and ascetic contemplation. The ascent includes intellect even in the lowest sense though ultimately transcending it. It will all be clearer if we keep in mind that this realm of manyness and evil is actually only the least, smallest, and least real level of reality. The One and, next, Nous are really much more real and constitute most of what is and always have and will. It is only because we are presently stuck here at the level of individuated souls and alleged objects and of evil and pain in space-time and have to exert such tremendous efforts to transcend it and return and have to deal with it all the time until we do get free that it looms of such importance and significance and difficulty and suffering to us. The main point is that this may help us and spur us on in our work towards freedom and re-union with the One or the Good which is ever drawing our souls back if we will only renounce this world in all its breadth and depth and devote ourselves as best as possible to contemplation and otherworldliness. The higher realities beckon. Hasten onward!

©2013 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (at) (Gee) mail (period) com