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
