Relative Realities, Spiritual Systems, Genuine Spiritual Practice and Renunciation

Relative Realities, Spiritual Systems, Genuine Spiritual Practice and Renunciation

by Eric S. Fallick


Platonism is very subtle because it requires transcending the sense-realm, and, finally, only Platonism is of ultimate soteriological value among the different systems. All the other systems, especially those involved with institutionalized religions for the many, really take place just within particular relative phenomenal realities, even when they think they are going beyond them, and are very much wrapped up and involved with particular relative consensus realities and confound actual spiritual contemplative ascetic practice aimed at the transcendent and phenomenal sensory experiences and occurrences. (That is not to say that they aren't of value to particular souls at a particular stage of their practice in a given birth, nor that we can't learn from them, but ultimately to get free one has to access the higher hypostases through Platonic contemplative asceticism.) Plotinus has expressed this well at the beginning of Ennead V.9. Renunciation and asceticism is an absolutely necessary corollary of this understanding. A somewhat hokey analogy is that when we look at a website all that is really being sent is the HTML code that the browser converts into the web page we see. All the different systems are really just moving within their given webpages, even when they think they are getting out of it, and so are concerned with the details and things going on within their webpage. Platonists, however, are concerned with how webpages in general are generated and how to get out of webpages of any sort altogether! (For example, the Mahayana/Bodhisattva ideal is all dependent on and wrapped up in a particular version of relative reality that is no more than just another phenomenal sensory experience set that is no more valid than any. Tibetan Buddhism is especially egregious in this regard. Similarly, and even more so, especially given their notion, of the essence of their systems, of a single linear geocentric historical progression, the Abrahamic systems are totally caught up in and involved with and dependent on one particular phenomenal sensory relative reality as being of spiritual significance. Such observations could me multiplied practically indefinitely. As just one of countless examples, some Catholics go on pilgrimage to pray at the relics of saints--just running around all the time chasing after phenomena instead of pursuing noumena through contemplative ascetic practice, which would be real actual spiritual practice! If one tries to explain a little that such phenomenal 'miraculous' experiences occur in all different religious traditions and have no bearing whatsoever on the metaphysical validity of their theological and soteriological systems and are just more phenomenal sensory karmic experiences--things to be ignored and transcended in pursuing the Absolute to really get free--of course, they don’t understand at all what one is talking about. The same quite and altogether applies to Iamblichus and Proclus and other post-Iamblichus so-called ‘Platonists’ or ‘Neoplatonists’ with their theurgy and etc. Most sadly, they have simply jettisoned the true transcendent Platonism of Plato and Plotinus and replaced it with what is really just another worldly, phenomenal, particular relative reality dependent ‘religious’ system.)

All sensory or 'physical' worlds are just shadow relative realities according to the karma of souls, of which there can be very many--the present world of modernity and science and scientism and naturalism, especially, just being one of many possibilities and not one of particular validity, except that it believes itself to be so--actually, it is one of the worst and least valid of many possibilities since it is most unconducive to and makes most inaccessible true spiritual knowledge and practice and renunciation and thus makes most remote the possibility of making progress towards getting out of relative realities and their misery altogether. The true underlying realities are transcendent and spiritual and suprasensory and are the objects of real knowledge--sensory knowledge being relatively unreal and unimportant and variable.

The real unchanging actual Realities are the higher Realities or hypostases of the One or the Good and then of Nous or the Divine Mind-Thought--the realm of the Divine Mind and the Platonic Forms. From the Divine Mind-Thought then further emanates or devolves or darkens the last and lowest and least real level or hypostasis of Soul and the "world" or "worlds" that Soul perceives and creates through projecting the Forms and Itself in the realm of individuated changing sensate existence in space-time. This includes both the Soul of the All or "World Soul" and all the individual souls, such as ourselves. There is only experience. There are no other separately existing objects or worlds or things apart from the experience of Soul or souls. This level of experience where there are different souls and their variety of experiences that change and present the image of worlds and changing worlds is, again, the lowest and least real level and the only one in which there is change and the possibility of a variety of different experiences and, therefore, "worlds". There are as many different sets of experiences or possibilities of experiences or "worlds" as the possible combinations of projection of souls and their projection of combinations of projections from/of the Forms as are possible--effectively, an infinite variety. All these are determined by what we call 'karma'--which is the experience of the individual souls and the World Soul modifying each other's experiential fields through their volitional workings. The relative realities are just all the different sets of experiences and experiential fields determined by karma of the different souls and the World Soul. These are all that there is at the level of soul--there is no other sort of objective world out there. These sets of experiences and experiential fields can take all sorts of forms according to karma. The underlying Reality is only the higher hypostases and the unchanging Law or Way in which these are projected down into the level of Soul. Thus, all phenomenal things, all the things in the supposed phenomenal sense world--so-called physical laws, gods or no gods, miracles or no miracles, etc., etc.--are just parts of different experience sets according to the karma of different souls as mediated through the World Soul. This is what is meant by relative realities and such applications of the idea as that some souls may experience or have experienced a relative world, for example, where 'miraculous' or 'supernatural' things are more likely to occur, but we don't, or we experience at the moment a world where things appear to operate according to the so-called laws of modern science, but others didn't, and etc., etc. These hypostases and these workings are all that there is. One shouldn’t be mislead by all the foolish people and society around one into thinking that there is some sort of objective material world out there and that its workings are real and that different appearances within it, including those that seem to violate its usual workings, are of significance or spiritual importance. One must just strive to transcend all these relative realities and worlds and existence as an individual soul to return to Nous and the One and to create karma only tending to aid in this direction.

It can readily be seen that this nature of Reality means that actual transcendent-oriented contemplative asceticism and renunciation is the very essence of, is, in fact, identical with, genuine spiritual practice of actual ultimate soteric value. The actual ultimately valid spiritual teaching is this of the higher realities and the generation and ultimately minimally valid nature of the many lower relative realities and possible worlds and experiences and how to understand this and to escape from and transcend the cycle of rebirth in these lower relative shadow realities that are miserable as a result of their minimal degree of being and to return to the real higher realities that are freedom as a result of their really being or being beyond being. To do this one must truly renounce all the relative lower realities and life in them and all that is entailed or contained in them and focus, as much as possible, solely on contemplation of the higher hypostases. One must shift one’s entire being from the lower relative realities of individuated sensate existence in space-time and repeated rebirth to the unchanging higher hypostases of Nous and the One. This means having as little to do with the sense world of the lower relative realities as possible while one is still in them (though, alas, maintaining the psycho-physical organism until one is free from it will constantly do more than plenty of pulling one’s attention back to the sense realm!). This, of course, means as much renunciation of the world and all worldly pursuits, desires, activities and possessions as possible and single-minded devotion to ascetic contemplation (and ancillary study, etc.). The very turning of the soul from the shadow worlds of relative realities and relative non-being back to the higher hypostases of true being and beyond being appears in these very shadow worlds of relative realities as the very fact of true transcendent-oriented otherworldly world-denying renunciation and ascetic contemplation.

Ⓒ 2018 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (at) (Gee) mail (dot) com

Purification of the Unalterable Soul from "Matter"

The Platonic/Plotinian teaching is pure idealism, even if it is expressed in a vocabulary and language that we may not immediately understand as such. (Incidentally, 'matter' is a very misleading translation for the Greek hule in Plotinus. In Plotinus, it carries none of the connotations of 'matter' in the modern physical sense, but is rather the extremity or principle, so to speak, of non-being, of darkness, of nescience. I have toyed with the idea of using 'anti-stuff' as a translation for hule.) There is only knowing, experience, 'mind', 'consciousness' or, as Plotinus puts it, contemplation. All is, as Plotinus says (Ennead 3.8), contemplation. The One is complete pure knowing or contemplation beyond knowing/contemplation. Nous is already lesser, incomplete, impure, adulterated to some extent but still unified knowing/contemplation having already been mixed, so to speak, to a certain extent with nescience/darkness/non-being, which Plotinus sometimes refers to as noetic hule/'matter'. Soul is knowing/contemplation mixed to the greatest extent with nescience/darkness/non-being to the point that it appears as individuated as our souls and in space-time and sense-perception, etc. It is still, though, the same knowing/contemplation, in its reality unchanged and unalterable and indestructible, as knowing/contemplation is still only in itself purely knowing/contemplation as such and can't be anything else, but is now turned or looking in the direction of the extremity of nescience/darkness/non-being and thus no longer knows itself or complete pure knowing/contemplation. The soul, thus, needs to turn around back to, to redirect back its attention to, to regain the complete pure knowing/contemplation of and that is the One, to re-become that complete pure knowing/contemplation without any admixture of nescience/darkness/non-being. Thus, renunciation and asceticism is of the very essence of the purification process, and also is not just of instrumental value but remains of the very essence of the fuller knowing/contemplation state(s), since involvement in and pursuit of the world of diversified individuated sense data in space-time more than is absolutely necessary, which is what worldly life is, is the very fact of looking in the direction of darkness, of only knowing/contemplating in a very darkened, impure, incomplete, ignorant way--being in worldly life is by definition knowing/contemplating/seeing the darkness and non-being of sense perception. The practice of purification, on the other hand, is more and more only seeing/knowing/contemplating the Forms and Nous and then the One/Good, and thus being in the very state of Nous and eventually the One Themselves, and thus obviously involves knowing/contemplating/seeing worldly life and its things of the senses less and less. The One is, of course, always there and unchanged, but we don't know it without turning away from the sense world, which is really non-being, in both life and mind, and turning the imperishable knowing of the soul back to the One.