I personally have little interest in a supposed 'historical' Socrates, whatever meaning such an idea may even really have. The Socrates of the dialogs is just, to my mind, an allegorical symbol, in accordance with the overall nature of the dialogs as a whole. You will note that in the Enneads, although Plotinus quotes Plato a number of times, the only times he ever refers to Socrates is when he uses the name 'Socrates' as a generic example name for an arbitrary person, i.e., as "John Smith" or "John Doe"! I know that most people look to the dialogs as historical documents or records to whatever extent and, in accordance with their (exclusive) preoccupation with the sense world try to understand them as realist historical documents, but I take them just as spiritual documents. The purpose of great true spiritual texts like the dialogs and Enneads is not to provide sensory/sense world information relating to alleged past occurrences in some supposed realist past physical world, but to remind our souls of the spiritual truths they have forgotten (the Platonist teaching of learning as recollection solves a multitude of difficulties) and to practice them and leave and renounce this least real sense world and return to their true home. They are teaching us how to get out of the cave and reminding us what things look like in the light, not giving us information about shadows on the cave wall that are the exclusive concern of worldlings. Ultimately, all spiritual texts that we perceive are, like everything else, just experiences according to our karma with no philosophically realist referent--in this case, experiences of our karma lightening up so that the Absolute is beginning to shine through the sense world and leading us to remember and helping us to practice to get free. All that is real is the higher hypostases, their darkened trace manifesting as this world and the world soul, the underlying spiritual structure of Reality, and the movement of individual souls closer to or farther from the One in their long journey and revolution through countless births in samsara/genesis. Though we must, in our circumstances, of course, deal extensively and honestly with 'history', ultimately all so-called historical records and artifacts are just present manifestations and appearances and experiences in our sense fields with no actually realistic existing physical past referents. Almost no one seems to understand what I am talking about when I say such things, but perhaps even a little glimpse of the One Itself and regular contemplative experience of Nous may show one that this whole sense world of becoming is just a shadow or projection of the higher hypostases, with the least reality, and that all manner of possible combinations of projections or traces of the Forms form all sorts of different relative realities of experience of souls according to their karma.
Showing posts with label Allegory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Allegory. Show all posts
Sunday, January 27, 2019
Sunday, September 2, 2018
Flesh-eating as the Fall of the Soul in Plato's 'Republic'
Flesh-eating as the Fall of the Soul in Plato’s ‘Republic’
by Eric S. Fallick
The Politea or ‘Republic’ of Plato is an allegorical, symbolic manual and description of individual contemplative ascetic spiritual practice. As the text itself repeatedly states and makes clear, the ‘city’ is just an analogy, a blown-up symbolic picture, for the individual soul. It has nothing at all to do with politics, political ‘philosophy’, or governance of states. ‘Socrates’ represents nous, intellect, and the higher, divine part of the soul and its divine understanding. Nous descends from the noetic realm to this lower realm of the senses and lower soul, ‘goes down (from the town) to the Piraeus’, and in doing so becomes associated with a lower soul and faculties, ‘with Glaucon (son) of Ariston’. Nous initially descends only so far as to participate in divine spiritual activities and contemplation in the lower realm of soul, ‘will be offering prayers to the goddess and wanting at the same time to view the festival’. It then is immediately returning to the noetic realm, but is restrained by more lower souls and faculties, ‘Polemarchus’ and the others, and compelled to remain for a time and instruct them in righteousness and divine matters.
Book 1 then proceeds to establish the correct divine understanding based on the noetic realm and the Forms of righteousness and holiness and their necessity and superiority for living a well-off life against the naturalistic, materialist (in both senses of the word!), physicalist, immoral, worldly understanding, ‘Thrasymachus’. Books 2 through the first part of Book 5 then, using the analogy and symbolism of the ‘city’, though constantly reminding that it is only just that and showing how it is a projection for understanding the individual soul, and the ‘guardians’, the thoughts, understandings, and discursive reasoning and cognitive state of the soul, describes the cognitive and emotional condition and training and disposition and ordering of the soul in this world as a whole with both its true higher part and the lower soul and faculties endemic to being at the lowest level that is the sense world of the beginning and, for a long time, conditioned ascetic practitioner. That is, initially and for long time on the Path, the contemplative ascetic practitioner has proper orientation, thoughts, and ordering of soul only as a conditioned state attained through practice without actual direct realization and understanding and ordering directly from the higher hypostases and spiritual realities. This is a necessary preliminary and stage of the practice, and, indeed, one at which the practitioner will likely remain for many births as he progresses, but is still a conditioned relative state, one of right opinion rather than true knowledge, and, as such, is unstable and has the possibility of being disrupted or lost until it is made into true knowledge and permanence through direct experience of the higher hypostases. The latter part of Book 5 through Book 7 then describe the further practice of actual direct contemplative experience of the higher hypostases, the attaining of actual true knowledge of the way things are and correct renunciant, ascetic practice, the mode of practice with this knowledge and experience, and the transformation of the conditioned contemplative ascetic practitioner liable to the possibility of falling from his conditioned state of practice, however wonderful it is, into a truly divine renunciant with actual stable knowledge and a permanent understanding and ordering of the soul that is not liable to regress until the final end is attained. Book 8 and the first part of Book 9 then describe how the conditioned practicing soul might fall and the various types of lower souls in this world down to the very worst. The rest of Book 9 and Book 10 show the superiority of righteousness and contemplative asceticism over the worldly way and cover various important topics of spiritual practice and metaphysics and transmigration.
In Book 2, ‘Socrates’ initially proposes and begins to develop the model of the ‘city’ as a blown-up analogy for understanding righteousness in the individual soul. The ‘city’, the complex soul in individuated sensate existence in space-time with higher and lower souls and faculties together in relation to each other, develops upon the initial fall of the true soul into the lower realm of soul and body and the senses from the noetic realm due to the need for now dealing with the senses, maintaining the psychophysical organism and body, and dealing with individual apparent objects appearing one after another in space-time. At this point, at its initial minimal descent, the soul and its thoughts and faculties naturally live a simple, reclusive, contemplative ascetic life with only the minimum lower faculties and minimum possessions and involvements in worldly affairs to maintain bodily existence. It, or now the person, just has enough clothing, shoes, and shelter for protection from the elements as necessary according to the season. He reclines on the ground on simple mats and eats from simple utensils made from leaves, etc. He, most significantly for this discussion, eats a simple grain based vegetarian diet with the addition of some modest vegetarian ‘relishes’ for complete nutrition. Note that when the text refers to the modest and moderate drinking of ‘wine’ that ‘wine’ is a symbol for the senses, which are intoxicants to the soul. So the text is saying that the contemplative ascetic recluse living in peace makes use of the senses only to a moderate degree as necessary to the minimum extent possible. A contemplative ascetic and philosophos, of course, never drinks even a drop of wine in the literal sense or any sort of alcohol, and the divine Plato never would suggest that he may. (Incidentally, this symbolism of ‘wine’ as representing the senses and sense experience occurs elsewhere in the dialogs, most notably, of course, in the Symposium.) He passes his leisure in divine contemplation, ‘hymning the gods’, and content in himself with the higher and lower faculties in order, ‘pleasantly being together with each other’. He produces no thoughts of wanting any more, ‘not making children beyond the (present) substance, taking care to avoid want or war’. He passes his life in peace and health maturing these renunciant and contented thoughts and mental states and continuing such as further circumstances continue or develop, ‘reaching old age and handing down another life of such a sort to the offspring’. This, the text makes clear, is the true, healthy, and proper way of life, the minimum declension of the fallen soul if it has to be here in this realm, the reclusive contemplative ascetic renunciant life.
How, then, does this true ascetic pure life degenerate into the mess of ordinary human life and the world as we see it and the people around us, this mess having been such since time immemorial? How does the soul after its initial fall then fall even deeper into becoming, samsara, genesis, the cycle of birth and death? The lowest faculty of the soul embedded in the body, ‘Glaucon’, seeing the bad way of sensual pleasures and desires lived by most all in samsara, is not satisfied with the simple ascetic life and wants all the sensual pleasures and sense experiences and desires that it sees around it. It turns and corrupts the whole person and soul to consider these necessary and desirable and to pursue them and dive headlong into the karmic mess of samsara and create the kind of lives we see around us. Not only does it now require comfortable furnishings and utensils to use while indulging its now excessive and luxurious desire for food and feasting, but, most crucially, now wants, and even thinks it necessary, to eat meat, to eat animal flesh and to kill for this purpose, as it sees those doing around it. This creates the inflamed, unhealthy, licentious ‘city’/soul. In true Orphic fashion, flesh-eating and killing is shown to be a critical turning point in the fall of the soul, leading to the wandering as an alien in the cycle of repeated birth and death. (And, of course, reversing this and becoming vegetarian again is a crucial and essential step in escaping from becoming and returning to the soul’s pristine state.) Once the soul has imbibed the greed for flesh and meat and has abandoned the true ascetic life that no longer suffices for it and has come to require its life of continual killing and production of meat for its consumption, this leads in snowball fashion to desires for all manners of luxuries, possessions, entertainments, etc., as listed in the text, and even for sex, ‘female companions’ and ‘the things concerning feminine adornment’. Following from the perverse desire for flesh-eating, the soul and its thoughts are darkened, and it becomes firmly ensconced in pursuing the desires of this world and ever binding itself to and suffering on the wheel of birth and death (a true Orphic as well a Platonic image).
The explication of the complete meaning of the Politea would be a great task. Perhaps, this short essay has given a tiny pointer in that direction. At any rate, the Politea reminds us that flesh-eating is a great crime and primal transgression, and that vegetarianism is an indispensable prerequisite of genuine spiritual life and practice.
Ⓒ 2018 Eric S. Fallick
by Eric S. Fallick
The Politea or ‘Republic’ of Plato is an allegorical, symbolic manual and description of individual contemplative ascetic spiritual practice. As the text itself repeatedly states and makes clear, the ‘city’ is just an analogy, a blown-up symbolic picture, for the individual soul. It has nothing at all to do with politics, political ‘philosophy’, or governance of states. ‘Socrates’ represents nous, intellect, and the higher, divine part of the soul and its divine understanding. Nous descends from the noetic realm to this lower realm of the senses and lower soul, ‘goes down (from the town) to the Piraeus’, and in doing so becomes associated with a lower soul and faculties, ‘with Glaucon (son) of Ariston’. Nous initially descends only so far as to participate in divine spiritual activities and contemplation in the lower realm of soul, ‘will be offering prayers to the goddess and wanting at the same time to view the festival’. It then is immediately returning to the noetic realm, but is restrained by more lower souls and faculties, ‘Polemarchus’ and the others, and compelled to remain for a time and instruct them in righteousness and divine matters.
Book 1 then proceeds to establish the correct divine understanding based on the noetic realm and the Forms of righteousness and holiness and their necessity and superiority for living a well-off life against the naturalistic, materialist (in both senses of the word!), physicalist, immoral, worldly understanding, ‘Thrasymachus’. Books 2 through the first part of Book 5 then, using the analogy and symbolism of the ‘city’, though constantly reminding that it is only just that and showing how it is a projection for understanding the individual soul, and the ‘guardians’, the thoughts, understandings, and discursive reasoning and cognitive state of the soul, describes the cognitive and emotional condition and training and disposition and ordering of the soul in this world as a whole with both its true higher part and the lower soul and faculties endemic to being at the lowest level that is the sense world of the beginning and, for a long time, conditioned ascetic practitioner. That is, initially and for long time on the Path, the contemplative ascetic practitioner has proper orientation, thoughts, and ordering of soul only as a conditioned state attained through practice without actual direct realization and understanding and ordering directly from the higher hypostases and spiritual realities. This is a necessary preliminary and stage of the practice, and, indeed, one at which the practitioner will likely remain for many births as he progresses, but is still a conditioned relative state, one of right opinion rather than true knowledge, and, as such, is unstable and has the possibility of being disrupted or lost until it is made into true knowledge and permanence through direct experience of the higher hypostases. The latter part of Book 5 through Book 7 then describe the further practice of actual direct contemplative experience of the higher hypostases, the attaining of actual true knowledge of the way things are and correct renunciant, ascetic practice, the mode of practice with this knowledge and experience, and the transformation of the conditioned contemplative ascetic practitioner liable to the possibility of falling from his conditioned state of practice, however wonderful it is, into a truly divine renunciant with actual stable knowledge and a permanent understanding and ordering of the soul that is not liable to regress until the final end is attained. Book 8 and the first part of Book 9 then describe how the conditioned practicing soul might fall and the various types of lower souls in this world down to the very worst. The rest of Book 9 and Book 10 show the superiority of righteousness and contemplative asceticism over the worldly way and cover various important topics of spiritual practice and metaphysics and transmigration.
In Book 2, ‘Socrates’ initially proposes and begins to develop the model of the ‘city’ as a blown-up analogy for understanding righteousness in the individual soul. The ‘city’, the complex soul in individuated sensate existence in space-time with higher and lower souls and faculties together in relation to each other, develops upon the initial fall of the true soul into the lower realm of soul and body and the senses from the noetic realm due to the need for now dealing with the senses, maintaining the psychophysical organism and body, and dealing with individual apparent objects appearing one after another in space-time. At this point, at its initial minimal descent, the soul and its thoughts and faculties naturally live a simple, reclusive, contemplative ascetic life with only the minimum lower faculties and minimum possessions and involvements in worldly affairs to maintain bodily existence. It, or now the person, just has enough clothing, shoes, and shelter for protection from the elements as necessary according to the season. He reclines on the ground on simple mats and eats from simple utensils made from leaves, etc. He, most significantly for this discussion, eats a simple grain based vegetarian diet with the addition of some modest vegetarian ‘relishes’ for complete nutrition. Note that when the text refers to the modest and moderate drinking of ‘wine’ that ‘wine’ is a symbol for the senses, which are intoxicants to the soul. So the text is saying that the contemplative ascetic recluse living in peace makes use of the senses only to a moderate degree as necessary to the minimum extent possible. A contemplative ascetic and philosophos, of course, never drinks even a drop of wine in the literal sense or any sort of alcohol, and the divine Plato never would suggest that he may. (Incidentally, this symbolism of ‘wine’ as representing the senses and sense experience occurs elsewhere in the dialogs, most notably, of course, in the Symposium.) He passes his leisure in divine contemplation, ‘hymning the gods’, and content in himself with the higher and lower faculties in order, ‘pleasantly being together with each other’. He produces no thoughts of wanting any more, ‘not making children beyond the (present) substance, taking care to avoid want or war’. He passes his life in peace and health maturing these renunciant and contented thoughts and mental states and continuing such as further circumstances continue or develop, ‘reaching old age and handing down another life of such a sort to the offspring’. This, the text makes clear, is the true, healthy, and proper way of life, the minimum declension of the fallen soul if it has to be here in this realm, the reclusive contemplative ascetic renunciant life.
How, then, does this true ascetic pure life degenerate into the mess of ordinary human life and the world as we see it and the people around us, this mess having been such since time immemorial? How does the soul after its initial fall then fall even deeper into becoming, samsara, genesis, the cycle of birth and death? The lowest faculty of the soul embedded in the body, ‘Glaucon’, seeing the bad way of sensual pleasures and desires lived by most all in samsara, is not satisfied with the simple ascetic life and wants all the sensual pleasures and sense experiences and desires that it sees around it. It turns and corrupts the whole person and soul to consider these necessary and desirable and to pursue them and dive headlong into the karmic mess of samsara and create the kind of lives we see around us. Not only does it now require comfortable furnishings and utensils to use while indulging its now excessive and luxurious desire for food and feasting, but, most crucially, now wants, and even thinks it necessary, to eat meat, to eat animal flesh and to kill for this purpose, as it sees those doing around it. This creates the inflamed, unhealthy, licentious ‘city’/soul. In true Orphic fashion, flesh-eating and killing is shown to be a critical turning point in the fall of the soul, leading to the wandering as an alien in the cycle of repeated birth and death. (And, of course, reversing this and becoming vegetarian again is a crucial and essential step in escaping from becoming and returning to the soul’s pristine state.) Once the soul has imbibed the greed for flesh and meat and has abandoned the true ascetic life that no longer suffices for it and has come to require its life of continual killing and production of meat for its consumption, this leads in snowball fashion to desires for all manners of luxuries, possessions, entertainments, etc., as listed in the text, and even for sex, ‘female companions’ and ‘the things concerning feminine adornment’. Following from the perverse desire for flesh-eating, the soul and its thoughts are darkened, and it becomes firmly ensconced in pursuing the desires of this world and ever binding itself to and suffering on the wheel of birth and death (a true Orphic as well a Platonic image).
The explication of the complete meaning of the Politea would be a great task. Perhaps, this short essay has given a tiny pointer in that direction. At any rate, the Politea reminds us that flesh-eating is a great crime and primal transgression, and that vegetarianism is an indispensable prerequisite of genuine spiritual life and practice.
Ⓒ 2018 Eric S. Fallick
Sunday, July 1, 2018
A Note on the Crito
I had only read the Crito once long ago and had, except for one particular passage, not paid much further attention to it since I couldn't understand what relation it had to spiritual practice and metaphysics, am not interested in social/political/societal concerns and can't believe that the divine Plato really was also, have no interest in a 'historical' Socrates disqualified as being of interest as being a grhastha and etc. However, I was encouraged to put it in the queue for reading in Greek. I finished reading it in Greek and now have a whole different take on it. Suffering as I do from hypertrophy of the allegorical faculty and seeing everything in terms of contemplative asceticism and renunciation, I now see it as having a clear renunciant undermeaning and not being actually at all about the literal surface meaning and actually being a very good ascetic text.
Very briefly, Socrates, as usual, represents the higher divine part of the soul in touch with the higher hypostases. Crito represents the lower deluded soul or self enmeshed in the body and the sense world and attentive to the opinions and inclinations and desires of the world, the many and society. The prison, as usual, is the prison of the body and life in this world. The polis/city is this All, this world, the lowest level of existence comprehended by the World Soul, and its Laws are the law of karma and necessity and justice. Deluded souls and the many and the world (Crito) want to evade the law of karma and extend existence in this world and gain worldly benefit by acting unrighteously and against the law of karma and in a worldly unascetic unspiritual way (to try to escape from Athens by illegal means), and think that this is to their benefit, and try to persuade the soul as a whole, even the soul properly governed by the higher true part of the soul (Socrates), to do so. The true higher soul (Socrates) responds at length, using also a personification of the laws of karma (the Laws of the polis), that it is not and never is proper and to the true benefit of the soul to pursue worldly gain or what the world considers gain or desirable by going against the law of karma and righteousness and that such never works. Thus, it is not a political, but actually a very ascetic text clearly indicating the necessity of following the Way and being in accord with the Law of Karma and necessity and righteousness regardless or in spite of apparent short term worldly gain and the ways and desires of the world.
One can see countless examples of this in the world around us and how the many behave all the time. Over the years, I have often had worldlings try to tell me that I should act contrary to spiritual and ascetic principles and righteousness for some immediate short term worldly gain and have had to respond either to them or at least internally think of responding as 'Socrates', the higher soul with true considerations, does to 'Crito', the views of the many and the lower samsaric self. No doubt any other renunciants left in this world have also often been in this position. It is nice to have further the ascetic text of the Crito behind us also.
Sunday, April 22, 2018
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
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
Friday, April 20, 2018
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
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
Tuesday, April 10, 2018
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
Friday, March 2, 2018
Seeing the Absolute You Must Entirely Renounce the Many
Don't Slay the Herds of the Sun:
Seeing the Absolute You Must Entirely Renounce the Many
by Eric S. Fallick
“The man, tell me of Muse, of many turns, who very much
wandered, when he had sacked the hallowed city of Troy.
And he saw the cities and knew the mind of many people,
and he certainly experienced many pains in his heart in the sea,
trying to achieve his soul and the return of his companions.
But not at all thus did he deliver the companions, even though much desiring it:
for they perished of themselves by their own blind follies,
fools, who devoured the cattle of Hyperion Helios:
but He took away from them the day of return.
Of these things, from somewhere at any rate, goddess, daughter of Zeus, tell us also.”
Odyssey, Book 1, lines 1-10
Directly from Divine Wisdom as an emanation of the Absolute into the relative let us learn
about the true contemplative ascetic, the renunciant, who both experiences many things on the Path of the soul
through many rebirths and has the perceptiveness to deal with them, who
had to wander through many more births and trials after he had already finally gained an
initial entry into the noetic realm, an initial breaking through sensate existence, and seen noetic
beauty. He had to pass through many states and worlds of relative experience and existence
and understand many relative manifestations of mind. He experienced many sufferings
traveling through the ocean of birth and death and individuated, sensate, material existence in
space and time trying to return his own soul to the source, but also trying to keep the lower soul
and faculties that actually belong only to the lower realm and have to be given up and
abandoned and destroyed for the true higher soul to return to the noetic realm and the One.
But, of course, he could not keep these and bring them with him, even though he blindly and
habitually kept wanting to. They were finally destroyed as a result of their own blind, relative
only nature, lower and valueless things only, that continued to grasp the many, the relative, even
while the higher soul was seeing and in contemplation of the Good, and thus were destroyed by
the very radiance and power of the One, because the true higher soul properly renounced them. May we please learn
about these things, in whatever order or piecemeal fashion we can, from the sources of divine wisdom, intelligence and
understanding that appear as a result of the divine order of things, according to our karma, that reflects the
emanation of the Absolute into this lowest order of existence.
There are various and many recurring themes in the Odyssey, an allegorical manual of contemplative ascetic practice over multiple rebirths which, like all true, genuine and real spiritual texts and systems, most staunchly and uncompromisingly teaches true, pure renunciation of the world, world-denying-ness and otherworldliness and puts these forth as of the essence of the Path. One of these themes is the destruction of Odysseus' ship and the death and loss of his remaining men as a result of their killing, and eating, the cattle of the Sun, Helios. This seems to be emphasized as of considerable or even special importance since it is the only one of Odysseus' trials and the only episode specifically mentioned in the very opening lines of the Odyssey. It is a central part of Teiresias' prophecy about how Odysseus can successfully return that Odyssey travels to Hades to learn in Book 11. It is also reiterated and repeated by Circe in her instructions in Book 12, and the incident actually occurs and is described in detail and the prophecy is fulfilled in Books 12 and 13. What is the meaning and significance of this and why is it so important?
At the beginning of his unerring prophecy in Book 11, Teiresias says:
“You seek for the honey-sweet return, illustrious Odysseus:
but a god will make it painfully burdensome for you: for I don't think
you will escape the notice of the Earthshaker, who has laid up resentment for you in his heart,
being wroth that you blinded his dear son.
But yet even so all of you may arrive back, experiencing evils indeed,
if you would be willing to restrain your heart and that of your companions,
when first you would bring your well-made ship to
the Thrinacian island, escaping from the violet-dark sea,
and all of you would find the cattle and goodly sheep
of Helios, who looks upon all things and hears all things.
If you let these be unharmed and have thought for your return,
even still you all may come to Ithaca experiencing evils indeed:
but if you harm them, then I indicate for you destruction,
both for your ship and your companions, but if you yourself at least would escape,
you will return late in straits, having lost all your companions,
in the ship of another: and you will find woes in your house...”
Odysseus, the true higher soul, is still trying to return to his true home in the noetic realm, to be reintegrated and reunited with Nous and the One, which, in truth, he has never really entirely left. He is still, however, encumbered by his lower self and soul and all the faculties, emotions, thoughts, etc. of embodiment and the body in the material realm, his ship and his men. He has to be painfully stripped of all this so that the higher soul can return alone, but he still doesn't realize this and hasn't given up attachment to the lower self and the things of embodiment and is still trying to bring them with him and thinks that he has to and that this is desirable. Actually, the higher soul as connected to the higher hypostases really knows that all the lower things must be given up and stripped away, but can't, at least at the surface level, clearly recognize this because of the obscuring functions of the lower self and body, emotions, etc. It is really the lower self that still wants to go along and the higher soul only as combined with it that suffers the pain of getting rid of the lower manifestations. Thus, Teiresias initially holds out the possibility of the return of the remaining lower self along with the higher soul if only all can be brought and held to the purest renunciation, even though it is already clear and fated, as it has been from the beginning, that the lower self must be entirely lost and destroyed and only the higher self will return alone. At this point in the narrative, Odysseus has already lost the numerical majority of his ships and men, the higher soul has already been much stripped of the animal soul, through the various preceding episodes. The numerically largest loss occurred in the episode of the Laestrygonian giants. The man-eating giants represent a clear view of the grossness, grotesqueness, horror and animality of sensuous material sensate existence, and seeing and recognizing this clearly in itself destroys much of the lower self and attachment to it and makes the higher soul want to purify itself and be alone. A similar meaning is found in the episode of the man-eating Cyclops, but with various differences and important additions and other aspects. Odysseus has already at this point blinded the Kukl-ops, the Circle-vision—the higher soul has destroyed the vision that only sees the circle or cycle of birth and death, of genesis, of samsara, of rebirth, of individuated sensate existence in space-time, of the senses using the burning bright stake of transcendent wisdom. Thus, at this point the renunciant contemplative ascetic can never really go entirely back to sleep. He can never really return to the standpoint and vision of the many deluded ordinary worldlings who only see and know the things of this world and are unaware of the transcendent and see things only from the horizontal standpoint of this life and not from a transmigratory and transcendent perspective. He can never really become an ordinary deluded worldling again, even if there may appear to be brief lapses, but must remain a renunciant striving until final liberation is attained. In doing this, however, he has brought down upon himself the wrath of the Earthshaker, Poseidon, the body and hyle, his remaining karma of embodiment that he has to work off and get rid of and will keep raging against him, against the higher soul and its return and its remaining lower self and causing much suffering until the return is finally accomplished, as it is already clearly destined that it eventually will and must be. He will eventually return to Ithaca, the higher soul will return to the higher hypostases alone without its gross attachments to the lower self, in the ship of another, using the vehicle of a system of spiritual practice to cross the ocean of becoming and hyle and body without the possessive attachment to it that characterizes his own ship of the body. He will then, though, find woes in his house, the defilements and passions are still there assaulting the remaining more subtle and needed for the remaining period of embodiment self, and must be destroyed, which long and difficult process occupies the whole second half of the Odyssey.
After leaving Circe, the circle of becoming, of genesis, of samsara, with whom he has had to abide intimately for a while to learn its ways and neutralize them and turn them to attaining liberation from the cycle itself, and after some additional notable episodes, he arrives at Thrinacia, the island of the sun. Before leaving Circe, he had to travel to Hades, the higher soul had to see this world and its inhabitants as the mere phantoms that they are, he had to see the prisoners in the cave who know only shadows as realities, he had to see that all the things, people, goals, strivings, supposed accomplishments and pleasures and sentiments and great people, etc. of this world are nothing, just meaningless shades, and hear instructions from the prophet Teiresias who is the only one who retains his mind there, the higher soul had to hear from and be reminded about the Path by the only voices in this phantom hell world that know and speak about the Path and the Truth, such as the records of Homer, Plato and Plotinus. Hyperion Helios, the Sun, who sees all and hears all, represents the Absolute, the One, the Good Itself. His immortal cattle and flocks of sheep and goddess herders are the lower hypostases and lower relative many realities that always exist, to the extent that they do, along with the One. Arriving at the sun's island is arriving at direct clear contemplation of the Absolute. The central point here is that true contemplation of and reunion with the Absolute requires the purest and most complete renunciation, contemplative asceticism, moral discipline and otherworldliness. This is of the very greatest importance if the soul is to succeed and not be destroyed. The more the Good is known, the higher the soul goes on the Path, the more complete and pure must the renunciation be. World-denyingness, renunciation and contemplative asceticism is not just a means or way station on the Path—it is of its very essence, is the very manifestation of the Absolute in this world and always remains getting purer and purer the more the One is known and the Way is traversed. To attain the One, one must give up the many. To get free from this world, one must renounce it in all its length and breadth. Only the true renunciant and contemplative ascetic can travel the Path successfully and know the One truly and without being destroyed. Real contemplation and renunciation, mysticism and asceticism always go together—they are flip sides of the same coin. This Truth is stated right at the beginning of the Odyssey, is explained by Teiresias, repeated by Circe, etc. and is a central theme running in various forms through the whole text.
Throughout the Odyssey, the horrible image of animal slaughter, sacrifice and consumption represents the need to dedicate, sacrifice and use the lower faculties and animal soul and their unavoidable necessary maintenance solely for the purpose of pursuing the Practice and Path in full renunciation, not for the purpose of sensual pleasure or worldly desires. It occurs constantly since, most unfortunately, as long as we have a body and its accompanying lower emotions, needs, etc., we have to constantly attend to it and provide for it, but always trying to dedicate it to divine purposes. The use of the image of sacrificing and eating animals and drinking wine (using the senses), so repulsive to the real vegetarian and teetotaling contemplative ascetic, is used by the vegetarian teetotaling Homer to continually generate revulsion towards material, animal existence and its needs and interference with contemplation and spiritual practice. Arriving at the island, Odysseus, the higher soul, recalls the instruction that in the actual period of contemplation and contact with the Absolute any, even the necessary normal, concern with the world and the body and its needs will be destructive. The eternally existing lower hypostases have to be entirely left alone and forsaken during the actual period of direct and intense contemplation of the Absolute and of Union, though they, alas, can't be ignored when returning to sensate existence until the telos is finally attained and sensate existence is ended completely and the soul has entirely re-become the One, but the proper understanding of renunciation must be retained all the time even so.
Thus, Odysseus, when entering the contemplation of the Good, remembers the instruction and wants to keep going and not attend to the needs of the body and the lower self at all. But they cannot be denied even then and so they have to pull into the island, but with the promise that the lower needs will be content with the minimum, the supplies they already have with them, and not kill the cattle and flocks of the Sun, won't pursue the things of the world and the lower hypostases more than necessary. But with time the lower needs become more importunate and Odysseus, the higher self, goes off alone to reach out to the divine, prays to the gods. They shed sleep upon him, he enters into a state of deep contemplation, of samadhi. Like in the Aeolus episode, while the higher soul is in this deep contemplation, the remaining undestroyed passions and defilements, now unrestrained by the higher self, break out and, in this case, take more care for this world and physical and emotional needs than is necessary, they kill the cattle, involve themselves with the lower hypostases, which during this contemplation need to be just ignored and left alone. This time, however, their folly calls forth the purifying power of the Absolute, which, through its emanation as the divine order in the lower hypostases, exposes the true nature of these grosser passions and defilements, helps the higher self know that they truly have to be left behind and destroys them and strips the higher self of them with the light of wisdom—Zeus destroys Odysseus' ship and men with the thunderbolt—leaving the higher soul alone to continue on with the further stages of the Path—with embodiment and more subtle and fundamental passions and defilements still not finished and much trial and pain and purification of renunciation still to come.
The soteriological necessity and wonderfulness of renunciation and celibate asceticism has almost been entirely forgotten in this ever darker modern world. There have always been sophists who, in their delusion and worldly desires, have claimed that renunciation isn't necessary or superior and that it is possible to practice contemplation and attain liberation as married or non-celibate or pursuing and enmired in worldly desires, but, in the past, in better times, the necessity and superiority of celibate asceticism was generally acknowledged, even if not followed. Now the sophists of worldly delusion have become the norm and reached new heights in their rationalizations and popular purveyors of meditation and contemplation and allegedly spiritual paths actually take pride in denying renunciation and claiming that the Path can be followed by all and sundry worldlings and that this is an advance over the benighted premodern world. This goes along with the deeply and almost entirely deluded and mistaken this-worldly, physicalist, etc. weltanschauung and thoughts (such as it thinks at all) of the modern world which has almost completely lost any sense of transcendence and the hierarchy of being. An analysis of this would, of course, be a volume and beyond the scope of this essay. Ultimately, of course, it has to do with the delusion and heavy karma of the souls inhabiting the modern world. Let us be grateful that we have the Teiresias of Homer to remind us of the necessity of pure renunciation and truly realizing the Absolute and transcending this world!
© 2016 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (with) (Gee) mail (period) com
Seeing the Absolute You Must Entirely Renounce the Many
by Eric S. Fallick
“The man, tell me of Muse, of many turns, who very much
wandered, when he had sacked the hallowed city of Troy.
And he saw the cities and knew the mind of many people,
and he certainly experienced many pains in his heart in the sea,
trying to achieve his soul and the return of his companions.
But not at all thus did he deliver the companions, even though much desiring it:
for they perished of themselves by their own blind follies,
fools, who devoured the cattle of Hyperion Helios:
but He took away from them the day of return.
Of these things, from somewhere at any rate, goddess, daughter of Zeus, tell us also.”
Odyssey, Book 1, lines 1-10
Directly from Divine Wisdom as an emanation of the Absolute into the relative let us learn
about the true contemplative ascetic, the renunciant, who both experiences many things on the Path of the soul
through many rebirths and has the perceptiveness to deal with them, who
had to wander through many more births and trials after he had already finally gained an
initial entry into the noetic realm, an initial breaking through sensate existence, and seen noetic
beauty. He had to pass through many states and worlds of relative experience and existence
and understand many relative manifestations of mind. He experienced many sufferings
traveling through the ocean of birth and death and individuated, sensate, material existence in
space and time trying to return his own soul to the source, but also trying to keep the lower soul
and faculties that actually belong only to the lower realm and have to be given up and
abandoned and destroyed for the true higher soul to return to the noetic realm and the One.
But, of course, he could not keep these and bring them with him, even though he blindly and
habitually kept wanting to. They were finally destroyed as a result of their own blind, relative
only nature, lower and valueless things only, that continued to grasp the many, the relative, even
while the higher soul was seeing and in contemplation of the Good, and thus were destroyed by
the very radiance and power of the One, because the true higher soul properly renounced them. May we please learn
about these things, in whatever order or piecemeal fashion we can, from the sources of divine wisdom, intelligence and
understanding that appear as a result of the divine order of things, according to our karma, that reflects the
emanation of the Absolute into this lowest order of existence.
There are various and many recurring themes in the Odyssey, an allegorical manual of contemplative ascetic practice over multiple rebirths which, like all true, genuine and real spiritual texts and systems, most staunchly and uncompromisingly teaches true, pure renunciation of the world, world-denying-ness and otherworldliness and puts these forth as of the essence of the Path. One of these themes is the destruction of Odysseus' ship and the death and loss of his remaining men as a result of their killing, and eating, the cattle of the Sun, Helios. This seems to be emphasized as of considerable or even special importance since it is the only one of Odysseus' trials and the only episode specifically mentioned in the very opening lines of the Odyssey. It is a central part of Teiresias' prophecy about how Odysseus can successfully return that Odyssey travels to Hades to learn in Book 11. It is also reiterated and repeated by Circe in her instructions in Book 12, and the incident actually occurs and is described in detail and the prophecy is fulfilled in Books 12 and 13. What is the meaning and significance of this and why is it so important?
At the beginning of his unerring prophecy in Book 11, Teiresias says:
“You seek for the honey-sweet return, illustrious Odysseus:
but a god will make it painfully burdensome for you: for I don't think
you will escape the notice of the Earthshaker, who has laid up resentment for you in his heart,
being wroth that you blinded his dear son.
But yet even so all of you may arrive back, experiencing evils indeed,
if you would be willing to restrain your heart and that of your companions,
when first you would bring your well-made ship to
the Thrinacian island, escaping from the violet-dark sea,
and all of you would find the cattle and goodly sheep
of Helios, who looks upon all things and hears all things.
If you let these be unharmed and have thought for your return,
even still you all may come to Ithaca experiencing evils indeed:
but if you harm them, then I indicate for you destruction,
both for your ship and your companions, but if you yourself at least would escape,
you will return late in straits, having lost all your companions,
in the ship of another: and you will find woes in your house...”
Odysseus, the true higher soul, is still trying to return to his true home in the noetic realm, to be reintegrated and reunited with Nous and the One, which, in truth, he has never really entirely left. He is still, however, encumbered by his lower self and soul and all the faculties, emotions, thoughts, etc. of embodiment and the body in the material realm, his ship and his men. He has to be painfully stripped of all this so that the higher soul can return alone, but he still doesn't realize this and hasn't given up attachment to the lower self and the things of embodiment and is still trying to bring them with him and thinks that he has to and that this is desirable. Actually, the higher soul as connected to the higher hypostases really knows that all the lower things must be given up and stripped away, but can't, at least at the surface level, clearly recognize this because of the obscuring functions of the lower self and body, emotions, etc. It is really the lower self that still wants to go along and the higher soul only as combined with it that suffers the pain of getting rid of the lower manifestations. Thus, Teiresias initially holds out the possibility of the return of the remaining lower self along with the higher soul if only all can be brought and held to the purest renunciation, even though it is already clear and fated, as it has been from the beginning, that the lower self must be entirely lost and destroyed and only the higher self will return alone. At this point in the narrative, Odysseus has already lost the numerical majority of his ships and men, the higher soul has already been much stripped of the animal soul, through the various preceding episodes. The numerically largest loss occurred in the episode of the Laestrygonian giants. The man-eating giants represent a clear view of the grossness, grotesqueness, horror and animality of sensuous material sensate existence, and seeing and recognizing this clearly in itself destroys much of the lower self and attachment to it and makes the higher soul want to purify itself and be alone. A similar meaning is found in the episode of the man-eating Cyclops, but with various differences and important additions and other aspects. Odysseus has already at this point blinded the Kukl-ops, the Circle-vision—the higher soul has destroyed the vision that only sees the circle or cycle of birth and death, of genesis, of samsara, of rebirth, of individuated sensate existence in space-time, of the senses using the burning bright stake of transcendent wisdom. Thus, at this point the renunciant contemplative ascetic can never really go entirely back to sleep. He can never really return to the standpoint and vision of the many deluded ordinary worldlings who only see and know the things of this world and are unaware of the transcendent and see things only from the horizontal standpoint of this life and not from a transmigratory and transcendent perspective. He can never really become an ordinary deluded worldling again, even if there may appear to be brief lapses, but must remain a renunciant striving until final liberation is attained. In doing this, however, he has brought down upon himself the wrath of the Earthshaker, Poseidon, the body and hyle, his remaining karma of embodiment that he has to work off and get rid of and will keep raging against him, against the higher soul and its return and its remaining lower self and causing much suffering until the return is finally accomplished, as it is already clearly destined that it eventually will and must be. He will eventually return to Ithaca, the higher soul will return to the higher hypostases alone without its gross attachments to the lower self, in the ship of another, using the vehicle of a system of spiritual practice to cross the ocean of becoming and hyle and body without the possessive attachment to it that characterizes his own ship of the body. He will then, though, find woes in his house, the defilements and passions are still there assaulting the remaining more subtle and needed for the remaining period of embodiment self, and must be destroyed, which long and difficult process occupies the whole second half of the Odyssey.
After leaving Circe, the circle of becoming, of genesis, of samsara, with whom he has had to abide intimately for a while to learn its ways and neutralize them and turn them to attaining liberation from the cycle itself, and after some additional notable episodes, he arrives at Thrinacia, the island of the sun. Before leaving Circe, he had to travel to Hades, the higher soul had to see this world and its inhabitants as the mere phantoms that they are, he had to see the prisoners in the cave who know only shadows as realities, he had to see that all the things, people, goals, strivings, supposed accomplishments and pleasures and sentiments and great people, etc. of this world are nothing, just meaningless shades, and hear instructions from the prophet Teiresias who is the only one who retains his mind there, the higher soul had to hear from and be reminded about the Path by the only voices in this phantom hell world that know and speak about the Path and the Truth, such as the records of Homer, Plato and Plotinus. Hyperion Helios, the Sun, who sees all and hears all, represents the Absolute, the One, the Good Itself. His immortal cattle and flocks of sheep and goddess herders are the lower hypostases and lower relative many realities that always exist, to the extent that they do, along with the One. Arriving at the sun's island is arriving at direct clear contemplation of the Absolute. The central point here is that true contemplation of and reunion with the Absolute requires the purest and most complete renunciation, contemplative asceticism, moral discipline and otherworldliness. This is of the very greatest importance if the soul is to succeed and not be destroyed. The more the Good is known, the higher the soul goes on the Path, the more complete and pure must the renunciation be. World-denyingness, renunciation and contemplative asceticism is not just a means or way station on the Path—it is of its very essence, is the very manifestation of the Absolute in this world and always remains getting purer and purer the more the One is known and the Way is traversed. To attain the One, one must give up the many. To get free from this world, one must renounce it in all its length and breadth. Only the true renunciant and contemplative ascetic can travel the Path successfully and know the One truly and without being destroyed. Real contemplation and renunciation, mysticism and asceticism always go together—they are flip sides of the same coin. This Truth is stated right at the beginning of the Odyssey, is explained by Teiresias, repeated by Circe, etc. and is a central theme running in various forms through the whole text.
Throughout the Odyssey, the horrible image of animal slaughter, sacrifice and consumption represents the need to dedicate, sacrifice and use the lower faculties and animal soul and their unavoidable necessary maintenance solely for the purpose of pursuing the Practice and Path in full renunciation, not for the purpose of sensual pleasure or worldly desires. It occurs constantly since, most unfortunately, as long as we have a body and its accompanying lower emotions, needs, etc., we have to constantly attend to it and provide for it, but always trying to dedicate it to divine purposes. The use of the image of sacrificing and eating animals and drinking wine (using the senses), so repulsive to the real vegetarian and teetotaling contemplative ascetic, is used by the vegetarian teetotaling Homer to continually generate revulsion towards material, animal existence and its needs and interference with contemplation and spiritual practice. Arriving at the island, Odysseus, the higher soul, recalls the instruction that in the actual period of contemplation and contact with the Absolute any, even the necessary normal, concern with the world and the body and its needs will be destructive. The eternally existing lower hypostases have to be entirely left alone and forsaken during the actual period of direct and intense contemplation of the Absolute and of Union, though they, alas, can't be ignored when returning to sensate existence until the telos is finally attained and sensate existence is ended completely and the soul has entirely re-become the One, but the proper understanding of renunciation must be retained all the time even so.
Thus, Odysseus, when entering the contemplation of the Good, remembers the instruction and wants to keep going and not attend to the needs of the body and the lower self at all. But they cannot be denied even then and so they have to pull into the island, but with the promise that the lower needs will be content with the minimum, the supplies they already have with them, and not kill the cattle and flocks of the Sun, won't pursue the things of the world and the lower hypostases more than necessary. But with time the lower needs become more importunate and Odysseus, the higher self, goes off alone to reach out to the divine, prays to the gods. They shed sleep upon him, he enters into a state of deep contemplation, of samadhi. Like in the Aeolus episode, while the higher soul is in this deep contemplation, the remaining undestroyed passions and defilements, now unrestrained by the higher self, break out and, in this case, take more care for this world and physical and emotional needs than is necessary, they kill the cattle, involve themselves with the lower hypostases, which during this contemplation need to be just ignored and left alone. This time, however, their folly calls forth the purifying power of the Absolute, which, through its emanation as the divine order in the lower hypostases, exposes the true nature of these grosser passions and defilements, helps the higher self know that they truly have to be left behind and destroys them and strips the higher self of them with the light of wisdom—Zeus destroys Odysseus' ship and men with the thunderbolt—leaving the higher soul alone to continue on with the further stages of the Path—with embodiment and more subtle and fundamental passions and defilements still not finished and much trial and pain and purification of renunciation still to come.
The soteriological necessity and wonderfulness of renunciation and celibate asceticism has almost been entirely forgotten in this ever darker modern world. There have always been sophists who, in their delusion and worldly desires, have claimed that renunciation isn't necessary or superior and that it is possible to practice contemplation and attain liberation as married or non-celibate or pursuing and enmired in worldly desires, but, in the past, in better times, the necessity and superiority of celibate asceticism was generally acknowledged, even if not followed. Now the sophists of worldly delusion have become the norm and reached new heights in their rationalizations and popular purveyors of meditation and contemplation and allegedly spiritual paths actually take pride in denying renunciation and claiming that the Path can be followed by all and sundry worldlings and that this is an advance over the benighted premodern world. This goes along with the deeply and almost entirely deluded and mistaken this-worldly, physicalist, etc. weltanschauung and thoughts (such as it thinks at all) of the modern world which has almost completely lost any sense of transcendence and the hierarchy of being. An analysis of this would, of course, be a volume and beyond the scope of this essay. Ultimately, of course, it has to do with the delusion and heavy karma of the souls inhabiting the modern world. Let us be grateful that we have the Teiresias of Homer to remind us of the necessity of pure renunciation and truly realizing the Absolute and transcending this world!
© 2016 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (with) (Gee) mail (period) com
Friday, February 23, 2018
Homer on the Limitations of Institutionalized Monasticism
Homer on the Limitations of Institutionalized Monasticism:
The Aeolus Episode of the Odyssey
by Eric S. Fallick
The Odyssey of Homer is a great and wonderful spiritual treasure left to us from antiquity. Although it is little appreciated as such now, it is actually an amazing spiritual guidebook and practice manual describing in a symbolic, allegorical, and anagogical manner the journey of the practitioner's soul through successive rebirths in its striving to obtain liberation from the cycle of becoming and return to its home in transcendent Reality. Like all real spiritual texts, the Path it describes and prescribes is that of contemplative asceticism, renunciation and meditation, and knowledge or wisdom. In fact, the asceticism and renunciation and mysticism it commends is of the most severe, pure, world-denying, uncompromising, abstract, and transcendent nature. (This, of course, does not mean it recommends the sort of self-torture practices that are sometimes included, unfortunately and incorrectly, under the rubric of asceticism.) No compromise is made with this world and ordinary human attachments and desires, which ultimately have to be transcended and given up completely to reach the Goal, difficult as this may be. So pure and austere and transcendent is this renunciation and contemplation, that it recognizes that institutionalized, ritualized, organized, corporate renunciation is not really full or true renunciation since, while incorporating some of the absolutely essential renunciant practices such as celibacy, vegetarianism, teetotaling, lack of personal possessions, devotion to practice, etc., it otherwise merely reproduces different forms of the same social structures of this world and caters to and provides for the same human emotional needs, desires, and attachments (all of which need to be transcended) within institutional monastic structures. Actual liberation, according to Homer, requires a long and painful process of totally stripping away the burden of the lower self and its needs and desires and totally reorienting the soul towards the Absolute. Institutionalized monasticism and renunciation does not, according to Homer, accomplish this, but ineffectually attempts to achieve transcendent contemplation while leaving the burden of the lower self and passions intact. Thus, it doesn't really work and must be considered as at best a way station towards more complete, full, independent, unsupported, and untethered renunciation and contemplative asceticism and complete otherworldliness.
The Aeolus episode at Book 10, lines 1-76 of the Odyssey relates Homer's view of the inadequacy of institutionalized monasticism and may serve as an example of relatively manageable size for an attempt at illustrating the symbolic, anagogical meaning of the text. I would, therefore, like to try here to give a literal prose translation of the text followed by an exposition of its undermeaning.
And we came to the Aeolian island: and there dwelt Aeolus son of Hippotas,
dear to the deathless gods, on a floating island: and, indeed, around it all was
an unbreakable bronze wall, and smooth stone runs up.
And of him twelve children have been in the halls, on the one hand six daughters,
on the other hand six sons being in the prime of youth:
there he indeed gave the daughters to the sons to be wives.
And they always dine beside their dear father and devoted mother, and a myriad good things
lie beside them, and indeed the house full of the savor of roasting fat resounds around
the courtyard during the days: and during the nights, on the other hand, they sleep beside
their revered wives in both blankets and perforated beds.
And we came to their city and fine house.
And for a whole month he held me dear and inquired about each thing, about Ilium
and the ships of the Argives and the return of the Achaeans: and I, for my part, related everything to him in due fashion.
But when then I also asked for the way and bid him to send me, he did not
at all refuse, but fashioned a conveyance.
But he gave me a leather bag having stripped it off of a nine year old bull,
and there he tied up the ways of the roaring winds: for the son of Kronos
made him manager of winds, both to make to cease and
to set in motion, which wind he would want.
And he tied it up in the hollow ship with a shining silver cord, so that
nothing would blow past even a little bit: but for me he sent forth a breath of the West
Wind to blow, so that it would bear both the ships and ourselves: nor then was
it going to be brought to completion: for we were lost by the senselessness of ourselves.
For nine days then we sailed both night and day alike, but on the tenth already
the fatherland country appeared, and then being near we were seeing the
people tending the fires: then sweet sleep came upon me having toiled,
for always I wielded the lower part of the sail of the ship, nor gave it to another of
my companions, in order that we would quickly come to the fatherland:
but my companions began addressing each other with words, and they said that I was
bringing home for myself both gold and silver as gifts from great-hearted Aeolus son of Hippotas.
And thus one was saying, seeing, to another one near:
Ah me! How this person is dear to and honored among all peoples,
of whomever he would come to both the city and the land.
Many are the fine treasures of spoil he is bringing for himself from Troy, but
we on the other hand having completed the same way come back home
together having empty hands: and now Aeolus showing
favor has given these things to him with love.
But come, quickly let us see what thing these things are,
how much certain both gold and silver are present in the bag.
Thus they said, and evil counsel overcame the companions:
they loosed the leather bag, and all the winds rushed out.
And at once snatching them up a storm wind bore them seaward wailing,
from the fatherland.
But I myself awakening turned over in my blameless spirit,
whether falling from the ship I should perish in the sea,
or quietly should bear it and still be among the living ones.
But I endured and stayed, and covering myself I lay in the ship.
And the ships were borne by an evil storm of wind back again
to the Aeolian island, and the companions groaned.
But there we went onto the land and drew water, and at once
the companions took dinner by the swift ships.
But when we had partaken of bread and drink, then I myself taking with
me a herald and a companion went to the famed house of Aeolus:
And I found him dining beside his wife and his children.
But coming into the house we sat down on the threshold by the
doorposts: but they were astonished in spirit and asked right out:
How have you come, Odysseus? What evil spirit assailed you?
Surely indeed we cordially sent you off, so that you would come to
your fatherland and house and if anywhere is dear to you. Thus they said, but I spoke among them feeling pain at heart:
Both my evil companions injured me and besides them stubborn sleep.
But cure it, friends: for the power is in you.
Thus I said addressing them with soft words, but they became silent: but the
father replied with a word: go quickly from the island, most reproachable of the
living: for it is not lawful for me to provide for or send forth that man who would
become hateful to the blessed gods: go, since then you have come to this place
becoming hateful to the gods.
Thus saying he sent me away from the house moaning heavily. …
Odysseus, the true divine soul or self and the contemplative ascetic and renunciant practitioner, is struggling to return to Ithaca, his true home, the higher transcendent realm of the Divine Mind-Thought and ultimately the One Itself, from which he has fallen into the ocean of genesis, of becoming, of birth and death, of individuated subjective experience in space-time. He is aware of being lost, but at this point doesn't know exactly how to get back, although he does know where it is he wants and needs to return to. He also at this point still has his ships and most of his crew, which represent the lower self or soul involved in the psychophysical complex and the accompanying passions, emotions, defilements, etc. He still is attached to this lower self and its faculties and still identifies with them and wants to bring them back with him. He doesn't yet understand that these are a great burden binding him to the prison of this world and preventing his return, and that he will have to get rid of or lose all of them and everything, however painful he may experience the process of doing so to be, before he can go back to Ithaca, that is, awake to true Reality. To return to the One, the Simple, the Pure, the Good, the Beautiful, one must oneself become unitary, simple, pure, good, and beautiful, stripping away everything that has accumulated around the true divine soul, so that it can become like the One it is returning to and realize that it is in fact the emanation of that One. Odysseus has, however, at this point already blinded the eye of the cyclops, made the initial separation from the senses and the bestial self involved wholly in the senses, which, while bringing all the karmic obstructions of matter, Poseidon, against him to be worked through, means that his eventual return to Ithaca, to Reality, alone, stripped entirely of the lower self, is already fated.
Now he comes to the island of Aeolia, of Aeolus son of Hippotas, which represents organized, institutionalized, ritualized monasticism. Incidentally, it may be noted that the course of spiritual practice described in the Odyssey is more iterative than necessarily linear, and one may go through the same episodes repeatedly in the course of the many lifetimes of the Path in various ways and at various levels. Aeolus and Aeolia imply in the Greek quick-moving, swift, wriggling, nimble, shifty, slippery, glittering, changeful of hue, and the like. This indicates both the cleverness of legalistic maneuvering and manipulation of ritual, along with politics, that tends to characterize institutionalized renunciation, and also the colorful and impressive appearance created by uniforms, corporate ritual, art and architecture, etc. He is the son of Hippotas, son of a horseman, because he 'descends' from a religious founder who instituted means and/or structures to try to tame the lower, bestial self and the beast of the body, the horse. He is dear to the gods because such are all sincere spiritual strivers. He lives on a floating island representing the fact that the institution is somewhat separated from the rest of the world but is still subject to various historical, temporal, and cultural vicissitudes like any institution in this world. It is surrounded by an unbreakable bronze wall and sheer stone cliff because it is cloistered and self-contained with its own corporate and administrative existence. His symmetrical even dozen six sons and six daughters married to each other show the uniform and uniformly, ritually reproduced disciples constituting the monastic order and indicate, along with Aeolus and his wife, the sort of non-biological procreation that maintains monastic orders and actually, and unfortunately, replicates worldly family structures within them. (There is, of course, no actual sexual implication in the symbolic description here using the language of ordinary conjugal arrangements.) Their continual dining represents the ongoing organized routine, largely centered on obtaining and preparing and consuming meals, maintaining the physical plant and income generating activities and services, and performing corporate ritual, that much constitutes cenobitical monastic life, and winds up really taking the place of individual spiritual striving. These activities visibly and audibly fill the monastery, so the savor of roasting fat resounds through the courtyard during the day, and at night they rest together in their uniform, appointed accommodations, their blankets and perforated beds. A myriad good things lie beside them suggesting the relative economic and physical security of institutionalized, corporate, and especially cenobitical renunciation, as opposed to the great insecurity of individual renunciation.
Odysseus, then, comes to this pleasantly accommodated monastic institution, and is cordially welcomed since he is, at least initially, recognized as a fellow renunciant, even if an independent one. In fact, they question him at great length concerning Ilium, the initial attempt to wrestle noetical beauty away from the material realm, the ships of the Argives, the means by which independent renunciants traverse the ocean of becoming, and the return of the Achaeans, how fully focused renunciants have attempted to return to awakening. Odysseus, the true contemplative ascetic, does not, however, wish to be retained here long, however nice it may be, but asks to return to the aim of his spiritual practice, Ithaca, and for help and conveyance in getting thereto. Aeolus gladly obliges him since, although he has not returned himself, he has various traditional methods that he believes are effective in suppressing and controlling and altering the passions and defilements, the son of Kronos has made him manager of winds, that is, passions and defilements. He teaches Odysseus the methods, which Odysseus diligently practices. He binds the winds, passions, in a leather bag made from a bull nine years old, that is, suppresses the passions and defilements by a long practice of physical restraint of the bestial self through regulated, ritualized activity, and secures it with a silver cord, that is, the practice of the mundane constitutional virtues without actual wisdom. He sends forth the West Wind, the positive emotion and enthusiasm generated by communal ritual, to help them on their way. But it can't actually work in the long run. The passions and defilements have only been suppressed and mitigated, not destroyed, and the whole lower self has not been gotten rid of and the process of doing so has not been gone through.
They set sail for Ithaca, that is, Odysseus, with the passions temporarily bound and with his lower self mostly still intact, diligently practices contemplation or meditation and comes within sight of the higher realm, Ithaca. Then he suddenly falls asleep, that is, he enters a state of deep contemplation or samadhi as would be necessary for contacting that higher Reality. But, alas, in this case it is only a temporary glimpse and meditative state. The elements and faculties of the lower self still being there unchanged and now being released from the control of the higher, divine self which is occupied in its meditative state, erupt into their characteristic greed, envy, egotism, etc. They think Odysseus has gold, silver, and gifts in the bag, that they are being deprived of the pleasures and gratifications of the ordinary emotions by the ritualized ascetic practice Odysseus has been following under Aeolus's guidance. So they open the bag, while Odysseus is in samadhi he can't attend to the ritualized mundane practice of keeping the defilements and karmic habit patterns in check, sitting on them, so to speak, without having actually destroyed them with real wisdom and true practice and knowledge, and release all the suppressed passions, the blustering storm winds that blow them back out into the sea of material existence and back to the ultimately mundane temporospatial realm of the monastery. Even the faculties of the lower self now realize their mistake and are upset, and Odysseus, the higher soul, having now emerged from the meditative state and rejoined with the lower self and still identifying with it is so distraught that he briefly considers giving up the Path altogether, perishing by falling entirely into the sea of material existence, but of course he endures and they come back to the island of Aeolus.
At first, upon arrival, they pause to draw water and take dinner. Sadly, even in the midst of spiritual crises we still have to maintain and tend to the basic needs of the body. Odysseus then goes back to the famed house of Aeolus where he finds them dining as ever. They are shocked to see him because, although they have never actually returned yet themselves, they have never doubted that their traditional methods should allow one to do so, and ask what happened. Odysseus, still distraught, but also still not realizing that the methods he has been given are not efficacious, especially when he still has the whole apparatus of the lower self which he still doesn't understand that he must be rid of, explains what happened, perhaps not even realizing that entering samadhi was really a good thing, and asks for them to help him to try again. They, however, are unable to understand the limitations of their system, and so the only thing they can conclude is that the individual renouncer and soul they have tried to help must be cursed, have heavy karma, and be a bad soul, even though he is actually better fated than they are, and send him away. So sad Odysseus leaves with much of the Path and many trials through a number of lifetimes ahead of him leading to his eventual success and freedom.
© 2011 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (at) (gee) mail (dot) com
The Aeolus Episode of the Odyssey
by Eric S. Fallick
The Odyssey of Homer is a great and wonderful spiritual treasure left to us from antiquity. Although it is little appreciated as such now, it is actually an amazing spiritual guidebook and practice manual describing in a symbolic, allegorical, and anagogical manner the journey of the practitioner's soul through successive rebirths in its striving to obtain liberation from the cycle of becoming and return to its home in transcendent Reality. Like all real spiritual texts, the Path it describes and prescribes is that of contemplative asceticism, renunciation and meditation, and knowledge or wisdom. In fact, the asceticism and renunciation and mysticism it commends is of the most severe, pure, world-denying, uncompromising, abstract, and transcendent nature. (This, of course, does not mean it recommends the sort of self-torture practices that are sometimes included, unfortunately and incorrectly, under the rubric of asceticism.) No compromise is made with this world and ordinary human attachments and desires, which ultimately have to be transcended and given up completely to reach the Goal, difficult as this may be. So pure and austere and transcendent is this renunciation and contemplation, that it recognizes that institutionalized, ritualized, organized, corporate renunciation is not really full or true renunciation since, while incorporating some of the absolutely essential renunciant practices such as celibacy, vegetarianism, teetotaling, lack of personal possessions, devotion to practice, etc., it otherwise merely reproduces different forms of the same social structures of this world and caters to and provides for the same human emotional needs, desires, and attachments (all of which need to be transcended) within institutional monastic structures. Actual liberation, according to Homer, requires a long and painful process of totally stripping away the burden of the lower self and its needs and desires and totally reorienting the soul towards the Absolute. Institutionalized monasticism and renunciation does not, according to Homer, accomplish this, but ineffectually attempts to achieve transcendent contemplation while leaving the burden of the lower self and passions intact. Thus, it doesn't really work and must be considered as at best a way station towards more complete, full, independent, unsupported, and untethered renunciation and contemplative asceticism and complete otherworldliness.
The Aeolus episode at Book 10, lines 1-76 of the Odyssey relates Homer's view of the inadequacy of institutionalized monasticism and may serve as an example of relatively manageable size for an attempt at illustrating the symbolic, anagogical meaning of the text. I would, therefore, like to try here to give a literal prose translation of the text followed by an exposition of its undermeaning.
And we came to the Aeolian island: and there dwelt Aeolus son of Hippotas,
dear to the deathless gods, on a floating island: and, indeed, around it all was
an unbreakable bronze wall, and smooth stone runs up.
And of him twelve children have been in the halls, on the one hand six daughters,
on the other hand six sons being in the prime of youth:
there he indeed gave the daughters to the sons to be wives.
And they always dine beside their dear father and devoted mother, and a myriad good things
lie beside them, and indeed the house full of the savor of roasting fat resounds around
the courtyard during the days: and during the nights, on the other hand, they sleep beside
their revered wives in both blankets and perforated beds.
And we came to their city and fine house.
And for a whole month he held me dear and inquired about each thing, about Ilium
and the ships of the Argives and the return of the Achaeans: and I, for my part, related everything to him in due fashion.
But when then I also asked for the way and bid him to send me, he did not
at all refuse, but fashioned a conveyance.
But he gave me a leather bag having stripped it off of a nine year old bull,
and there he tied up the ways of the roaring winds: for the son of Kronos
made him manager of winds, both to make to cease and
to set in motion, which wind he would want.
And he tied it up in the hollow ship with a shining silver cord, so that
nothing would blow past even a little bit: but for me he sent forth a breath of the West
Wind to blow, so that it would bear both the ships and ourselves: nor then was
it going to be brought to completion: for we were lost by the senselessness of ourselves.
For nine days then we sailed both night and day alike, but on the tenth already
the fatherland country appeared, and then being near we were seeing the
people tending the fires: then sweet sleep came upon me having toiled,
for always I wielded the lower part of the sail of the ship, nor gave it to another of
my companions, in order that we would quickly come to the fatherland:
but my companions began addressing each other with words, and they said that I was
bringing home for myself both gold and silver as gifts from great-hearted Aeolus son of Hippotas.
And thus one was saying, seeing, to another one near:
Ah me! How this person is dear to and honored among all peoples,
of whomever he would come to both the city and the land.
Many are the fine treasures of spoil he is bringing for himself from Troy, but
we on the other hand having completed the same way come back home
together having empty hands: and now Aeolus showing
favor has given these things to him with love.
But come, quickly let us see what thing these things are,
how much certain both gold and silver are present in the bag.
Thus they said, and evil counsel overcame the companions:
they loosed the leather bag, and all the winds rushed out.
And at once snatching them up a storm wind bore them seaward wailing,
from the fatherland.
But I myself awakening turned over in my blameless spirit,
whether falling from the ship I should perish in the sea,
or quietly should bear it and still be among the living ones.
But I endured and stayed, and covering myself I lay in the ship.
And the ships were borne by an evil storm of wind back again
to the Aeolian island, and the companions groaned.
But there we went onto the land and drew water, and at once
the companions took dinner by the swift ships.
But when we had partaken of bread and drink, then I myself taking with
me a herald and a companion went to the famed house of Aeolus:
And I found him dining beside his wife and his children.
But coming into the house we sat down on the threshold by the
doorposts: but they were astonished in spirit and asked right out:
How have you come, Odysseus? What evil spirit assailed you?
Surely indeed we cordially sent you off, so that you would come to
your fatherland and house and if anywhere is dear to you. Thus they said, but I spoke among them feeling pain at heart:
Both my evil companions injured me and besides them stubborn sleep.
But cure it, friends: for the power is in you.
Thus I said addressing them with soft words, but they became silent: but the
father replied with a word: go quickly from the island, most reproachable of the
living: for it is not lawful for me to provide for or send forth that man who would
become hateful to the blessed gods: go, since then you have come to this place
becoming hateful to the gods.
Thus saying he sent me away from the house moaning heavily. …
Odysseus, the true divine soul or self and the contemplative ascetic and renunciant practitioner, is struggling to return to Ithaca, his true home, the higher transcendent realm of the Divine Mind-Thought and ultimately the One Itself, from which he has fallen into the ocean of genesis, of becoming, of birth and death, of individuated subjective experience in space-time. He is aware of being lost, but at this point doesn't know exactly how to get back, although he does know where it is he wants and needs to return to. He also at this point still has his ships and most of his crew, which represent the lower self or soul involved in the psychophysical complex and the accompanying passions, emotions, defilements, etc. He still is attached to this lower self and its faculties and still identifies with them and wants to bring them back with him. He doesn't yet understand that these are a great burden binding him to the prison of this world and preventing his return, and that he will have to get rid of or lose all of them and everything, however painful he may experience the process of doing so to be, before he can go back to Ithaca, that is, awake to true Reality. To return to the One, the Simple, the Pure, the Good, the Beautiful, one must oneself become unitary, simple, pure, good, and beautiful, stripping away everything that has accumulated around the true divine soul, so that it can become like the One it is returning to and realize that it is in fact the emanation of that One. Odysseus has, however, at this point already blinded the eye of the cyclops, made the initial separation from the senses and the bestial self involved wholly in the senses, which, while bringing all the karmic obstructions of matter, Poseidon, against him to be worked through, means that his eventual return to Ithaca, to Reality, alone, stripped entirely of the lower self, is already fated.
Now he comes to the island of Aeolia, of Aeolus son of Hippotas, which represents organized, institutionalized, ritualized monasticism. Incidentally, it may be noted that the course of spiritual practice described in the Odyssey is more iterative than necessarily linear, and one may go through the same episodes repeatedly in the course of the many lifetimes of the Path in various ways and at various levels. Aeolus and Aeolia imply in the Greek quick-moving, swift, wriggling, nimble, shifty, slippery, glittering, changeful of hue, and the like. This indicates both the cleverness of legalistic maneuvering and manipulation of ritual, along with politics, that tends to characterize institutionalized renunciation, and also the colorful and impressive appearance created by uniforms, corporate ritual, art and architecture, etc. He is the son of Hippotas, son of a horseman, because he 'descends' from a religious founder who instituted means and/or structures to try to tame the lower, bestial self and the beast of the body, the horse. He is dear to the gods because such are all sincere spiritual strivers. He lives on a floating island representing the fact that the institution is somewhat separated from the rest of the world but is still subject to various historical, temporal, and cultural vicissitudes like any institution in this world. It is surrounded by an unbreakable bronze wall and sheer stone cliff because it is cloistered and self-contained with its own corporate and administrative existence. His symmetrical even dozen six sons and six daughters married to each other show the uniform and uniformly, ritually reproduced disciples constituting the monastic order and indicate, along with Aeolus and his wife, the sort of non-biological procreation that maintains monastic orders and actually, and unfortunately, replicates worldly family structures within them. (There is, of course, no actual sexual implication in the symbolic description here using the language of ordinary conjugal arrangements.) Their continual dining represents the ongoing organized routine, largely centered on obtaining and preparing and consuming meals, maintaining the physical plant and income generating activities and services, and performing corporate ritual, that much constitutes cenobitical monastic life, and winds up really taking the place of individual spiritual striving. These activities visibly and audibly fill the monastery, so the savor of roasting fat resounds through the courtyard during the day, and at night they rest together in their uniform, appointed accommodations, their blankets and perforated beds. A myriad good things lie beside them suggesting the relative economic and physical security of institutionalized, corporate, and especially cenobitical renunciation, as opposed to the great insecurity of individual renunciation.
Odysseus, then, comes to this pleasantly accommodated monastic institution, and is cordially welcomed since he is, at least initially, recognized as a fellow renunciant, even if an independent one. In fact, they question him at great length concerning Ilium, the initial attempt to wrestle noetical beauty away from the material realm, the ships of the Argives, the means by which independent renunciants traverse the ocean of becoming, and the return of the Achaeans, how fully focused renunciants have attempted to return to awakening. Odysseus, the true contemplative ascetic, does not, however, wish to be retained here long, however nice it may be, but asks to return to the aim of his spiritual practice, Ithaca, and for help and conveyance in getting thereto. Aeolus gladly obliges him since, although he has not returned himself, he has various traditional methods that he believes are effective in suppressing and controlling and altering the passions and defilements, the son of Kronos has made him manager of winds, that is, passions and defilements. He teaches Odysseus the methods, which Odysseus diligently practices. He binds the winds, passions, in a leather bag made from a bull nine years old, that is, suppresses the passions and defilements by a long practice of physical restraint of the bestial self through regulated, ritualized activity, and secures it with a silver cord, that is, the practice of the mundane constitutional virtues without actual wisdom. He sends forth the West Wind, the positive emotion and enthusiasm generated by communal ritual, to help them on their way. But it can't actually work in the long run. The passions and defilements have only been suppressed and mitigated, not destroyed, and the whole lower self has not been gotten rid of and the process of doing so has not been gone through.
They set sail for Ithaca, that is, Odysseus, with the passions temporarily bound and with his lower self mostly still intact, diligently practices contemplation or meditation and comes within sight of the higher realm, Ithaca. Then he suddenly falls asleep, that is, he enters a state of deep contemplation or samadhi as would be necessary for contacting that higher Reality. But, alas, in this case it is only a temporary glimpse and meditative state. The elements and faculties of the lower self still being there unchanged and now being released from the control of the higher, divine self which is occupied in its meditative state, erupt into their characteristic greed, envy, egotism, etc. They think Odysseus has gold, silver, and gifts in the bag, that they are being deprived of the pleasures and gratifications of the ordinary emotions by the ritualized ascetic practice Odysseus has been following under Aeolus's guidance. So they open the bag, while Odysseus is in samadhi he can't attend to the ritualized mundane practice of keeping the defilements and karmic habit patterns in check, sitting on them, so to speak, without having actually destroyed them with real wisdom and true practice and knowledge, and release all the suppressed passions, the blustering storm winds that blow them back out into the sea of material existence and back to the ultimately mundane temporospatial realm of the monastery. Even the faculties of the lower self now realize their mistake and are upset, and Odysseus, the higher soul, having now emerged from the meditative state and rejoined with the lower self and still identifying with it is so distraught that he briefly considers giving up the Path altogether, perishing by falling entirely into the sea of material existence, but of course he endures and they come back to the island of Aeolus.
At first, upon arrival, they pause to draw water and take dinner. Sadly, even in the midst of spiritual crises we still have to maintain and tend to the basic needs of the body. Odysseus then goes back to the famed house of Aeolus where he finds them dining as ever. They are shocked to see him because, although they have never actually returned yet themselves, they have never doubted that their traditional methods should allow one to do so, and ask what happened. Odysseus, still distraught, but also still not realizing that the methods he has been given are not efficacious, especially when he still has the whole apparatus of the lower self which he still doesn't understand that he must be rid of, explains what happened, perhaps not even realizing that entering samadhi was really a good thing, and asks for them to help him to try again. They, however, are unable to understand the limitations of their system, and so the only thing they can conclude is that the individual renouncer and soul they have tried to help must be cursed, have heavy karma, and be a bad soul, even though he is actually better fated than they are, and send him away. So sad Odysseus leaves with much of the Path and many trials through a number of lifetimes ahead of him leading to his eventual success and freedom.
© 2011 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (at) (gee) mail (dot) com
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