What Is To Be Done

                                                What Is To Be Done

by Eric S. Fallick

“So that for him some acts will be contributing towards blessedness (eudaimonia), but some will not be for the sake of the goal (telos) and won’t be of him at all, but for the thing being yoked together (with him), which he will take thought for and bear, while it is possible…”

[Ennead 1.4, 16.21-24]

For many thousands of lifetimes, over countless eons, throughout the long dark night of time, we have been undergoing repeated rebirths in all sorts of forms, human and non-human, in the beginningless and endless cycle of genesis, becoming, samsara, birth and death, individuated sensate existence in space-time.  This is nothing but darkness and non-being, pure and constant misery and unsatisfactoriness and impermanence.  It is nothing but separation from the Good, the experience of multiplicity and individuality instead of the experience of the One–this in itself is the most horrible intrinsic suffering and fallen and undesirable state.  Now, we have the extremely rare and precious opportunity to implement and follow the Path to liberation, to re-union with the One, to release forever from the cycle of rebirth and all the attendant inherent pain of individuated spatio-temporal sensate existence.  To not make the most of this opportunity, to be concerned about and devoted to the ephemeral and momentary and worthless things of this world instead, is the most foolish and tragic thing possible.  Nothing else at all matters in this world and this brief life.  Our only concern is striving towards the goal of release and return.  In this world, the only thing that actually determines whether someone is blessed, well off, in a good condition, happy or not is the distance or closeness of the soul to or from the One/the Good, and with it the progress towards or regression from release from becoming.  Everything else that goes on in the world or that people experience is really and ultimately trivial and unimportant.  The only real distinction to view among people is between those aspiring for and working towards re-union with the One and release from samsara and those who are not, between those who have renounced this world for the Absolute and those who have not.  So, apart from this, all the goings on and 'news' and problems and sufferings and so forth that we see and hear about in the world are really meaningless and indistinct--just more and more endless samsara and just another unvarying drop in the bucket of becoming.  The specific details don't really mean anything from this broader and more general and truer perspective.  Of course, some people are creating better mundanely good karma and some, most perhaps, are creating bad, and the good will be happier than the bad in a mundane sense, but it is all still just endless turning of the wheel--only someone aspiring for the Path in some way is really significant.  The only thing worth doing in this world is turning from it and working on the Way.  However, alas, we also have to maintain this skin bag (body) and psycho-physical organism and mind to the minimum extent necessary so that we can continue in the askesis.

Given this state of affairs, the way things are, there are only two legitimate, acceptable, real reasons for doing anything, for any act or action or thought or word:  Either it is part of contemplative ascetic practice, is part of traveling on the Path, leads to and makes progress towards liberation from birth and death, to return to the Good, to the end of individuation, to the telos; or it is necessary, really necessary, to maintain one’s existence, to maintain body and mind, to maintain the psycho-physical organism, to continue to live in the mundane sense in a reasonable manner so that we can continue the askesis.  Everything else, every and any other motivation, every other act is proscribed, illegitimate, and deadly foolishness.

Of course, this is not easy to implement.  It is probably especially difficult in the beginning and early stages of the practice when withdrawal from sensual pleasures and worldly activities and interests is new and still ongoing and capability for and power of practice is still undeveloped.  Also, some people may have various worldly obligations, duties, commitments, and burdens that they took on before they raised the aspiration for the Way in this birth and which have, of course, to be discharged properly with due righteousness and dutifulness.  It is fairly clear what acts constitute the contemplative ascetic practice and fall under the first criterion; but the difficulty lies in accurately and honestly discerning what are the really necessary actions under the second criterion of mere survival in accordance with one’s individual capacities and abilities and circumstances and having the awareness and presence of mind and discipline and determination to act according to such correct discernment of what is minimally necessary for psycho-physical survival and adequate functioning to optimally maintain the askesis.

The activities that constitute the actual contemplative ascetic practice, that fall under the first criterion, that belong to the true higher soul, that lead to the goal and release and re-union, that are real, include all aspects of ascetic withdrawal and practice, the actual practice of formal sitting in contemplation, spiritual reading and study (and, as ancillary, for those capable of it, language study to learn Ancient Greek to be able to actually read the primary spiritual texts, such as the Dialogs and Enneads, the reading of which constitutes a form of auxiliary contemplation and for which translations are inadequate), and, possibly, sharing and discussion with true spiritual friends (if you can find any here in the depths of the modern Kali Yuga!).  That’s it!

The minimum actions that are merely necessary for psycho-physical survival, for maintaining mind and body in good condition to serve for the contemplative ascetic practice proper, that don’t really belong to the higher self or soul and the sage, that don’t directly conduce to liberation, are not always quite so clear, especially in the circumstances of the present day.  Obviously, what ones are really necessary include eating/food and water (and, of course, subsequent excretion!), sleeping, clothing, housing, some exercise, healthcare (including dental care and vision care), bathing and washing and other forms of hygiene, and so forth.  These generally require some money and so working is generally required to earn it and is included here.  The rub here is that exactly how much and what form of each of these things is required and how they are best obtained and done varies and depends on the individual’s capability and capacity and ability and given physical and mental and emotional karmic factory equipment and individual situation and circumstances.  Always, though, of course, we are talking about only the minimum necessary of such things, with no luxury and no regard for sensual pleasure or enjoyment or the opinion of worldlings or social expectations or etc.  Thus, each individual has to discern and decide these for themselves and their circumstances, based on a sound understanding of ascetic and spiritual and contemplative principles and consultation with the spiritual texts and, if and when possible, with true ascetic spiritual friends.  This can often be unclear and difficult to ascertain and an ongoing process of discernment and adjustment.  Nonetheless, these basic items needed for minimal physical survival in consonance with proper ascetic poverty and conduct are comparatively clear.  One thing that is obviously and most uncompromisingly clear is that the discharging and obtaining of these physical necessities must always be done in the most scrupulously righteous, honest, and non-harming (and, of course, this means vegan in food, clothing, shoes, accessories, medicines, personal care products, etc.!) manner no matter what–this can’t be compromised even if it were to mean not having necessities and dying!

What is even more difficult to discern and understand, however, is what activities and to what extent are permissible for maintaining one’s mental and emotional state in a condition suitable for the contemplative ascetic practice, including how much and in what manner it is necessary to refresh and rest the mind and emotions and have something resembling ‘recreation’ and how much and what sort of people contact is necessary to avoid excessive depression and anxiety and mental distortion.  It is, of course, being assumed here that fully committed and devoted celibate, solitary, vegan, teetotalling, contemplative, etc. renunciants and ascetics are being addressed.  The practitioner has to discern, at any given stage of practice, just how hard they can practice in a sustained manner without undue emotional and mental disruption, how much social isolation they can handle, and how much time they have to devote, however unwillingly, to a little mental, emotional, and human rest and refreshment and by what means they can properly fulfill this reluctant need.  Some means are obviously proscribed and not acceptable:  movies, television, fiction, popular music, worldly social events, excessive reading or viewing or hearing of the news, social action, political activities, premeditated socializing with worldlings, etc.  (Those who still have family obligations and commitments may not be able to avoid all family functions and gatherings and so forth.  They will have to decide and discern about this on a case by case basis.)  Acceptable forms of ‘recreation’ may be such as reading various works of and about ascetics and spiritual understandings and practices in different systems, which can be helpful for company and encouragement as well as relaxation and can also sometimes provide helpful ancillary knowledge and background, discussing such, if you can somehow find anybody now with whom to do so or who at least likes to hear about it, walking outdoors, which also provides the needed exercise to maintain the physical body, watching videos about ascetics in different systems on the internet, looking for and researching books and works on asceticism and the like, reading outside, weather permitting, researching about veganism and acceptable products and how to manage doing least harm, such as also to the environment, and learning about the intelligence and sensitivity of animals, and so forth.  The hardest thing, probably, is the problem of social isolation in the circumstances of the present day in which we find ourselves.  Ideally, all ordinary human social contact that is necessary to keep from going crazy and being over-tense at any given stage and progress on the Path would be provided by interaction with true ascetic spiritual friends–the only other people truly and really worth having anything to do with.  These are hard to find even in the best of times and circumstances, but now are especially rare and one can hardly count on this being available at present.  So what to do?  Of course, premeditated socializing and attending social events with ordinary worldlings is out of the question.  In the absence of spiritual friends or enough spiritual friends, probably about the best one can do for a little human contact is to get by with just brief unplanned casual encounters with people one meets or has to meet with in the course of discharging the other necessary actions: neighbors, coworkers, housemates, passersby, fellow passengers on public transportation, etc. (those still with family relationships they can’t get out of too much can include interaction with family–which may be more than too much for this purpose!).  One has to be careful, especially early on in the askesis, not to be sucked into and influenced by their worldly views, attitudes, understandings, opinions, advice, and acts, but, hopefully, this can be done, one can get a little human contact of however an undesirable sort without too much harm, and come out largely unscathed.  One can try to talk to them about what one actually does and is as an ascetic, however uncomprehending they may be.  Not ideal, but maybe the only option possible.  It is important to note that interaction with bad, false alleged spiritual friends is actually an even worse option.  Casually talking and interacting with chance worldlings one can more easily distance oneself from them, recognize their foolishness and evil, admonish oneself not to be like them, protect oneself by talking about such things as veganism, and turn to the writings and records of the ancient true practitioners for inspiration and guidance, to the “community of saints”, as it were.  But with bad supposed spiritual friends and false ascetics or non-ascetics, “wolves in sheep’s clothing”, (and such are mostly all there are these days!) one is liable to be subtly drawn in and mislead by their sophistries and fall from the Way!

The key in this matter is:  First, to understand and accept and commit and be devoted to the principle outlined here that there are only two acceptable and legitimate and justifiable reasons for doing anything–either because it is part of contemplative ascetic practice and leads to re-union with the Good and liberation from birth and death, or because it is indispensably necessary to maintain psycho-physical survival in this birth.  Next, with understanding and discernment of what is necessary, to honestly assess one’s own motivations in performing any act or doing anything.  Is it really necessary, if it is not part of the askesis, or is it really because of remaining worldly desire and interest?  Lastly, to discern as best as possible what really is absolutely necessary in any doing in this world, apart from the contemplative ascetic practice, and to do only that regardless of the latent habits and desires of the lower defiled worldly self.  Every act we do either moves us further on the Path to the telos, if we choose wisely, or binds us further to the wheel of birth and death and creates more suffering samsaric karma.  In everything we do, we must try to discern as best as we can which this action is and be honest as to our motivation and what we are doing, and with great discipline, enthusiasm, love, effort, and joy try to always take the upward Path!

Why was this essay written?  “...but the gardens in writings, as it seems, he will both sow and will write for the sake of play, whenever he would write, storing up reminders both for himself, if he should come to the “forgetting of old age”, and for everyone following the same track…”  [Phaedrus 276 d1-4]

© 2024 Eric S. Fallick

A Q. and A. on the cenobium vs. eremiticism

 

Q. We talked about the cenobitical vs. the eremtical life approaches.  A point that I didn't think of while we were talking, but was hovering in the back of my mind, is that cenobitical approaches live in accordance with a rule (like the Rule of St. Benedict).  That is to say that every member of a cenobium has to align their daily activities in accordance with an objective rule that is the basic structure of that way of life.  I think this has advantages for spiritual practice.  It means that those who participate in this way of life have abandoned personal choices in many areas of life (e.g. when to eat, what to wear, etc.).  I see this as a form of renunciation that opens up the possibility of a higher goal in life, beyond that of self-satisfaction in making one's own choices.  

 

A. Would you like me to respond briefly to this observation?  We could always talk about it more sometime if you like, but a few quick thoughts follow.  I understand that this is a common argument made by the cenobium in its favor, but I don't think it is really valid or is a superiority of cenobitical monasticism over eremitical.  (By the way, as I'm sure you know, all the monastic traditions that I know of--Buddhist, Jaina, Hindu, Christian, Quanzhen Daoist--started as eremitical and then only in time developed cenobitical forms that eventually took over and declared themselves to be superior, but were never able to entirely eliminate the original eremitical ideal.  Reform movements within them tended towards a return to the original eremitical way as superior for actual spiritual practice and attainment.  And there have always been individual renunciant practitioners within them who were truly striving for liberation who took to and remained in the eremitical life of spiritual necessity, who were the greatest in their systems, and often the systems always retained this as an option.  Anyway, it would take a long time to discuss all of this and various examples in detail.)

Eremitical renunciants, at least real ones, also very much, at least as much, follow an objective rule that is the basic structure of their way of life and renounce and give up personal choices of the lower self and self-satisfaction therein.  They, however, have to have the discipline to do it themselves without external enforcement and be able to do it with understanding of the principles and reasons involved (though some may not always have had such understanding).  Further, their objective rule or way is, at least ideally or at least for Platonists, the actual 'rule' or requirements in the very nature of reality, not a more or less conditioned rule created by a specific temporospatial figure or group.  They must conform themselves to the 'paradigm laid up in heaven for those who want to see it and seeing it establish a colony in themselves', which is the most objective and least self-satisfied and of idiosyncratic choices 'rule' or 'way' possible.  This, I think, even more, much more, opens the possibility of a higher goal in life, indeed the highest.

Many of the arguments that the cenobium and other institutionalized spiritual groups use for their advantages, including, I think, this one, I think are confusing conditioned, and ultimately mundane, personal development with actual unconditioned based spiritual advancement.  Of course, individual eremites can confuse these also, but real spiritual practice has to be based on a genuine aspiration and determination from within that comes from the Good starting to re-manifest Itself from within the practitioner/ascetic, and thus is very far from a self-satisfied personal choice.  (The decision to follow a cenobitical rule and be part of the group and let them make the choices in certain regards can be just as much a self-satisfying personal choice without necessarily having real unconditioned spiritual motivation.)

These are big and most important topics that are a lot to go into, but here are a couple quick thoughts of mine to go with yours.  Incidentally, as I guess you know, historically, many eremitical monastics have actually had written 'rules' like those of cenobites that they had to follow given to them by preceptors or institutional authorities or written by themselves.

If it is of any help to think of it in this way, not going to social or worldly events like the fine dining experience that you narrowly escaped is an objective rule for eremitical renunciants and one that is inscribed in Reality Itself and something that you don't really have a personal choice about--you simply can't do such things but have to be 100% focused on the askesis, especially given impermanence and your age and condition and the urgency of 'the Great Matter of Birth and Death'.

If Platonism had ever manifested as an organized religious institution or an organized monastic institution, it would have become, by definition, another thing of this world, another conditioned phenomena, and, like all things of this world and conditioned phenomena, been subject to impermanence, change, decay, decline, corruption, destruction, and disappearance.  It would have lost its pure transcendence and liberative power, like all the other systems that did become institutions for the many.  It would have become, to whatever degree, just a shadow or phantom, rather than a real being, like everything else in the sense world, including the other religious and spiritual systems and institutions that are part of the sense world.

 

We are trying to get free entirely from this world and all phenomenal sensory spatio-temporal individuated worlds.  We renounce this world entirely and completely as far as we can in all its respects and hold only to the Absolute, to Transcendence.  Organized, institutionalized monasticism doesn't actually do this.  It just creates another alternative conditioned phenomenal world of its own, complete with costumes, uniforms, rituals, ceremonies, ranks, hierarchies, positions and offices, laws and codes, etiquettes, properties, finances and maintenances,  family structures and bonds and attachments, politics, entertainments, emotional appeals and satisfactions, etc., etc.--all the things of this world that we have renounced and they are supposed to have renounced!  Thus, while it is certainly much better than ordinary worldly life and can be a useful, and, for many, necessary, half-way house, it is difficult to attain full true liberation within it.  This is why most of the real people, even if they formally belonged to a monastic order and were initially brought up in the cenobium, even in the highly institutionalized systems, tended to eventually become hermits, solitaries, forest ascetics, etc. to try to really practice and pursue liberation and perfection.

A Platonist "precept"/"vow" of monastic poverty

 Given here is an explicit statement of philosophos conduct/practice that could be added to a list of such surviving explicit "regulations" compiled from the extant written Platonist texts, from the Dialogs to the end of Platonism in antiquity, though so much appears to be lost or never committed to writing, though the Phaedo also enjoins voluntary monastic poverty, I think, pretty explicitly, and it is also at least implied, if not outright stated, in the Politea:

 

"O both dear Pan and how many other gods (are) here, give to me to become/be beautiful/noble inside: but how much I have outside to be friendly with the things inside for me.  And may I consider the wise person rich: and may the quantity of gold for me be how much no one other than the one having control over sensual desires, the sane person, would be able to bear or manage/observe."  (Phaedrus, 279 b9-c3)

 

The above is my own rendering, which may differ noticeably from other translations of the Phaedrus.

 

Here are a few other explicit  statements for a list for a philosophos’ “rule” from some surviving fragments (all in my own quick, rough draft, off the cuff translations):

From Olympiodorus' commentary on the Phaedo:

" "The philosopher, as far as is not absolutely necessary, looks down upon/disdains the care of the body"...The are three (kinds of) activities:  either natural and necessary, as taking nourishment and sleeping; or natural, but not necessary, as sexual intercourse; or neither natural nor necessary, as finery and how many things there are of variegated clothing--there being these three (kinds of) activities, therefore, the philosopher will have nothing at all to do with the natural but not necessary and the neither natural nor necessary, but will thrust them away from himself/reject/despise them (for nocturnal emissions will suffice for him in regard to secretion of semen), but he will make use of the first (i.e., the natural and necessary) a little bit perfunctorily/pro forma, as not to take his fill/make much of them.  "If, then, these things are thus, the philosopher, as far as is not absolutely necessary, disdains the body; such a one is willing to die; the philosopher therefore practices death."..."

This is a clear and explicit statement that the Platonist philosophos is a celibate ascetic. 

From Damascius' commentary on the Phaedo:

"...the contemplative philosopher is one wanting as his goal having been made one with the (hypostases) above himself and to be theirs rather than of himself:  on which account (Plato) says "(it is not lawful) for the not pure to touch the pure".

It is necessary for the one being purified and hastening to be made like the Pure first to reject pleasures and pains as far as he is able; second, he must nourish himself with plain, simple food without luxury, but also food that is righteous and temperate (but this is untainted with blood and spotless) and that is holy and in accord with ancestral practice (for the food that is unholy and harming animals and coarsening the spirit makes the body intractable to the soul and unfit for contact with God); third, he must cut off the unharmonious wrong motion of the appetitive irrationality (for what would one standing aloof from all external things desire and with what would he be angry?), but if ever such a sort of thing would be moved either awake or asleep, it is most quickly put down by the reason; fourth, he must keep away from all sense-perceptions and imaginations, as far as it is not necessary to use them; fifth, the one wanting to be released from the multiplicity of becoming is to be separated from the opinions of all various sorts; the sixth precept out of all of them, is to escape the variegated complexity of thought and pursue the simpler expositions and distinctions with a view to becoming accustomed to the undivided intelligence."

This is an injunction to vegetarianism. 

The Timaeus is explicitly vegan, as is the Epinomis.

Of course, Porphyry tells us in the "Life" that Plotinus "didn't abide to take medicines made from wild animals, saying that neither did he allow foods from the bodies of domesticated animals" and Porphyry, of course, wrote his whole book on the necessity of vegetarianism, and with it philosophical asceticism.

Though it is not directly from Platonism, but from Neo-Pythagoreanism, which is likely more derived from Platonism, in Philostratus' LIfe of Apollonius of Tyana, Apollonius is given as explicitly and in detail setting forth as necessary 'precepts' 'the big three':  celibacy in all respects,  vegetarianism and probably veganism (including not wearing leather, etc.), and teetotalling:

“For if someone has come to my standards of conduct, he would choose to get rid of all food (lit., how much of a table) of (i.e., coming from) animals; and he would utterly forget wine and not make turbid the vessel of wisdom that stands in the souls of those abstaining from wine; neither a cloak will warm him, nor wool, that has been shorn from an animal, and I give to him shoes of papyrus, and to lie down to sleep as it chances; and if I perceive him giving way to sexual desire and love, I have pits of perdition down into which Righteousness, the attendant of Wisdom, bears such people and thrusts them (into them)...”

I think that probably the above examples could be expanded and multiplied many times through searching the fragmentary surviving texts and probably there were many more such explicit prescriptions in the likely much greater bulk of Platonist literature that is lost to us (for example, because of the Muslims burning the great ancient library of Alexandria and the Christians burning whatever may have escaped the Muslims!), but just the above, with, of course, the Phaedo, Republic, and Timaeus and others, may perhaps be enough to obviate concern about any lack of structure or definite prescriptions in Platonism.  It seems that the ascetic Path of Platonism is pretty clear, it's just that it is left to the individual, who is one of the few not the many and is presumed to have some spiritual discernment himself, to work out the exact details in each particular circumstance, without, for instance, the sort of long lists of silly, absurd, and neurotic details given in, for example, the Buddhist Vinayas and the sort of attempts criticized in the Republic to endlessly create detailed rules for every particular circumstance to try to make up for a lack of actual righteousness, renunciation, asceticism, and spiritual discernment and informed-ness and intelligence enabling the ascetic to decide more correctly what to do in each case in accordance with the actual principles of the contemplative ascetic life and practice and the single-minded striving for release and the telos without worldly concerns and desires. 

 

I might make another suggestion of a resolution to feeling a want of a set of formal precepts or regulations for Platonist contemplative ascetics/philosophoi in the extant texts--in fact, a more really Platonist, perhaps, and ultimately more satisfactory and definitive solution.  It is, though, one that is not necessarily easy to implement and hardly anyone now could do it or even try to do it.  If one can manage to clearly and fully "see" or "touch" or "know" or come in contact with in contemplation, having ascended to the noetic realm, to the level of Nous, and entering into it, the actual Form/Idea of "contemplative-ascetic-in itself" or "contemplative-asceticism-in-itself" or "philosophos-in-itself" or "Platonist-renunciant/yogi-in-itself" or etc.--however, one might choose to label it just as a means of focussing on that one particular Form as it truly and really and paradigmatically exists in Nous--one will find that it contains in itself, is the higher source of, (in unity and interpenetration with the separate Forms of the individual virtues, etc.) all the practices/"precepts"/necessary prescriptions/standards of conduct/"regulations”, etc. that we talk about--celibacy, veganism, teetotaling, monastic poverty, abstaining from worldly entertainments, simplicity of food, drink, and clothing, world-renunciation, solitude, sitting in contemplation practice, etc., etc.  All are there, though, of course, not in a series or list of statements in English(!) at the level of discursive thought, but as the actual really existing aspects of the complex level Form.  After thoroughly contemplating this Form at the level of Nous, when the soul is not even really, in a sense, itself but has entered into a degree of unity with Nous, when the soul returns to this level the logoi corresponding to or emanating from the Form will appear clearly in the soul as the statements of necessary practice or conduct at the discursive verbal level.  Hard for me to put the matter into words and a hard thing to do, but I think this is a much more ultimately satisfactory source of and point of reliance for, the real thing, what constitutes ascetic practice and conduct than feeling dependent on karmically appearing sensory experience, which is, after all, really what any text we have is.  As Platonist contemplative ascetics, we have a great advantage and freedom in that our "regulations" of renunciant/ascetic conduct are eternally there and always accessible and real and unerring and not a matter of opinion in the realm of being, in the noetic realm, and we don't have to depend on karmically chancing to encounter teachings of such in the uncertain, always changing, impermanent, only the object of opinion not actual knowledge, sensory realm of becoming like practitioners of other systems.  (And, ultimately, even further, our askesis comes from the source of all knowledge, the Good Itself, and direct contact and union with the Good will also, even more, upon the return, lead to all the logoi of contemplative ascetic practice being present at the discursive level in the soul.)  All the prescriptions and ideas of ascetic practice that we read about in Platonist texts and/or in the texts of other systems can then serve as reminders to help the soul recollect the real ascetic standards that it once knew in itself and now recontacts or remembers or learns in contemplation.  (The Platonist teaching of learning being recollection solves a multitude of difficulties!)

 

A Q. and A. on the Dialectic and Analogical Reasoning

 Q.  To better understand how Plato thought, I want to learn more about how the Greeks in general thought about metaphor and analogy.  Plato's philosophical style I characterize as heavily analogical. The way the dialectic in general unfolds is never linear or logical.  What are your thoughts?  Are there any texts on analogical reasoning that can help me get a better grasp on the dialectic?

 

 

A.  I’m afraid that this is one that I can't help much with.  I don't know of any texts on analogical reasoning, and have never looked for any such, nor any works on the way the Greeks in general used metaphor and analogy since, again, I have never looked for or been interested in such.  I don't know how many of my works you have read or watched on my internet venues, but you will see that I view Platonism and Plato's own teaching as spiritual teaching for the contemplative ascetic practice and ascent, not as 'thinking' or 'thought' in the modern sense or the modern idea of 'philosophy'.  The dialectic is not a matter of discursive thinking or reasoning based on sense data, but rather is the contemplative ascetic practice of placing the soul in direct contact with Nous and the Forms therein in meditation/contemplation.  The purpose of the 'dialectic' in the dialogs and the 'reasoning' in the Enneads is to facilitate this and help prepare the mind and soul for being able, after long great effort both in asceticism and contemplation/meditation, to make the ascent and enter this condition of contact with and assimilation to Nous, the Divine Mind-Thought--to enter the 'dialectical samadhi', as it were, to borrow a Sanskrit word from the Indian and derivative systems.  (In general, by far, I think, the closest analogies or systems most useful for the Platonic practitioner for comparison are the Indian origin systems of certain schools of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, rather than Aristotelianism or the later modern Western systems of 'philosophy' based solely on thinking about things without yogic practice.)  I have, if it is of any help, translated, quite literally, Plotinus' (short) Ennead 1.3, On Dialectic at my internet venues and in my book.  I don't know if you have a translation of Plotinus/the Enneads, but some of the more accessible Enneads, such as 5.1, 1.6, and 6.9 might be helpful to you in general, along with the Phaedo, as I have mentioned, and the core books of the Republic, which add more explicitly about the Good/One to the teaching of the Phaedo.  Today, I was rereading Ennead 1.6, On Beauty, in Greek, as I have many times, and was particularly struck by the statement, "But wisdom is the mental act in turning away from the things below and bringing the soul towards the things above."  That is, it is principally and authentically attained in contemplation turning the soul away from the senses and their objects and towards the higher hypostases.  And to do this requires renunciant and ascetic practice and this is as necessary as thinking to understand how things are and Plato's teaching.  Just as an example, as incomprehensible as it may be to most moderns and particularly professor types, being a vegetarian/vegan is as essential to being able to understand Plato as any degree of knowledge of later 'philosophical' systems or historical knowledge!

An Extremely Brief Introduction to Platonism

Platonism is a spiritual or religious or soteriological system that offers a path to release from the endless cycle of reincarnation and its concomitant misery. It belongs to a family of such systems, comprising Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Orphism, Pythagoreanism, and Platonism, that all accept the facts of reincarnation, the cycle of repeated birth and death, that this works by karma, that this state is wretched and painful and unsatisfactory and a fallen and mistaken condition, and that it is possible through great and correctly directed effort to be released permanently from this state. All these systems consider that the path to this release consists of renunciation, asceticism, detachment, celibacy, vegetarianism and non-harming, abstinence from alcohol and intoxicants, study, and meditation or spiritual exercises. Platonism differs from the others, as they do from each other, in its metaphysics, its description of reality and how it relates to the spiritual path, the nature of release or the condition of having attained the freedom of the goal of the path, the texts that it takes for study, its exact method of implementing the required behavioral and ascetic practices, and its methods of meditation and spiritual exercises. It also differs from the other systems in never having been or become an organized institutional religion or church for the many, in never having had an institutionalized monastic order, in not having devotional or ritual or magical practices to accommodate the non-philosophical many, in not having costumes or ceremonies or holidays and so forth, and in never allowing its ascetic practitioners to become priests/mediators for the populace. In other words, Platonism has never developed a popular religion in addition to or as its central message. It always has been, and remains, a narrow way limited to a philosophical, intellectual, and spiritual elite, for those few who are able and willing to follow its highly morally, spiritually, ascetically, contemplatively, and mentally demanding path and practice.

The texts that Platonism studies, that form the Platonist ‘scriptures’, so to speak, are the Dialogues of Plato and the Enneads of Plotinus. It implements its most stringent moral and ascetic standards and practices purely, with discernment, and without legalism, extensive legal codes, extensive lists of rules devolving down to the level of manners and customs, and trying to exhaustively catalog specific regulations for every particular circumstance that could be encountered in a given relative environment, and, of course, without the extensive prescriptions for ritual and ceremonial practice that preoccupy many other systems. Its meditation and contemplation practices consist in coming to understand the workings of things at the level of soul, ascending to contemplation of the actual Platonic Forms and the Divine Mind, and finally ascending to contemplation of and union with the One or the Good, which is the final release and goal.

The Platonist system or description of reality consists of three existential or experiential levels or degrees of reality that are called the three hypostases. In descending order, from first to last, and from most real to least real, these are the One or the Good, the Divine Mind and the Platonic Forms, and Soul. The One or the Good is the Absolute, the utterly Transcendent, the Unity, the Source, the purest noumenon, “God”, the source and origin and fount of all things, from which all things come but which Itself comes from nothing else, and which remains always unchanged as all else emanates from It. The Divine Mind-Thought, Nous, emanates from the One and is the second most real and perfect thing. It is one unitary divine mind with its objects with which it is neither different nor identical. The objects or thoughts of the single divine mind are the Platonic Ideas or Forms or Archetypes or Things-in-themselves, which, again, are not different or outside the one Mind. This level is a one-many, not a pure unity like the One. Though dynamic and active, it is still unchanging and still transcends, is beyond, time and space. The third level of existence is that of soul, both the World Soul or Soul of the All and all the individual souls of individual sentient beings both human and non-human. This is the level of changing, impermanent, differentiated sensory experience, of space and time, of separate individuals, of cyclic individuated sensate spatio-temporal existence, of the cycle of reincarnation, and of karma. Though still divinely ordered by the World Soul, it is the level of suffering, misery, unsatisfactoriness, and endless rebirth in time and space and change for individual souls. This is the level at which we find ourselves now, and that we must transcend and escape from back to the higher hypostases from which we have fallen. To ordinary people and animals, this seems to be the only real and true level (especially now in the naturalist modern world where so many deny transcendence altogether or have never even heard or conceived of it and think that the sensory world is all that there is), but actually it is the least true and least real. It is the level of mere opinion, not of true knowledge, which is of the higher levels.

The Platonist practitioner and ascetic works to transcend this lowest level of individual soul and escape from it and the cycle of reincarnation dictated by karma and return to and re-become the higher hypostases. Since the soul is imprisoned in the body and sensory existence and takes these things as real, he or she renounces all sensory things and things and activities of this world as much as possible and devotes him- or herself solely to transcendent and divine things alone, to things of the soul, not things of the body and its desires and emotions. Thus, he is celibate and teetotaling (not deliberately dulling his divine soul with intoxicants) and abstains from worldly pleasures as much as possible, is a true ascetic and renunciant. He aims at conforming to the true paradigmatic virtues in the noetic realm (the second hypostasis) and so cultivates all moral virtue and non-harming. He is vegan, completely honest, doesn’t obtain the necessities of life in a way that harms any beings, is kind and gentle, etc. Through study of the Dialogues of Plato and the Enneads of Plotinus, and ancillary works, and reflection, he gains an understanding of the nature of things here at the level of soul and how they work, an idea of what the higher hypostases must be like and of their utter transcendence, of how to live virtuously and ascetically, and of the nature of the Path and what it entails and how to practice it. Then, with all this as a base, he devotes himself to contemplation practice to attain direct noetic apprehension of the Platonic Forms and transfer his soul to the level of and unity with the second hypostasis, the Divine Mind-Thought. Finally, established here at the second level, he devotes himself even further and vigorously to contemplation practice to directly touch and apprehend the One, the Good, and eventually attain complete and permanent re-union with and re-identification with It. This is the release from the cycle of birth and death and the final goal. All this is most difficult and is likely to take many lifetimes and rebirths, with many years of hard work to make some progress in any given birth.

Given the non-institutional, individual, transcendent, and transhistorical nature of the Platonist system and practice, and its lack of dependence on particular worldly structures, the Platonist ascetics, the philosophoi, are rather less likely to leave traces in the historical record. We are most fortunate that the Dialogues and Enneads have been preserved, but if many other Platonist ascetics left any written records, many things were lost or destroyed when Christianity and Islam came to power with their intolerance of anything else and their attempt to destroy all other writings. There has never been a time when the Dialogues and Enneads were not being read, even in the original Greek, from antiquity, through Byzantium, into the Renaissance and modernity, and there couldn’t have been actual Platonist contemplatives, but once Christianity and Islam took over, any such would have had to remain hidden at the cost of their lives. Nonetheless, Platonism has greatly influenced the Abrahamic systems, and the Jewish, Islamic, and, especially, Christian mystical systems owe a great deal to and and in some cases are even largely based on Platonism. After Plotinus, but before the final suppression of all non-Abrahamic practices, some teachers and people, such as Iamblichus and Proclus, who considered themselves Platonists, but departed thoroughly from the actual Platonic system, attempted to incorporate polytheistic, ritual, theurgic, and magical practices and thought into Platonism and make it more like the other popular religions. Unfortunately, most of the few modern people who have attempted to revive some sort of Platonist practice have fallen in with and follow these later ideas or those of the conscious incorporation of into or blending with Judaism, Christianity, or Islam.



Ⓒ 2020 Eric S. Fallick

The Reason for Asceticism

Q. I've read a few chapters of your book, and it has prompted me to think more about asceticism, attempting to answer the question: Why is asceticism important and even necessary for the moral and spiritual development of the person? In short, what is the reason for asceticism? 

At this stage, my understanding is that asceticism functions to counteract the cause of our corporeal existence. When the nous fell or broke from unity, there must have been some initial movement, creating the momentum to cause the nous to fall or precipitate from the Good to the lesser, temporal goods (and evils) of mortal and bodily existence. This initial movement was an act of carelessness or negligence with regard to the nous and its unity with the Good. The nous carelessly and negligently turned away from unity to multiplicity in order to pursue individuation, which divided the nous into nous, soul, and body. 

Asceticism is carefulness and thoughtfulness (the antithesis of negligence) functioning as a therapy or antidote or the application of justice to the careless and negligent movement of the nous away from the One, underpinning a process of purification via the instrument of the body that removes the passions from the soul, and allowing in turn for the recovery and return of the nous to unity. 

I was wondering if you could comment on this, confirm my understanding, or correct it in any way? 

A. Thank you for reading some of my book. I don't know if you have read or will get to some of the other essays that explain more of the reason for asceticism, though most of them do in one way or another, and also point out that asceticism is not just instrumental, but the very manifestation or reflection of the Good in this world. In the divine Plato, the Phaedo, especially, among the dialogs, gives extensively the rationale for asceticism, though parts of others do also, and much of the Enneads also explains this (in relation particularly to what you say, see, eg., the beginning of Ennead 5.1). 

I wouldn't say that what you say is incorrect, though I wouldn't say that it is the whole story. One thing I would 'correct', since you ask, is where you say "...purification via the instrument of the body...". I would say, rather, that asceticism is purification from the body, not using the body as an instrument, but rather having as little to do with it (and the sense world) as possible. As you indicate, the fall of the soul is from unity, the Good/One and Nous into cyclic individuated sensate existence in space-time, into the cycle of repeated reincarnation and sensory/bodily existence, and this we have to get free from and return to just being Nous and the One only. To do this, we have to turn the soul, and the whole soul, back around 180 degrees from looking and being in the direction of this lowest darkest least real level of multiplicity and individuated temporal-spatial quasi-existence to looking only at and being only in (and this is the only true being) Nous and the Good. Being involved with the body and the things of this world and pursuing the things of the senses and sensual pleasures and the things of this world of every kind and in every sense is exactly being in the fallen state and pursuing it further and running ever deeper into it and birth and death and looking towards and having the soul turned towards the darkness. Asceticism, having as little to do with the body and the sense world as possible, just doing the minimum necessary to keep the psycho-physical organism going until we can be rid of it, being unconcerned with sensual pleasures, dealing with and seeking only those things of this world minimally necessary for survival, and voluntarily being concerned only with the 

things of the soul and the divine, turning the whole soul as much as possible from the body and sense things to look at and strive for the higher hypostases, is this very process of turning from this fall into and state of becoming back to Nous and the One. This also points towards why I say that asceticism isn't just instrumental, isn't just a means that has to be justified. The highly accomplished contemplative, but who still is bearing his last body and not completely done yet until he is completely free from body, sensory experience, individuation, and being at all in this 'material' world and becoming, would be permanently turned back to Nous and the One except for such minimal attention as still being embodied for a while yet more requires for maintaining the remaining psychophysical existence, and couldn't give more attention to and be concerned with this world and especially sensual pleasures, possessions, etc., etc. than that even if he tried. Not being an ascetic would be not being a contemplative, would be being back in bondage, would be being back an ordinary worldling again. Contemplation and asceticism necessarily go together, are two aspects of the same process, two sides of one coin. Sensual and worldly indulgence and involvement is the exact opposite of contemplation and spiritual practice and moves the soul in the exact opposite direction. One, the soul, can only move in one direction at a time, so there is simply the choice of either pursuing sensual pleasures and worldly things and anti-contemplation and going deeper into bondage and binding oneself tighter to the wheel of birth and death, or renouncing this world and the things of this world and the senses and pursuing asceticism and contemplation hand in hand and going towards freedom from becoming and re-union with Nous and the One. 

I hope that this answers your request for comment a little. It could be a lot to go into in thorough detail and in all aspects. Incidentally, your question sort of reminded me a little of how completely different my way of looking at things, and that of true contemplative ascetics generally, if there are any now, is from that of the world and worldlings, especially now in this modern brave new world. Contemplative asceticism, renunciation, is the obvious necessity and fact and true way and only life that is really life--this seems so obvious and the reasons so clear that the rationale hardly needs to be rehearsed--the burden of proof would be on those who might claim that asceticism and renunciation isn't the way and for any worldlings who would attempt to justify their way, though it would, of course, be impossible for them to do so and they and their thoughts are not in any way in accord with Reality! 

These Writings Now Available in Book Form

The essays, pieces, and translations on this blogspot site up to this date are now available in printed book form from lulu.com and all the regular online retail booksellers.  The full information:  Eric Fallick, Platonist Contemplative Asceticism:  Practice and Principle, ISBN 978-0-359-77301-5.
http://www.lulu.com/shop/eric-fallick/platonist-contemplative-asceticism-practice-and-principle/paperback/product-24173074.html