The Platonic/Plotinian teaching is pure idealism, even if it is expressed in a vocabulary and language that we may not immediately understand as such. (Incidentally, 'matter' is a very misleading translation for the Greek hule in Plotinus. In Plotinus, it carries none of the connotations of 'matter' in the modern physical sense, but is rather the extremity or principle, so to speak, of non-being, of darkness, of nescience. I have toyed with the idea of using 'anti-stuff' as a translation for hule.) There is only knowing, experience, 'mind', 'consciousness' or, as Plotinus puts it, contemplation. All is, as Plotinus says (Ennead 3.8), contemplation. The One is complete pure knowing or contemplation beyond knowing/contemplation. Nous is already lesser, incomplete, impure, adulterated to some extent but still unified knowing/contemplation having already been mixed, so to speak, to a certain extent with nescience/darkness/non-being, which Plotinus sometimes refers to as noetic hule/'matter'. Soul is knowing/contemplation mixed to the greatest extent with nescience/darkness/non-being to the point that it appears as individuated as our souls and in space-time and sense-perception, etc. It is still, though, the same knowing/contemplation, in its reality unchanged and unalterable and indestructible, as knowing/contemplation is still only in itself purely knowing/contemplation as such and can't be anything else, but is now turned or looking in the direction of the extremity of nescience/darkness/non-being and thus no longer knows itself or complete pure knowing/contemplation. The soul, thus, needs to turn around back to, to redirect back its attention to, to regain the complete pure knowing/contemplation of and that is the One, to re-become that complete pure knowing/contemplation without any admixture of nescience/darkness/non-being. Thus, renunciation and asceticism is of the very essence of the purification process, and also is not just of instrumental value but remains of the very essence of the fuller knowing/contemplation state(s), since involvement in and pursuit of the world of diversified individuated sense data in space-time more than is absolutely necessary, which is what worldly life is, is the very fact of looking in the direction of darkness, of only knowing/contemplating in a very darkened, impure, incomplete, ignorant way--being in worldly life is by definition knowing/contemplating/seeing the darkness and non-being of sense perception. The practice of purification, on the other hand, is more and more only seeing/knowing/contemplating the Forms and Nous and then the One/Good, and thus being in the very state of Nous and eventually the One Themselves, and thus obviously involves knowing/contemplating/seeing worldly life and its things of the senses less and less. The One is, of course, always there and unchanged, but we don't know it without turning away from the sense world, which is really non-being, in both life and mind, and turning the imperishable knowing of the soul back to the One.
Showing posts with label Idealism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Idealism. Show all posts
Saturday, June 16, 2018
Monday, April 16, 2018
Q. and A. on Karma
Q. and A. on Karma
Greetings Eric. In past emails we touched upon the subject of karma several times. For instance, why we view phenomena the way we do, while others do not. I want to clear any erroneous notions I might have, regarding how karma works within the Platonic system. I once heard the late Advaita Vedanta teacher Ramesh Balsekar say, "there is no individual doer of any deed, everything is just a happening. The Will of God or Cosmic law." You also know, the Jains and Buddhist understand karma completely different from him, and each other. Is everything predetermined by karma? What is the difference between fate and karma? Is the human will completely in bondage to karma? I do not wish to sound Augustinian, I just desire clarity. What is the proper hierarchy between intellect and will? Which Ennead and Platonic dialogue should I read, which would point to the correct understanding, concerning freedom of the will or the lack thereof? Thank you in advance for your reply
These are questions of great importance and involved and hard to cover extensively in an email reply, but I will try to do so briefly. Ennead VI.8 is "On Free Will and the Will of the One" and deals with this. You might also want to read the beginning of Ennead V.1. It would take a very long time for me to go through all the Enneads and try to cite all the passages and parts related to this. There isn't a specific Platonic dialogue I can refer you to for this. In passing, let me mention that modern so-called Advaitins are generally most all actually full-blown theists of almost an Abrahamic type and I wouldn't necessarily go by what they say as actually representing the actual earlier Advaita school. Karma is not determinism, fate or pre-destination and we are not Augustinians or Calvinists. The human will is not completely in bondage to karma or else liberation would not be possible. Everything is determined by karma but not pre-determined. At every moment, we have the free will to move either towards liberation and re-union with the One or further into multiplicity and greater bondage. Some of the confusion may be due to a realist (in the modern, not the opposite medieval, sense) and physicalist/materialist perspective on things that conceives of objects and events existing apart from perceiving subjects, where in reality there is just experience and Mind as a unitary whole. Karma is only relevant at this lowest level of Soul and individuated sensate existence in space-time that is a weak projection or faint reflection or darkening of the higher hypostases of Nous and the Good. At this level, subject and object have apparently broken up, but still cannot exist apart from each other, by definition. The Soul of the All experiences this All as a whole and all time and space, which are only created by soul, simultaneously and all our individual souls are within its experiential field. Our individual experiential fields include all our individual relative worlds and experiences that we experience appearing as a temporal and spatial series of past, present and future and translation in space and all our sense-perceptions of objects and events and other souls, etc. At each moment, we experience given things and happenings as our experiential field and we act volitionally on this basis. Our volitional actions and choices and thoughts modify our experiential field and sometimes that of others we are interacting with. All the modifications of our experiential field and those of all other souls modify the experiential field of the Soul of the All. These modifications of the experiential field of the All in turn then modify our experiential field and those of all other souls. The Soul of the All experiences all this in a single moment of time, as it were, and a single place, as it were, but we experience all these modifications of our experiential fields as a temporal series.
Thus, all the modifications that we have done by volitional thought and action in what we perceive as the past modify, through the Soul of the All and its experience of both our modified experiential fields and those of all other souls, what we perceive and experience as our present and future experiential fields. This is what we call karma. There is no such thing as fate in the sense of experiences that don't occur as a result of our volitional choices, but there is providence in that all this works in accordance with righteousness and necessity and is a reflection or unfolding in space-time of the eternal relations of Nous. At each moment, we have the choice of our will being that of the higher soul--of that in contact with Nous and the Good and, ultimately, really of Nous and the Good themselves--which moves us in the direction of divinity and liberation or our will being that of the lower or animal soul bound in with the body and sense-perception and this world, which moves us further into bondage and sense-experience. Even though the conditions, circumstances, perceptions, desires, passions, emotions, defilements, involuntarily arising thoughts, etc., etc. that we experience and that constitute our experiential field at a given time are determined by karma, we always have the ability to whatever extent to then react to them or act and think, even if only a little bit, based on the higher soul and higher hypostases rather than the lower and thus create positive karma and, more specifically, karma leading to release. As I have indicated before, this striving for liberation and renunciation and acting according to the true higher self is really the One acting through us and working to re-realize and re-unify Itself through us, though It has actually never become de-unified and all this is actually only happening or apparently happening at our level which is less real and only a subtraction and darkening that doesn't affect the Light at the level of the Good, which is completely unchanged. Words and purely discursive understanding maybe begin to fail at this point in my explanation. When this happens, when one is truly renouncing and correctly striving for release, the modification of the experiential field of the Soul of the All includes that the Light is starting to reappear in and through a particular soul and its experiential field is being thus modified, and so that soul's experiential field keeps being modified in a way to allow it to keep going to liberation, but also brings forth the deluded modifications that it previously effected and have to be used up, but now in a manner that, while perhaps difficult and not pleasant, doesn't permanently or really hinder its continued progress towards the telos. Ordinary deluded worldlings, on the other hand, just experience modifications to their experiential field based on previous deluded volitions based on the lower self and just react to them again on the basis of the lower self and just then create more such modifications and just keep going in an endless cycle of shifting low level experiential fields of rebirth as humans and non-humans until and if somehow they begin to see through it and begin to act from the higher soul and the Absolute begins to remanifest through them. Why this movement towards release has started in a few souls but not in most at any given point, I don't know. As I have said, this is all kind of involved and not necessarily easily graspable at soul-level. The most important thing is to renounce the world and strive wholeheartedly for re-union with the Good, the source of all knowing and knowledge, at which point this won't be a problem.
I hope this explanation is at least somewhat intelligible and helps to answer your questions and give you greater clarity, at least to a reasonable degree. Perhaps, I should also mention that my answers are, frankly, based on my own contemplative experience and understanding, and I can't necessarily cite written authorities for my way of putting things.
Greetings Eric. In past emails we touched upon the subject of karma several times. For instance, why we view phenomena the way we do, while others do not. I want to clear any erroneous notions I might have, regarding how karma works within the Platonic system. I once heard the late Advaita Vedanta teacher Ramesh Balsekar say, "there is no individual doer of any deed, everything is just a happening. The Will of God or Cosmic law." You also know, the Jains and Buddhist understand karma completely different from him, and each other. Is everything predetermined by karma? What is the difference between fate and karma? Is the human will completely in bondage to karma? I do not wish to sound Augustinian, I just desire clarity. What is the proper hierarchy between intellect and will? Which Ennead and Platonic dialogue should I read, which would point to the correct understanding, concerning freedom of the will or the lack thereof? Thank you in advance for your reply
These are questions of great importance and involved and hard to cover extensively in an email reply, but I will try to do so briefly. Ennead VI.8 is "On Free Will and the Will of the One" and deals with this. You might also want to read the beginning of Ennead V.1. It would take a very long time for me to go through all the Enneads and try to cite all the passages and parts related to this. There isn't a specific Platonic dialogue I can refer you to for this. In passing, let me mention that modern so-called Advaitins are generally most all actually full-blown theists of almost an Abrahamic type and I wouldn't necessarily go by what they say as actually representing the actual earlier Advaita school. Karma is not determinism, fate or pre-destination and we are not Augustinians or Calvinists. The human will is not completely in bondage to karma or else liberation would not be possible. Everything is determined by karma but not pre-determined. At every moment, we have the free will to move either towards liberation and re-union with the One or further into multiplicity and greater bondage. Some of the confusion may be due to a realist (in the modern, not the opposite medieval, sense) and physicalist/materialist perspective on things that conceives of objects and events existing apart from perceiving subjects, where in reality there is just experience and Mind as a unitary whole. Karma is only relevant at this lowest level of Soul and individuated sensate existence in space-time that is a weak projection or faint reflection or darkening of the higher hypostases of Nous and the Good. At this level, subject and object have apparently broken up, but still cannot exist apart from each other, by definition. The Soul of the All experiences this All as a whole and all time and space, which are only created by soul, simultaneously and all our individual souls are within its experiential field. Our individual experiential fields include all our individual relative worlds and experiences that we experience appearing as a temporal and spatial series of past, present and future and translation in space and all our sense-perceptions of objects and events and other souls, etc. At each moment, we experience given things and happenings as our experiential field and we act volitionally on this basis. Our volitional actions and choices and thoughts modify our experiential field and sometimes that of others we are interacting with. All the modifications of our experiential field and those of all other souls modify the experiential field of the Soul of the All. These modifications of the experiential field of the All in turn then modify our experiential field and those of all other souls. The Soul of the All experiences all this in a single moment of time, as it were, and a single place, as it were, but we experience all these modifications of our experiential fields as a temporal series.
Thus, all the modifications that we have done by volitional thought and action in what we perceive as the past modify, through the Soul of the All and its experience of both our modified experiential fields and those of all other souls, what we perceive and experience as our present and future experiential fields. This is what we call karma. There is no such thing as fate in the sense of experiences that don't occur as a result of our volitional choices, but there is providence in that all this works in accordance with righteousness and necessity and is a reflection or unfolding in space-time of the eternal relations of Nous. At each moment, we have the choice of our will being that of the higher soul--of that in contact with Nous and the Good and, ultimately, really of Nous and the Good themselves--which moves us in the direction of divinity and liberation or our will being that of the lower or animal soul bound in with the body and sense-perception and this world, which moves us further into bondage and sense-experience. Even though the conditions, circumstances, perceptions, desires, passions, emotions, defilements, involuntarily arising thoughts, etc., etc. that we experience and that constitute our experiential field at a given time are determined by karma, we always have the ability to whatever extent to then react to them or act and think, even if only a little bit, based on the higher soul and higher hypostases rather than the lower and thus create positive karma and, more specifically, karma leading to release. As I have indicated before, this striving for liberation and renunciation and acting according to the true higher self is really the One acting through us and working to re-realize and re-unify Itself through us, though It has actually never become de-unified and all this is actually only happening or apparently happening at our level which is less real and only a subtraction and darkening that doesn't affect the Light at the level of the Good, which is completely unchanged. Words and purely discursive understanding maybe begin to fail at this point in my explanation. When this happens, when one is truly renouncing and correctly striving for release, the modification of the experiential field of the Soul of the All includes that the Light is starting to reappear in and through a particular soul and its experiential field is being thus modified, and so that soul's experiential field keeps being modified in a way to allow it to keep going to liberation, but also brings forth the deluded modifications that it previously effected and have to be used up, but now in a manner that, while perhaps difficult and not pleasant, doesn't permanently or really hinder its continued progress towards the telos. Ordinary deluded worldlings, on the other hand, just experience modifications to their experiential field based on previous deluded volitions based on the lower self and just react to them again on the basis of the lower self and just then create more such modifications and just keep going in an endless cycle of shifting low level experiential fields of rebirth as humans and non-humans until and if somehow they begin to see through it and begin to act from the higher soul and the Absolute begins to remanifest through them. Why this movement towards release has started in a few souls but not in most at any given point, I don't know. As I have said, this is all kind of involved and not necessarily easily graspable at soul-level. The most important thing is to renounce the world and strive wholeheartedly for re-union with the Good, the source of all knowing and knowledge, at which point this won't be a problem.
I hope this explanation is at least somewhat intelligible and helps to answer your questions and give you greater clarity, at least to a reasonable degree. Perhaps, I should also mention that my answers are, frankly, based on my own contemplative experience and understanding, and I can't necessarily cite written authorities for my way of putting things.
Sunday, April 1, 2018
Some Thoughts on the Great Problems of Manyness and Evil
Some Thoughts on the Great Problems of Manyness and Evil
by Eric S. Fallick
The One, the Good, the Absolute is completely perfect, changeless, whole, and one. Hyper-good, hyper-beautiful, hyper-existent, hyper-conscious, ultimately the only thing that really is—it is the Source of everything, by the support of which everything that has any kind of existence at all remains in whatever kind of existence it has. It is that to which everything looks and to which everything looks to return, whether aware of it or not. It is our source too. We seek to be re-united with It, love It more, or really only, than anything, and seek in It our only freedom. Yet, we find ourselves in a world of apparently many individuated, separate objects in space-time with much horror and suffering. We find ourselves as separate, individuated souls in space-time undergoing repeated cycles of birth and death as humans and non-humans, transmigrating and reincarnating since beginningless time, suffering endless misery and pain, seeing and experiencing all manner of evil, unless or until with tremendous effort over a very long time we free ourselves to re-become the changeless One. Even in the Nous, the Divine Mind-Thought, the noetic realm of the Platonic Ideas, which lies intermediate between the One and our present realm of Soul, though there is no evil per se except in so far as it falls short of the One and Its perfection, there is still a multiplicity of different things, the archetypal Forms, and the Divine Mind that thinks them without being separate from them, and subject and object, while not separated, are at least distinguished. How can this be? How and why can there be more than the One, especially when everything else is a descent from Its perfection? How and why do many things come from the One? Even more incomprehensible, how can evil, which is so evident and undeniable, arise from the Good Itself, and why should this be so? Indeed, compared to the One Itself, just the existence of anything else, even of those things we ordinarily describe as good, is evil in itself just as those things being other than the Good! Why are they then, and how can this be so? Why did our souls descend in the first place and the beginningless cycles of birth and death, genesis, samsara begin? These sorts of questions, and related variants according to different systems, have been considered and answered by many different people in many different systems of many varieties. No answer has satisfied everyone and perhaps there is no answer but to realize union with the Absolute through diligent contemplative ascetic practice, at which point both the question and the questioner cease or, to put it another way, the answer is obvious. Nevertheless, it may be worth expressing some thoughts on the matter from a thoroughgoing idealist and Platonist standpoint considering the vital notion of degrees of being and reality and pointing out a few erroneous thought/being patterns and habits that seem to me to impede our consideration of the issue and make it more of a problem than it actually is.
It must be recognized that we are thinking about this matter in our state as individuated souls at the lowest level of reality, which is what the world of soul and space-time and separate, individual subjects and objects is, and so our thinking and being is infested with erroneous habits and patterns concomitant with this world and, in some sense, creative of it. These patterns inhibit our thinking correctly about the great matters we are considering. The first of these habit patterns that I would like to point out is the very fact that we are wondering why there are many and evil things and events. There are no things and events. There is no physical world or world of objects and events that exists apart from subjects experiencing it. The subjects themselves are not something like object substances. There is only experience without referent, only spirit, only contemplation, only thought or knowing or knowledge or mind in the broadest and deepest senses of these words. This is all the more obvious at the higher two levels of reality or being. In Nous, though subject and object are distinguished, they are not separated, the Divine Mind cannot be separated from its Thoughts, the Forms, and there is no mistaking the Ideas for things, for realist objects. In the One, though ineffable, we may consider that subject and object are not distinguished at all, and that there is only pure knowing or knowledge or thought and nothing else. Again, all of Reality from top to bottom and beginning to end is experience, contemplation only. There is no realist's world or reality of things, physicality, objects, events, etc. Thus, the question we have been pondering has been incorrectly formulated from the beginning. It is unmeaning to ask why are there many things and souls and events and why is there evil. The question must be asked as why is there experience or contemplation or thought of multiplicity, of more or other than the One, and why is there experience or contemplation or thought of evil, of pain.
The second erroneous, upside down habit pattern that impedes our answering our question is thinking that the existence, which we now know means experience, of more than or other than the One and of evil is an addition to the One, that when there are many besides the One and evil besides the Good we now have a sum, have more than when there is just the One or the Good alone. Quite the contrary, it is a subtraction, many and the One are less than the One alone, evil and the Good are less than the Good alone. As we descend the scale from the One to the many, from the Good to evil, we descend from most real to least real. The experience of many and evil is a matter of not knowing, of knowing less, of increased nescience, of less clear thought, of a lack of knowledge, of clouded, dim, dreamy (or nightmarish) contemplation. Ignorance plus perfect Knowledge equals less knowledge, not more. Imperfect, multiple or evil experience plus perfect Experience equals lesser experience, not greater or additional. Dim contemplation plus perfect Contemplation equals dimmer contemplation, not clearer or added. So again our question has been incorrectly formulated. It is unmeaning to ask why there is experience of many and evil besides the experience of the One or the Good, why there is knowledge or contemplation of many and evil besides the knowledge and contemplation of the One or the Good. Rather, we must ask why is there less than whole or complete or perfect experience or knowledge within the perfect Experience or Knowledge, why is there ignorance within perfect Knowing, why is there unclear contemplation within perfect Contemplation.
The third erroneous habit pattern is our inveterate tendency to think in spatial and temporal terms when time and space appear at all only at this lowest least real level, and are only creations of the soul level nescient experience pattern. Indeed, even the very language we use, including the language used in this essay, speaking of “descent”, “higher”, “lower”, “coming from”, etc., reflects this limitation. But it is possible, especially at a higher level of contemplation, to exercise pure thought independent of spatio-temporal and picture and analogy and even linguistic thinking. The many of multiplex experience, the many “objects”, “events”, and souls that we experience at this level, the evil and pain that we observe and experience, and also the degree of multiplicity and distinguished items at the level of Nous, do not exist in space and time, they are not separated in space and time, but are only separated or distinguished by difference, or, more accurately, by awareness of difference. The different levels of reality that we have noted are not in any way spatially or temporally separated, but, again, are only distinguished by difference or awareness of difference, and by being more or less real. The difference between levels, which is only experience of levels, is only that of difference of degree or clarity or dimness of awareness, knowing, thought, or contemplation. The lower levels are less real because contemplation or thought of them is dimmer and weaker, they are weaker and foggier experience. Thus, when we think of the realities of the One, Nous, and soul and manyness and evil, we should not imagine that these exist in some sort of spatial relation with the One here, Nous there, and soul over there, or Nous and soul spreading out in space from the One or proceeding in time with the One being there first and then Nous coming from it and soul coming from that or the subtractions that make Nous and soul occurring in temporal and spatial sequence one after another. They are all actually simultaneously (unable to avoid using a temporal word!) present at the same point (unable to avoid using a spatial word!), as it were. Although we are unable to avoid speaking of our own spiritual and contemplative practice and either bondage or liberation in terms of movement and transition from one state to another, it is really a transition (again, unable to avoid using a spatio-temporal word!) from one state of knowing or contemplation or experience to another, not from one “place” to another, and does not actually occur in time, as much as it seems to to us.
Now we can formulate our question more correctly and attempt an answer. Why is there experience or contemplation or awareness or knowledge of many besides or actually less than the One and worse or evil rather than just the Good? Because complete and perfect Thought contains the thought within the laws of thought of thought that is less and worse than it. Complete and perfect Contemplation covers the contemplation within the possible realities of contemplation of lesser and worse and bad contemplation. Complete and perfect Experience comprehends that incomplete and unpleasant experience that is possible. Complete and perfect Knowledge knows also that knowledge that is lesser and worse and painful that is possible within the structural limits of knowledge, that is of knowledge that can in some sense be true even if far less and worse and less real than real ultimate Knowledge. This is so even though all this lesser and worse thought, contemplation, experience, and knowledge doesn't appear as such in the Absolute Thought, Contemplation, Experience, and Knowledge as such. The thought of calculus includes the thought of analytic geometry, trigonometry, arithmetic, and all lesser mathematics even though they don't appear in the thought of calculus as such, but it does not include the thought of invalid mathematics. The thought of a solid sphere necessarily includes the thought of two-dimensional circles, one-dimensional radii, and zero-dimensional points, without the sphere itself being anything other than just a sphere, but it does not include the thought of such figures as could not properly fit within a sphere. Thus, since the lesser levels of reality including manyness and evil are just subtractions from, limitations of, dimmings and incompletions of the Absolute, they necessarily are to a certain degree since the more comprehends the less, but they are limited by the overall structure, so to speak, or nature, so to speak, of the One or the Good, and fit, in a sense (non-spatially!), within in it and are determined by it. So, for example, this lowest realm of the many is still in a more limited way one since it comes from and is within the One, and the alleged realm of truly, really, absolutely separate objects, persons, and events of the pluralist, realist, or materialist is impossible. For example, evil in this lowest realm is still governed by the law of dike or karma since it is a subtraction from and within the Good, and the ungoverned evil of, for example, the eternal damnation of the Christians and others is not possible.
Will this simple solution to the great insoluble problem satisfy everyone or anyone? Probably not, but attempting to understand even conceptually is part of our path of spiritual and ascetic contemplation. The ascent includes intellect even in the lowest sense though ultimately transcending it. It will all be clearer if we keep in mind that this realm of manyness and evil is actually only the least, smallest, and least real level of reality. The One and, next, Nous are really much more real and constitute most of what is and always have and will. It is only because we are presently stuck here at the level of individuated souls and alleged objects and of evil and pain in space-time and have to exert such tremendous efforts to transcend it and return and have to deal with it all the time until we do get free that it looms of such importance and significance and difficulty and suffering to us. The main point is that this may help us and spur us on in our work towards freedom and re-union with the One or the Good which is ever drawing our souls back if we will only renounce this world in all its breadth and depth and devote ourselves as best as possible to contemplation and otherworldliness. The higher realities beckon. Hasten onward!
©2013 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (at) (Gee) mail (period) com
by Eric S. Fallick
The One, the Good, the Absolute is completely perfect, changeless, whole, and one. Hyper-good, hyper-beautiful, hyper-existent, hyper-conscious, ultimately the only thing that really is—it is the Source of everything, by the support of which everything that has any kind of existence at all remains in whatever kind of existence it has. It is that to which everything looks and to which everything looks to return, whether aware of it or not. It is our source too. We seek to be re-united with It, love It more, or really only, than anything, and seek in It our only freedom. Yet, we find ourselves in a world of apparently many individuated, separate objects in space-time with much horror and suffering. We find ourselves as separate, individuated souls in space-time undergoing repeated cycles of birth and death as humans and non-humans, transmigrating and reincarnating since beginningless time, suffering endless misery and pain, seeing and experiencing all manner of evil, unless or until with tremendous effort over a very long time we free ourselves to re-become the changeless One. Even in the Nous, the Divine Mind-Thought, the noetic realm of the Platonic Ideas, which lies intermediate between the One and our present realm of Soul, though there is no evil per se except in so far as it falls short of the One and Its perfection, there is still a multiplicity of different things, the archetypal Forms, and the Divine Mind that thinks them without being separate from them, and subject and object, while not separated, are at least distinguished. How can this be? How and why can there be more than the One, especially when everything else is a descent from Its perfection? How and why do many things come from the One? Even more incomprehensible, how can evil, which is so evident and undeniable, arise from the Good Itself, and why should this be so? Indeed, compared to the One Itself, just the existence of anything else, even of those things we ordinarily describe as good, is evil in itself just as those things being other than the Good! Why are they then, and how can this be so? Why did our souls descend in the first place and the beginningless cycles of birth and death, genesis, samsara begin? These sorts of questions, and related variants according to different systems, have been considered and answered by many different people in many different systems of many varieties. No answer has satisfied everyone and perhaps there is no answer but to realize union with the Absolute through diligent contemplative ascetic practice, at which point both the question and the questioner cease or, to put it another way, the answer is obvious. Nevertheless, it may be worth expressing some thoughts on the matter from a thoroughgoing idealist and Platonist standpoint considering the vital notion of degrees of being and reality and pointing out a few erroneous thought/being patterns and habits that seem to me to impede our consideration of the issue and make it more of a problem than it actually is.
It must be recognized that we are thinking about this matter in our state as individuated souls at the lowest level of reality, which is what the world of soul and space-time and separate, individual subjects and objects is, and so our thinking and being is infested with erroneous habits and patterns concomitant with this world and, in some sense, creative of it. These patterns inhibit our thinking correctly about the great matters we are considering. The first of these habit patterns that I would like to point out is the very fact that we are wondering why there are many and evil things and events. There are no things and events. There is no physical world or world of objects and events that exists apart from subjects experiencing it. The subjects themselves are not something like object substances. There is only experience without referent, only spirit, only contemplation, only thought or knowing or knowledge or mind in the broadest and deepest senses of these words. This is all the more obvious at the higher two levels of reality or being. In Nous, though subject and object are distinguished, they are not separated, the Divine Mind cannot be separated from its Thoughts, the Forms, and there is no mistaking the Ideas for things, for realist objects. In the One, though ineffable, we may consider that subject and object are not distinguished at all, and that there is only pure knowing or knowledge or thought and nothing else. Again, all of Reality from top to bottom and beginning to end is experience, contemplation only. There is no realist's world or reality of things, physicality, objects, events, etc. Thus, the question we have been pondering has been incorrectly formulated from the beginning. It is unmeaning to ask why are there many things and souls and events and why is there evil. The question must be asked as why is there experience or contemplation or thought of multiplicity, of more or other than the One, and why is there experience or contemplation or thought of evil, of pain.
The second erroneous, upside down habit pattern that impedes our answering our question is thinking that the existence, which we now know means experience, of more than or other than the One and of evil is an addition to the One, that when there are many besides the One and evil besides the Good we now have a sum, have more than when there is just the One or the Good alone. Quite the contrary, it is a subtraction, many and the One are less than the One alone, evil and the Good are less than the Good alone. As we descend the scale from the One to the many, from the Good to evil, we descend from most real to least real. The experience of many and evil is a matter of not knowing, of knowing less, of increased nescience, of less clear thought, of a lack of knowledge, of clouded, dim, dreamy (or nightmarish) contemplation. Ignorance plus perfect Knowledge equals less knowledge, not more. Imperfect, multiple or evil experience plus perfect Experience equals lesser experience, not greater or additional. Dim contemplation plus perfect Contemplation equals dimmer contemplation, not clearer or added. So again our question has been incorrectly formulated. It is unmeaning to ask why there is experience of many and evil besides the experience of the One or the Good, why there is knowledge or contemplation of many and evil besides the knowledge and contemplation of the One or the Good. Rather, we must ask why is there less than whole or complete or perfect experience or knowledge within the perfect Experience or Knowledge, why is there ignorance within perfect Knowing, why is there unclear contemplation within perfect Contemplation.
The third erroneous habit pattern is our inveterate tendency to think in spatial and temporal terms when time and space appear at all only at this lowest least real level, and are only creations of the soul level nescient experience pattern. Indeed, even the very language we use, including the language used in this essay, speaking of “descent”, “higher”, “lower”, “coming from”, etc., reflects this limitation. But it is possible, especially at a higher level of contemplation, to exercise pure thought independent of spatio-temporal and picture and analogy and even linguistic thinking. The many of multiplex experience, the many “objects”, “events”, and souls that we experience at this level, the evil and pain that we observe and experience, and also the degree of multiplicity and distinguished items at the level of Nous, do not exist in space and time, they are not separated in space and time, but are only separated or distinguished by difference, or, more accurately, by awareness of difference. The different levels of reality that we have noted are not in any way spatially or temporally separated, but, again, are only distinguished by difference or awareness of difference, and by being more or less real. The difference between levels, which is only experience of levels, is only that of difference of degree or clarity or dimness of awareness, knowing, thought, or contemplation. The lower levels are less real because contemplation or thought of them is dimmer and weaker, they are weaker and foggier experience. Thus, when we think of the realities of the One, Nous, and soul and manyness and evil, we should not imagine that these exist in some sort of spatial relation with the One here, Nous there, and soul over there, or Nous and soul spreading out in space from the One or proceeding in time with the One being there first and then Nous coming from it and soul coming from that or the subtractions that make Nous and soul occurring in temporal and spatial sequence one after another. They are all actually simultaneously (unable to avoid using a temporal word!) present at the same point (unable to avoid using a spatial word!), as it were. Although we are unable to avoid speaking of our own spiritual and contemplative practice and either bondage or liberation in terms of movement and transition from one state to another, it is really a transition (again, unable to avoid using a spatio-temporal word!) from one state of knowing or contemplation or experience to another, not from one “place” to another, and does not actually occur in time, as much as it seems to to us.
Now we can formulate our question more correctly and attempt an answer. Why is there experience or contemplation or awareness or knowledge of many besides or actually less than the One and worse or evil rather than just the Good? Because complete and perfect Thought contains the thought within the laws of thought of thought that is less and worse than it. Complete and perfect Contemplation covers the contemplation within the possible realities of contemplation of lesser and worse and bad contemplation. Complete and perfect Experience comprehends that incomplete and unpleasant experience that is possible. Complete and perfect Knowledge knows also that knowledge that is lesser and worse and painful that is possible within the structural limits of knowledge, that is of knowledge that can in some sense be true even if far less and worse and less real than real ultimate Knowledge. This is so even though all this lesser and worse thought, contemplation, experience, and knowledge doesn't appear as such in the Absolute Thought, Contemplation, Experience, and Knowledge as such. The thought of calculus includes the thought of analytic geometry, trigonometry, arithmetic, and all lesser mathematics even though they don't appear in the thought of calculus as such, but it does not include the thought of invalid mathematics. The thought of a solid sphere necessarily includes the thought of two-dimensional circles, one-dimensional radii, and zero-dimensional points, without the sphere itself being anything other than just a sphere, but it does not include the thought of such figures as could not properly fit within a sphere. Thus, since the lesser levels of reality including manyness and evil are just subtractions from, limitations of, dimmings and incompletions of the Absolute, they necessarily are to a certain degree since the more comprehends the less, but they are limited by the overall structure, so to speak, or nature, so to speak, of the One or the Good, and fit, in a sense (non-spatially!), within in it and are determined by it. So, for example, this lowest realm of the many is still in a more limited way one since it comes from and is within the One, and the alleged realm of truly, really, absolutely separate objects, persons, and events of the pluralist, realist, or materialist is impossible. For example, evil in this lowest realm is still governed by the law of dike or karma since it is a subtraction from and within the Good, and the ungoverned evil of, for example, the eternal damnation of the Christians and others is not possible.
Will this simple solution to the great insoluble problem satisfy everyone or anyone? Probably not, but attempting to understand even conceptually is part of our path of spiritual and ascetic contemplation. The ascent includes intellect even in the lowest sense though ultimately transcending it. It will all be clearer if we keep in mind that this realm of manyness and evil is actually only the least, smallest, and least real level of reality. The One and, next, Nous are really much more real and constitute most of what is and always have and will. It is only because we are presently stuck here at the level of individuated souls and alleged objects and of evil and pain in space-time and have to exert such tremendous efforts to transcend it and return and have to deal with it all the time until we do get free that it looms of such importance and significance and difficulty and suffering to us. The main point is that this may help us and spur us on in our work towards freedom and re-union with the One or the Good which is ever drawing our souls back if we will only renounce this world in all its breadth and depth and devote ourselves as best as possible to contemplation and otherworldliness. The higher realities beckon. Hasten onward!
©2013 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (at) (Gee) mail (period) com
Friday, March 16, 2018
Brief Demonstration of Reincarnation
A Very Brief A Priori Demonstration of the Immortality of the Soul and of Reincarnation
by Eric S. Fallick
An understanding of the immortality of the soul or self and reincarnation1 is among the very most basic elements of a genuine spiritual life. Although a basic feature of the weltanschauung of the Indo-hellenistic systems and those at least in part derived from them,2 and despite their being, in fact, obvious, these concepts do not seem to be acceptable to many moderns today. There are, perhaps, two reasons for this that readily suggest themselves. The first is the dominance of the Abrahamic systems and their belief structures, as well as the influence of these on Western thinkers, even if such influence is not recognized or acknowledged.3 The second is, in these dark times, the dominance of realism, positivism, reductionism, materialism, etc. Although materialism is, in fact, extremely implausible (for one thing, it denies the existence of the very entity constructing the theory!) and certainly requires as much if not more justification than any other theory of reality, it seems to be considered by its adherents today as self-evident and not requiring explanation. Further, the general “intelligentsia” who do not actually think philosophically or examine their assumptions accept this position simply because it is the outlook of the age. The present discussion will, for brevity, assume an idealist position as understood. The reader who requires a refutation of materialism and an establishment of the idealist understanding may be referred to various works of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (when some people could still think) for this purpose.4
The idealistic premise or axiom that will, for purposes of this demonstration, be taken as granted is as follows. There are and can be no objects without subjects and no subjects without objects. The self or center of experience and its object-world are both aspects of a single reality of knowledge or experience. They are logically distinguishable, but cannot and do not occur separately, independently and in isolation. It is not meaningful to speak or think of an object or event existing without any subject to experience it.
This premise being granted, the conclusion of immortality of the soul follows simply: For the object or event of death to occur there must be a subject or self or mind or center of experience to experience it (we are here talking about an individual's actual experience of death, not an external observer merely having the sense experience of observing the destruction of an external body). For an object or event to be experienced, it must be experienced in its entirety, through its beginning, middle and end; otherwise it is not the object or event that is experienced, but another, different object or event partial with respect to the first one. In other words, the subject must be present and existent on both sides, so to speak, of the object or event. Thus, for the event of death to occur, for it to be meaningful to speak of an individual experiencing death, the soul or self or mind or center of experience must be present through or around or on both sides of the event and thus must be present or continue after the event of death. Since death by definition is the only event that can constitute the destruction or discontinuance of the soul, and since the soul must continue after death in order to actually experience it, however many times and in whatever intervals it occurs, the soul is immortal.
At this point, it may be objected, particularly by conventional Abrahamists, that while it has been proved that the soul is immortal, the fact of reincarnation has not been demonstrated—there could be only one occurrence of death and the soul may then just continue forever in the state following that. Here, it is necessary to observe that the whole discussion, and the whole matter of death, pertains only to the lowest realm of reality, the level of soul and individual souls or selves in space-time. At the level of the Divine Mind, there is only the one divine mind as the only subject with the real beings as the only object, distinguishable, but not separate to the extent of the realm of soul. There, there is neither time nor space, and only life, not death at all. Further, at the level of the Absolute itself, subject and object are not distinguishable at all, and there is only absolute unitary knowledge beyond even eternity, life, and being. At the level of soul that we are discussing, for individuated souls to exist as such in space-time, they must be associated in some sense with body and matter, not body or matter in a physical sense, but in the sense of experiencing a certain set of changing sense-perceptions with an apparently given means of perception. It is an inherent property of this realm that all things in it, the whole possible object-world of the soul, change and are subject to coming into being, existing for a while, and then decaying and being destroyed. This includes all possible 'body', all possible sets and means of sense-perceptions that a soul could have. (The soul itself is sort of amphibious—the lower soul changing with its objects, the higher soul remaining always unchanging and connected to or part of the higher realms.) Thus, as long as we remain in the realm where it is meaningful to speak of the lives and deaths of individual souls, it is not possible that a given soul could retain a given body or perception set indefinitely. Each body or perception set must eventually cease and other ones must arise, so each individuated soul must experience a series of bodies or perception sets and lives and births and deaths, so reincarnation is a fact. (The details of this process, the rise and fall of souls to higher and lower perception sets, and the means of a given soul escaping from individuation and the whole cycle to 'return' to the higher unified state are beyond the scope of this short demonstration.)
Thus, the immortality of the soul and the fact of reincarnation have been demonstrated. This a priori proof is far more reliable than any sort of attempt to ascertain the facts of such matters through allegedly empirical observation or appeal to revealed texts, which are, after all, just more sense phenomena appearing in the object-world of the soul itself and incapable of determining the structure of the actual overall unity of experience or knowledge that includes the mind or soul and its objects. This demonstration is, at least in substance if not in expression, not at all new, but goes back at least to the divine Plato. It has been stated here in the form of ordinary 'logical' reasoning and may, perhaps, be attacked at that level, but it is really intended as a contemplative experience based proof. Genuine spiritual understanding can only be attained by attempting the conjunction of the individual mind with the Divine Mind through contemplative asceticism. If you don't really know for sure what death is, then you don't, in fact, know what life is!
© 2010 by Eric S. Fallick. All rights reserved. platonicascetic (with) (Gee) mail (period) com
Notes
1 Reincarnation has been selected here as the most common and standard term at present for the process of repeated births and deaths. (Some systems, such as Buddhism, may object to the term and the use of the terms soul, self, etc.) Other terms are rebirth, transmigration, metempsychosis, metensomatosis, and gigul (Hebrew). Perhaps the best terms might be the Greek palingenesis and the Sanskrit punarbhava, both of which mean 'again-becoming'.
2 These include Platonism, Orphism, Pythagoreanism, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Manichaeism, etc.
3 There are notable exceptions. For example, the Jewish mystical systems of Kabbalah and Hasidism (and likely Hellenic Judaism) include reincarnation in some form, as does the philosophical system of J. Ellis McTaggart.
4 Here are just a few examples:
John Caird, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, Glasgow: James Maclehose and Sons, 1901
George Plimpton Adams, Idealism and the Modern Age, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1919
Viscount Haldane, Human Experience: A Study of Its Structure, NY: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1926
F. H. Cleobury, God, Man and the Absolute, London: Hutchinson & Co., (no date—late 1940's).
by Eric S. Fallick
An understanding of the immortality of the soul or self and reincarnation1 is among the very most basic elements of a genuine spiritual life. Although a basic feature of the weltanschauung of the Indo-hellenistic systems and those at least in part derived from them,2 and despite their being, in fact, obvious, these concepts do not seem to be acceptable to many moderns today. There are, perhaps, two reasons for this that readily suggest themselves. The first is the dominance of the Abrahamic systems and their belief structures, as well as the influence of these on Western thinkers, even if such influence is not recognized or acknowledged.3 The second is, in these dark times, the dominance of realism, positivism, reductionism, materialism, etc. Although materialism is, in fact, extremely implausible (for one thing, it denies the existence of the very entity constructing the theory!) and certainly requires as much if not more justification than any other theory of reality, it seems to be considered by its adherents today as self-evident and not requiring explanation. Further, the general “intelligentsia” who do not actually think philosophically or examine their assumptions accept this position simply because it is the outlook of the age. The present discussion will, for brevity, assume an idealist position as understood. The reader who requires a refutation of materialism and an establishment of the idealist understanding may be referred to various works of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (when some people could still think) for this purpose.4
The idealistic premise or axiom that will, for purposes of this demonstration, be taken as granted is as follows. There are and can be no objects without subjects and no subjects without objects. The self or center of experience and its object-world are both aspects of a single reality of knowledge or experience. They are logically distinguishable, but cannot and do not occur separately, independently and in isolation. It is not meaningful to speak or think of an object or event existing without any subject to experience it.
This premise being granted, the conclusion of immortality of the soul follows simply: For the object or event of death to occur there must be a subject or self or mind or center of experience to experience it (we are here talking about an individual's actual experience of death, not an external observer merely having the sense experience of observing the destruction of an external body). For an object or event to be experienced, it must be experienced in its entirety, through its beginning, middle and end; otherwise it is not the object or event that is experienced, but another, different object or event partial with respect to the first one. In other words, the subject must be present and existent on both sides, so to speak, of the object or event. Thus, for the event of death to occur, for it to be meaningful to speak of an individual experiencing death, the soul or self or mind or center of experience must be present through or around or on both sides of the event and thus must be present or continue after the event of death. Since death by definition is the only event that can constitute the destruction or discontinuance of the soul, and since the soul must continue after death in order to actually experience it, however many times and in whatever intervals it occurs, the soul is immortal.
At this point, it may be objected, particularly by conventional Abrahamists, that while it has been proved that the soul is immortal, the fact of reincarnation has not been demonstrated—there could be only one occurrence of death and the soul may then just continue forever in the state following that. Here, it is necessary to observe that the whole discussion, and the whole matter of death, pertains only to the lowest realm of reality, the level of soul and individual souls or selves in space-time. At the level of the Divine Mind, there is only the one divine mind as the only subject with the real beings as the only object, distinguishable, but not separate to the extent of the realm of soul. There, there is neither time nor space, and only life, not death at all. Further, at the level of the Absolute itself, subject and object are not distinguishable at all, and there is only absolute unitary knowledge beyond even eternity, life, and being. At the level of soul that we are discussing, for individuated souls to exist as such in space-time, they must be associated in some sense with body and matter, not body or matter in a physical sense, but in the sense of experiencing a certain set of changing sense-perceptions with an apparently given means of perception. It is an inherent property of this realm that all things in it, the whole possible object-world of the soul, change and are subject to coming into being, existing for a while, and then decaying and being destroyed. This includes all possible 'body', all possible sets and means of sense-perceptions that a soul could have. (The soul itself is sort of amphibious—the lower soul changing with its objects, the higher soul remaining always unchanging and connected to or part of the higher realms.) Thus, as long as we remain in the realm where it is meaningful to speak of the lives and deaths of individual souls, it is not possible that a given soul could retain a given body or perception set indefinitely. Each body or perception set must eventually cease and other ones must arise, so each individuated soul must experience a series of bodies or perception sets and lives and births and deaths, so reincarnation is a fact. (The details of this process, the rise and fall of souls to higher and lower perception sets, and the means of a given soul escaping from individuation and the whole cycle to 'return' to the higher unified state are beyond the scope of this short demonstration.)
Thus, the immortality of the soul and the fact of reincarnation have been demonstrated. This a priori proof is far more reliable than any sort of attempt to ascertain the facts of such matters through allegedly empirical observation or appeal to revealed texts, which are, after all, just more sense phenomena appearing in the object-world of the soul itself and incapable of determining the structure of the actual overall unity of experience or knowledge that includes the mind or soul and its objects. This demonstration is, at least in substance if not in expression, not at all new, but goes back at least to the divine Plato. It has been stated here in the form of ordinary 'logical' reasoning and may, perhaps, be attacked at that level, but it is really intended as a contemplative experience based proof. Genuine spiritual understanding can only be attained by attempting the conjunction of the individual mind with the Divine Mind through contemplative asceticism. If you don't really know for sure what death is, then you don't, in fact, know what life is!
© 2010 by Eric S. Fallick. All rights reserved. platonicascetic (with) (Gee) mail (period) com
Notes
1 Reincarnation has been selected here as the most common and standard term at present for the process of repeated births and deaths. (Some systems, such as Buddhism, may object to the term and the use of the terms soul, self, etc.) Other terms are rebirth, transmigration, metempsychosis, metensomatosis, and gigul (Hebrew). Perhaps the best terms might be the Greek palingenesis and the Sanskrit punarbhava, both of which mean 'again-becoming'.
2 These include Platonism, Orphism, Pythagoreanism, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Manichaeism, etc.
3 There are notable exceptions. For example, the Jewish mystical systems of Kabbalah and Hasidism (and likely Hellenic Judaism) include reincarnation in some form, as does the philosophical system of J. Ellis McTaggart.
4 Here are just a few examples:
John Caird, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, Glasgow: James Maclehose and Sons, 1901
George Plimpton Adams, Idealism and the Modern Age, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1919
Viscount Haldane, Human Experience: A Study of Its Structure, NY: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1926
F. H. Cleobury, God, Man and the Absolute, London: Hutchinson & Co., (no date—late 1940's).
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