Tuesday, April 10, 2018
Maximus of Tyre, Dissertation 33
Maximus of Tyre, Dissertation 33, “What is the object of philosophy?”
translated from ancient Greek by Eric S. Fallick
It is difficult to find a true reasoning—for the human soul runs the risk, through facility of thinking, to be at a loss for judgment. The other arts going forward through discovery become more successful, each concerning its own works—but philosophy, whenever it would be most abundant, then it is filled full of reasonings opposed and equally balanced, and it resembles a farmer suffering more fruitless earth whenever he would come to be in a surplus of many implements. Therefore, votes and the number of jurors and the opinions of public speakers and the (show of) hands of the people govern political suits—but, here, what judge will be present to us and by what vote will we judge the truth? By reason? But you would not have a reasoning to say for which you would not find the opposite reasoning. Emotion? But this is an untrustworthy judge. By the multitude (of people saying so)? But the very ignorant ones are more. By opinion? But the worse things are more held in esteem.
At once in this present problem, pleasure is contending and being measured against virtue—is not pleasure, pushing aside virtue, strong in (people's) opinion and surpassing in multitude of witnesses and having power in accordance with emotion? But that which is the only remaining ally of virtue, reason, is also split and divided, and some help to pleasures could also be discovered from it, and someone speaks finely speaking on behalf of pleasure, and holding virtue cheap, and transposing the rule from the men's quarters to the women's quarters—and dresses himself in the dress of a philosopher, and would claim to hold the name of a philosopher. Give it up, human being, the name also with the reasoning. You transgress the law about the foundations. There is nothing in common between wisdom and pleasure—the lover of pleasure is one person, the lover of wisdom is another—the names have been divided, the deeds have been divided, the races have been divided, as the Laconian things from the Attic, as the barbarian things from the Hellenic. But if saying you are a Spartan and a Hellene and a Dorian and a Heraclean, you esteem a Median tiara and a barbaric dining-table and a Persian covered carriage, you have gone Persian, you have gone barbarian, you have destroyed Pausanias—you are a Median, you are Mardonius—put aside the name with the race.
Thus, I bear the multitude singing the praises of pleasure—for their soul is vulgar and having been excluded from reason, pitiable in emotion, pardonable in ignorance—but I do not bear Epicurus on account of (his having) the name (of 'philosopher'), nor do I bear philosophy being wanton. For neither do I bear a general deserting the ranks and leading the flight, nor do I bear a farmer setting the crops on fire, nor do I bear a steersman being very fearful of the sea—it is necessary for you to sail, it is necessary for you to command, it is necessary for you to farm—these things are full of hard toils, but nothing noble comes to be through ease. But if pleasure follows the noble things, I grant it—let it follow, but let the noble lead in every way:
Let there be one ruler, one king, to whom it has been given
by Zeus to rule. But if you would transpose the order, and pleasure would rule, but reason would follow, you give to the soul a bitter and implacable tyrant, to whom it is necessary to be a slave and to serve with services indeterminate and of every sort, even if it would order ugly things, even if it would order unrighteous things. For what would be the limit of pleasure laying hold of license for desires? For this tyrant is insatiable, and disdainful of the things present and desirous of the things not present, being inflamed through abundance, rising through expectation, and waxing wanton through plenty. This tyrant makes the base things rise against the noble things, this one makes ready unrighteousness against righteousness, excess against moderation. Since certainly the need of the body fills up its appetites without difficulty. Is someone thirsty? There are springs everywhere. Is someone hungry? There are acorns everywhere. The sun is the warmest of cloaks. The meadows are the most variegated of spectacles. The flowers are natural fragrances. To go as far as these is to take need itself as the limit of pleasures. But if you step beyond these things and go on further, you give an unceasing run to pleasures and wall out virtues.
This begets greedinesses; this makes tyrannies. For the Pasargadae territory and the cardamom of Cyrus are not enough for the king of the Persians, but all of Asia divvies up lots to supply for the pleasures of one man. Media raises a Nisaean horse for him. Ionia sends Greek concubines. Babylon rears barbarian eunuchs. Egypt sends crafts of all kinds—the Indians ivory, the Arabs fragrance. And also the rivers supply for the pleasures of the king—the Pactolus gold, the Nile wheat, the Choaspes water. But not even these are enough for him, but he desires foreign pleasure, and through this comes to Europe, runs after the Scythians, dislodges the Paeonians, takes Eretria, sails against Marathon, and wanders everywhere. Most unfortunate one in poverty! For what would be poorer than a man desiring continuously? For when once a soul would taste pleasures beyond its need, it is held by satiety of the previous ones and desires others. And that then was the allegory of Tantalus—the continuous thirst of a pleasure loving man and the streams of pleasure coming up and going away again, and the flowing back of desires and the bitter pains having been mixed up with these, and the disturbances and fears. For on the one hand he is fearful lest pleasure being present would go away, but on the other hand he is distressed lest pleasure not being present would not come—so that it is a necessity for the one pursuing pleasure not to cease being pained, but also not to sense being pleased, but to live being confounded in much unclarity.
See what and what kind of tyrant you give to the soul: as Critias to the Athenians, thrusting away Solon; as Pausanias to the Lacedaemonians, thrusting away Lycurgus. But I, desiring freedom, have need of law, have need of reason. This will guard for me well-being true and unshaken and without fear and independent, but not base, not having been contrived by the arts of slaves, by which collecting for myself I will gather together that “great profit”, pleasure, begging not little bits, by Zeus, as in the begging in Homer, nor only swords and kettles, but things even stranger than these: relish from Mithaecus, wine from Sarambus, song from Connus, and a courtesan from Melesias. And what will be the measure of these things? What will be the limit of the “well-being” from pleasures? Where will we stop? To whom should we give the prizes of victory we are bearing? Who is this “blessed” man, vigilant and laborious, whom not even one pleasure escapes and goes unnoticed by, neither by night nor day, but whose soul stretching out all the senses, just as the marine octopus its tentacles, brings in through these from all sides all the pleasures together?
Let us form, if possible, an image of this sort: a man “well-off” in the “well-being” from pleasures, seeing the most pleasant colors, hearing the sweetest sounds, smelling the most delightful odors, tasting the most varied flavors, being warmed, and having sexual intercourse, all together. For if you would give time and separate the pleasures and would divide the sense-perceptions, you will cut short the “well-being”. For all which being present gladdens, being taken away gives pain. What soul could bear a mob of so many pleasures streaming in and being laid upon it and affording no cessation and respite at all? But would it not likely live most miserably and desire change and long for rest? For continuing pleasure produces pain. What would be more untrustworthy than a “well-being” to be pitied? Oh Zeus and the gods, fathers and makers of earth and sea and how many creatures there are of earth and sea, what kind of living being have you put in this place here and life, rash and hasty and boisterous, deficient in good, destitute of profit, being fed and won over by pleasures.
If only it had been unborn and perished unmarried
--that whole genus, if it will have nothing from you better than pleasure.
And how does it not have something better? For let us answer according to Homer on behalf of Zeus. For it has, it has, mind and reason, but its life has been mixed together from immortal and mortal things, as a certain living being assigned to the border and from mortal error having the body while from the immortal outflow receiving the mind. But pleasure is the characteristic thing of the flesh while reason is of the mind; and it has the flesh in common with the beasts, but the mind as its own proper thing. Here then seek the good of the human being, where its proper work is. There is its proper work, where its own proper organ is. There is its proper organ, where its preservation is. Begin from the thing saving it. Which is the preservative of which, body of soul or soul of body? Soul of body—you have found the saving thing. Seek the proper organ. What is the organ of soul? Mind. Seek the proper work. What is the proper work of mind? Wisdom—you have found the good. But if someone dishonoring that understanding and god-loving and god-loved part of the human being, says the person is only that despicable creature, the flesh, and would want to feed the incontinent part, the gluttonous part, the friend of pleasures, to what would I compare such a mode of living than to a myth, by Zeus?
The poets say that there are men in Pelion, a Thessalian genus, with strange bodies, from the navel trailing along the nature of a horse. But in the lack of harmony of such a sort of association, there is, at any time, every necessity to feed the bestial nature together with the human; to speak as a human being, but to eat as a beast; to see as a human being, but to copulate as a beast. Well done indeed, poets and sons of poets, fathers of an ancient and noble muse, how clearly then you have allegorized for us the bond of pleasures. Whenever bestial pleasures would rule the soul, maintaining a human appearance, they show by the service of their deeds that the one enjoying them has become a beast from a human being. That is the Centaurs, that is the Gorgons, that is the Chimaeras, the Geryon, the Cecrops. Take away the desire of the stomach, and you have taken away the beast from the human being. Take away the desire of the genitals, and you have cut through the beast. But as long as these things would live and be fed together in someone and he has inclined to their tendance, it is a necessity for the appetites of those to rule and the soul to cry out their sounds.
©2012 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (at) (Gee) mail (period) com
Monday, April 2, 2018
An Ancient Urban Hermit
An Excerpt from Damascius' Life of Isidore/The Philosophic History
translated from ancient Greek by Eric S. Fallick
Isidore made friends with this man who surpassed all people in piety and in a life of wholly loving wisdom, except for Isidore himself. And the man so greatly excelled in true way of life and speech that what is usually said in a proverb was fulfilled in deed by him: he lived hidden and unnoticed, so that I would expect none of the people then living, neither younger nor older, knew he was the sort of man I say. Nor would anyone else have known the kind of person this Sarapio was, nor would I myself know now, if the philosopher (i. e., Isidore) himself hadn't told me about him. For he said he couldn't ever persuade him to meet with another man; especially when he grew old, he no longer often came down from his own house, but he lived alone in a tiny house, having in reality taken up a solitary life, only having dealings with some of his neighbors for absolute necessities. He did, though, say that Sarapio was especially prayerful and in the manner of a common man wandered about to all the holy places when he was lead by the custom of a holiday, but mostly he spent the whole day at home living, not some human life, but one simply to be said to be divine, always recounting both aspirations and virtues in regard to himself or the Divine, but much more meditating in silence. Being devoted to the search for truth and contemplative by nature, he didn't think it worthwhile to waste time with the more technical details of philosophy, but stuck to more powerful and inspired understandings; on which account he possessed and read pretty much only the writings of Orpheus, always putting each arising question to Isidore, who was, so to speak, the utter tops in theological knowledge, and who was the only one he received and was acquainted with as a friend. And indeed it seemed to Isidore that he saw in Sarapio the life of the fabled Golden Age of Cronos. For he continuously did and said nothing else than collecting himself and always, as far as possible, concentrating on the inward and quite indivisible.
He thus very much looked down on money and property, so that he possessed nothing whatever besides two or three books, including also the poems of Orpheus. He thus very much looked down on the pleasures relating to the body, so that even from the first he indeed only provided the body with necessities, and was through his whole life undefiled by sexual pleasures. And he thus had no care for honor from people, so that not even his name was known in the city. Nor would it have been known afterward, if some god had not wished to favor humanity with an example of the life of the Golden Age of Cronos, in order that the story would not seem to be a myth, without history having been called to witness. For the so-called Cheiron stood rather at the boundary of the reigns of Cronos and Zeus, whence his double form. But this Sarapio known by the philosopher, let him have been recorded as of such a kind. He made Isidore his heir, not having any family, nor anyone else worthy to receive his property, by which I mean his two or three books.
Translation ©2003 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (at) (Gee) mail (period) com
translated from ancient Greek by Eric S. Fallick
Isidore made friends with this man who surpassed all people in piety and in a life of wholly loving wisdom, except for Isidore himself. And the man so greatly excelled in true way of life and speech that what is usually said in a proverb was fulfilled in deed by him: he lived hidden and unnoticed, so that I would expect none of the people then living, neither younger nor older, knew he was the sort of man I say. Nor would anyone else have known the kind of person this Sarapio was, nor would I myself know now, if the philosopher (i. e., Isidore) himself hadn't told me about him. For he said he couldn't ever persuade him to meet with another man; especially when he grew old, he no longer often came down from his own house, but he lived alone in a tiny house, having in reality taken up a solitary life, only having dealings with some of his neighbors for absolute necessities. He did, though, say that Sarapio was especially prayerful and in the manner of a common man wandered about to all the holy places when he was lead by the custom of a holiday, but mostly he spent the whole day at home living, not some human life, but one simply to be said to be divine, always recounting both aspirations and virtues in regard to himself or the Divine, but much more meditating in silence. Being devoted to the search for truth and contemplative by nature, he didn't think it worthwhile to waste time with the more technical details of philosophy, but stuck to more powerful and inspired understandings; on which account he possessed and read pretty much only the writings of Orpheus, always putting each arising question to Isidore, who was, so to speak, the utter tops in theological knowledge, and who was the only one he received and was acquainted with as a friend. And indeed it seemed to Isidore that he saw in Sarapio the life of the fabled Golden Age of Cronos. For he continuously did and said nothing else than collecting himself and always, as far as possible, concentrating on the inward and quite indivisible.
He thus very much looked down on money and property, so that he possessed nothing whatever besides two or three books, including also the poems of Orpheus. He thus very much looked down on the pleasures relating to the body, so that even from the first he indeed only provided the body with necessities, and was through his whole life undefiled by sexual pleasures. And he thus had no care for honor from people, so that not even his name was known in the city. Nor would it have been known afterward, if some god had not wished to favor humanity with an example of the life of the Golden Age of Cronos, in order that the story would not seem to be a myth, without history having been called to witness. For the so-called Cheiron stood rather at the boundary of the reigns of Cronos and Zeus, whence his double form. But this Sarapio known by the philosopher, let him have been recorded as of such a kind. He made Isidore his heir, not having any family, nor anyone else worthy to receive his property, by which I mean his two or three books.
Translation ©2003 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (at) (Gee) mail (period) com
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).
Friday, March 9, 2018
Q. and A.'s, including beginning meditation instructions
Q. and A. on A Mother's Death and Destinations of Rebirth
Q. I have another question to ask if I may.... my mother passed away, and this is why I like "rebirth" with the idea in mind that I'll see her again (hopefully if she is a angel in heaven!) What does Platonic metaphysics say of worlds like heavens? I remember asking another ("alleged") Platonist regarding I think the 32 realms found in Buddhism and he said something along the lines of "there are no planes, there is only wisdom and agnosis". I remember asking him about Plato when he talked of realms, asking if they were literal, he said he (talking of Plato) was literal. So now I'm puzzled.
A. I will try to answer your question according to my understanding, which I make no claim to be that of anyone else. Rebirth and reincarnation is, of course, quite literally true. There is, however, as I have tried to indicate in my previous replies, no independent physical world, only experience, only Mind, and, thus, no fixed 'geography' or 'topography' of places of rebirth. At this lowest level of individuated sensate existence in space-time, all manner of rebirths, within the limits of the laws of this level, are possible according to the karma of each individual soul. Some of these may bear some resemblance to the typologies given in various traditions and texts, but many are possible--all just relative individuated experiences at the level of soul, all just to be transcended. Your mother has no doubt been reborn with the experiential set of circumstances dictated by her karma and the Law of the All, but I can't say what that is. Whether you ever encounter her again sometime during the long weary round of rebirth throughout the long dark night of time depends on your mutual karmas, and again we can't say now. Even if you did somehow meet again, it probably isn't likely that you (or she) would know it or recognize each other in relation to the particular relationship of mother-son in this birth. In any case, it is not a goal to be wished for. I'm sorry that you are grieved at the loss of your mother, but, if I may gently and respectfully point out, the idea of spiritual practice and metaphysical understanding is not to assuage worldly grief or cater to worldly desires and attachments, but to gain a broader perspective on these things and free oneself from emotional attachment to the things of this world and, ultimately, from this world and the level of soul and individuated sensate existence in space-time altogether. You have had and have lost countless mothers in the past through countless rebirths--now is the time to start striving to get free of the whole mess altogether!
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Q. and A. on Beginning Meditation Practice
Q. I would like to start a meditation practice as you recommended. What are the steps?
A. It's great that you would like to start a meditation/contemplation practice. Again, please read carefully my essay THE PRACTICE OF CONTEMPLATION, also, there are a couple of preliminary meditations mentioned in MEDITATION FOR WORLDLINGS (though, of course, you are not a worldling!). Half an hour twice every day might be good to start--at regular times/on a regular schedule is best. The best time for meditation/contemplation practice, as universally agreed upon by all the contemplative ascetic systems, is upon arising very early in the morning. It is good to get into an 'early to bed, early to rise' regular routine, going to bed and getting up early to meditate at the same time every day. (From the time stamp of your emails, it looks like this might be a big change and reversal for you and could take a lot of getting used to, but I think you would eventually find it good and rewarding and good for discipline.) When you go to meditate, sit up straight on a firm/hard chair or, if you prefer, cross-legged on the floor. (I sit on the floor in the 'quarter-lotus' position, as I have for so many years. I get up, and have for more than thirty years, at 4:30 AM and meditate for two hours from about 5 to 7 AM. I also meditate for at least another hour later in the day--at a time depending on my work schedule. I go to sleep around 9:30 PM, but also take a nap at some point during the day, again depending on my work schedule.) Close your eyes and rest your hands either on your lap or on your knees. If you like, you could repeat one of your aphorisms mentally several times to settle down. Then, pick one Platonic Form/Idea and focus and concentrate and think on it continuously to the exclusion of all else--even though at first and probably for a very long time you won't be able to actually touch the Form itself. If one particular Form--such as beauty, sophrosune, dikaiosune, the ideal sage, or whatever--especially appeals to you, you may use that. Or, to start, you could just take the Form/Idea of 'triangle-in-itself'. Just try to continually think on/of and contact the Idea of triangle per se--not a visual or other sensory image, not any particular kind of triangle, but just the very intelligible notion of a triangle before any specific sensory experience of a triangle or any specific type of triangle, as all sensible triangles must be, but triangle-in-itself is not. Your mind and thoughts will almost immediately and constantly go off onto something else and into thinking about all sorts of things (not even necessarily wholesome!), but just keep continually gently bringing it back to the Idea/Form over and over again--you will do this countless times even just in half an hour! It is very difficult and takes a long time, so don't be discouraged, just keep going on and steadily working--it is most essential and rewarding, so just stick with it patiently whatever the difficulties or seeming lack of results.
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Q. and A. on Recollection
Q. Therefore intelligence does not depend upon sense perception, being independent from it, but sense perception does depend upon intelligence. This would be a rejection of scientism, which constantly says to man "Your mind is just a neurological process." I do not pretend to fully understand how knowledge can be remembrance. I would like your help understanding it
A. You are right that "intelligence does not depend on sense perception...but sense perception does depend on intelligence", and, with long and dedicated practice, you will experience and know this directly for yourself in the contemplation practice described above. This is indeed a complete rejection of scientism, which, unfortunately, is all around us in this darkest of times, even though it is the most deluded of views (to me, at least, it is quite scary being in such an environment, surrounded by mad beings going the exact opposite way from that in which we are going!). We could correspond about/discuss this more sometime, but, very briefly, the idea of empirical knowledge being recollection (or, actually, true non-empirical knowledge) is related to all this. In creating or experiencing sense perception and relative experience in space-time, the soul creates and organizes its experience based on its true knowledge of the Forms/Ideas that it had, even if unaware of it, from its being from and still in its higher part in contact with Nous. Otherwise, there couldn't be coherent relative experience at all--a mass of sensations per se is meaningless. To take the example given above, the soul has the innate knowledge eternally of triangle-in-itself. No sensory triangle as perceived by sense perception in this world is really a true and perfect and complete triangle and the true idea of triangle can't be derived from any sensory triangle. Perceiving, however, the imperfect phantom copies of one or more triangles in the sensory world, the soul refers these perceptions and sensory data to the Idea of triangle-in-itself that it innately possesses and is reminded of this Idea that it was previously no longer aware of, had 'forgotten', and uses this Idea to construct and organize the experience of a relative sensory triangle, which would otherwise be impossible--disorganized sense impressions being meaningless and impossible in themselves. Thus, 'knowledge' at a relative empirical level of empirical sensory triangles and what they are is really recollection of the absolute Idea of triangle-in-itself that the soul has always had but not recalled to the lower conscious level. (And, in fact, even the sensory experience is from the beginning a projection of soul (ours and the world-soul) of the Idea from the level of Nous, so the whole process is really remembering from beginning to end.)
Q. I have another question to ask if I may.... my mother passed away, and this is why I like "rebirth" with the idea in mind that I'll see her again (hopefully if she is a angel in heaven!) What does Platonic metaphysics say of worlds like heavens? I remember asking another ("alleged") Platonist regarding I think the 32 realms found in Buddhism and he said something along the lines of "there are no planes, there is only wisdom and agnosis". I remember asking him about Plato when he talked of realms, asking if they were literal, he said he (talking of Plato) was literal. So now I'm puzzled.
A. I will try to answer your question according to my understanding, which I make no claim to be that of anyone else. Rebirth and reincarnation is, of course, quite literally true. There is, however, as I have tried to indicate in my previous replies, no independent physical world, only experience, only Mind, and, thus, no fixed 'geography' or 'topography' of places of rebirth. At this lowest level of individuated sensate existence in space-time, all manner of rebirths, within the limits of the laws of this level, are possible according to the karma of each individual soul. Some of these may bear some resemblance to the typologies given in various traditions and texts, but many are possible--all just relative individuated experiences at the level of soul, all just to be transcended. Your mother has no doubt been reborn with the experiential set of circumstances dictated by her karma and the Law of the All, but I can't say what that is. Whether you ever encounter her again sometime during the long weary round of rebirth throughout the long dark night of time depends on your mutual karmas, and again we can't say now. Even if you did somehow meet again, it probably isn't likely that you (or she) would know it or recognize each other in relation to the particular relationship of mother-son in this birth. In any case, it is not a goal to be wished for. I'm sorry that you are grieved at the loss of your mother, but, if I may gently and respectfully point out, the idea of spiritual practice and metaphysical understanding is not to assuage worldly grief or cater to worldly desires and attachments, but to gain a broader perspective on these things and free oneself from emotional attachment to the things of this world and, ultimately, from this world and the level of soul and individuated sensate existence in space-time altogether. You have had and have lost countless mothers in the past through countless rebirths--now is the time to start striving to get free of the whole mess altogether!
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Q. and A. on Beginning Meditation Practice
Q. I would like to start a meditation practice as you recommended. What are the steps?
A. It's great that you would like to start a meditation/contemplation practice. Again, please read carefully my essay THE PRACTICE OF CONTEMPLATION, also, there are a couple of preliminary meditations mentioned in MEDITATION FOR WORLDLINGS (though, of course, you are not a worldling!). Half an hour twice every day might be good to start--at regular times/on a regular schedule is best. The best time for meditation/contemplation practice, as universally agreed upon by all the contemplative ascetic systems, is upon arising very early in the morning. It is good to get into an 'early to bed, early to rise' regular routine, going to bed and getting up early to meditate at the same time every day. (From the time stamp of your emails, it looks like this might be a big change and reversal for you and could take a lot of getting used to, but I think you would eventually find it good and rewarding and good for discipline.) When you go to meditate, sit up straight on a firm/hard chair or, if you prefer, cross-legged on the floor. (I sit on the floor in the 'quarter-lotus' position, as I have for so many years. I get up, and have for more than thirty years, at 4:30 AM and meditate for two hours from about 5 to 7 AM. I also meditate for at least another hour later in the day--at a time depending on my work schedule. I go to sleep around 9:30 PM, but also take a nap at some point during the day, again depending on my work schedule.) Close your eyes and rest your hands either on your lap or on your knees. If you like, you could repeat one of your aphorisms mentally several times to settle down. Then, pick one Platonic Form/Idea and focus and concentrate and think on it continuously to the exclusion of all else--even though at first and probably for a very long time you won't be able to actually touch the Form itself. If one particular Form--such as beauty, sophrosune, dikaiosune, the ideal sage, or whatever--especially appeals to you, you may use that. Or, to start, you could just take the Form/Idea of 'triangle-in-itself'. Just try to continually think on/of and contact the Idea of triangle per se--not a visual or other sensory image, not any particular kind of triangle, but just the very intelligible notion of a triangle before any specific sensory experience of a triangle or any specific type of triangle, as all sensible triangles must be, but triangle-in-itself is not. Your mind and thoughts will almost immediately and constantly go off onto something else and into thinking about all sorts of things (not even necessarily wholesome!), but just keep continually gently bringing it back to the Idea/Form over and over again--you will do this countless times even just in half an hour! It is very difficult and takes a long time, so don't be discouraged, just keep going on and steadily working--it is most essential and rewarding, so just stick with it patiently whatever the difficulties or seeming lack of results.
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Q. and A. on Recollection
Q. Therefore intelligence does not depend upon sense perception, being independent from it, but sense perception does depend upon intelligence. This would be a rejection of scientism, which constantly says to man "Your mind is just a neurological process." I do not pretend to fully understand how knowledge can be remembrance. I would like your help understanding it
A. You are right that "intelligence does not depend on sense perception...but sense perception does depend on intelligence", and, with long and dedicated practice, you will experience and know this directly for yourself in the contemplation practice described above. This is indeed a complete rejection of scientism, which, unfortunately, is all around us in this darkest of times, even though it is the most deluded of views (to me, at least, it is quite scary being in such an environment, surrounded by mad beings going the exact opposite way from that in which we are going!). We could correspond about/discuss this more sometime, but, very briefly, the idea of empirical knowledge being recollection (or, actually, true non-empirical knowledge) is related to all this. In creating or experiencing sense perception and relative experience in space-time, the soul creates and organizes its experience based on its true knowledge of the Forms/Ideas that it had, even if unaware of it, from its being from and still in its higher part in contact with Nous. Otherwise, there couldn't be coherent relative experience at all--a mass of sensations per se is meaningless. To take the example given above, the soul has the innate knowledge eternally of triangle-in-itself. No sensory triangle as perceived by sense perception in this world is really a true and perfect and complete triangle and the true idea of triangle can't be derived from any sensory triangle. Perceiving, however, the imperfect phantom copies of one or more triangles in the sensory world, the soul refers these perceptions and sensory data to the Idea of triangle-in-itself that it innately possesses and is reminded of this Idea that it was previously no longer aware of, had 'forgotten', and uses this Idea to construct and organize the experience of a relative sensory triangle, which would otherwise be impossible--disorganized sense impressions being meaningless and impossible in themselves. Thus, 'knowledge' at a relative empirical level of empirical sensory triangles and what they are is really recollection of the absolute Idea of triangle-in-itself that the soul has always had but not recalled to the lower conscious level. (And, in fact, even the sensory experience is from the beginning a projection of soul (ours and the world-soul) of the Idea from the level of Nous, so the whole process is really remembering from beginning to end.)
Thursday, March 8, 2018
Traditional Sexual Morality (Ascetic Perspective)
Traditional Sexual Morality
by Eric S. Fallick
“...but which things make not a small difference, and are hard to persuade about,
are especially the work of a god, if somehow it were possible for injunctions themselves
to come to be from that (god), but now there is likely to be need of some daring steadfast
person who, exceptionally honoring frankness of speech, will say the things seeming to be
best for a polis and citizens, among corrupted souls enjoining the fitting and pursuant
thing for the whole constitution, saying things opposite to the greatest desires, and not having
any person helping, alone following understanding alone.”
Plato, Laws, 835c
Sexual desire, in its broadest and most comprehensive sense and in all respects, including romantic love, is one of the principal things that binds us to the wheel of birth and death and repeated reincarnation and misery. It is the love and desire of the soul turned completely the wrong way, turned totally away from the Divine, the soul's true desire and love, and turned completely to becoming and sensate existence. It moves us further and further, only and always, into becoming and delusion and suffering and defilement, and further and further away from the Divine Absolute and re-union therewith and release from transmigration and individuated sensate existence in space-time. Complete celibacy, again, in its fullest and truest sense, and abstinence from any and all sexual activity whatsoever is required without question to tread the Path to freedom, release from becoming and divine union. It is an absolute ultimate soteriological necessity. It is an uncompromising requisite to even truly begin the Path and practice of true contemplation of the higher hypostases and to progress along it. At the end, at the telos, sexual desire in all its manifestations is, and must be, completely destroyed and eliminated. The true philosophos, the true Platonic contemplative ascetic and renunciant, clearly and intimately understands this and practices it to the best of his ability. Of course, he is in no sense free from sexual desire, this occurs only in accomplishment of the Path, and struggles with it constantly, but he always and without question maintains his physical celibacy and never willingly indulges his sexual desire in any way. Not being cloistered, he struggles continually with restraining his eyes and thoughts, and is always failing, but would never dream of compromising or abandoning his celibacy or of thinking or acting like an ordinary deluded worldling, and always picks up the battle again as soon as he realizes a slip of the eye or mind. The true philosophos, the true Platonist contemplative ascetic and renunciant, always views things from a transmigratory perspective and from an understanding of the actual spiritual nature and working of Reality, not from the superficial perspectives of the sense world and of worldlings. He is a stranger and alien in this world, always directed in every moment to transcending it and ascending to the Divine. He views the world and worldlings and their pursuits from apart, as a lonely outsider, looking down on this world and life from a transcendent, divine and metaphysical perspective and understanding. This is very much the case with the realm of sexuality and worldly love that so preoccupies the world and ordinary worldlings, to the horrible corruption and bondage of their souls and their continued re-becoming.
The real Platonic ascetics, the philosophoi, are, however, even in the best of times, let alone now in these darkest times, always very few. Real and full renunciants truly striving for release from the cycle of birth and death, genesis, and for divine re-union and actually knowing how to do so are rare and lonely outsiders in this world. This Path is not for the many (as upsetting as this may be to many in this democratic, egalitarian, relativist, naturalist age which denies the natural and divine spiritual hierarchy and won't accept, in the spiritual realm, that any way of life or practice or understanding is better than another and relentlessly works to level everything and everyone to the lowest common denominator). So what for the rest? The second and next best approximation, and which is a very good step indeed in a given birth and is to be greatly respected and admired and welcomed in fellowship, is a celibate religious vocation, clerical or monastic, eremitical or cenobitical, within one of the institutionalized religious traditions or systems—Buddhism, Hinduism, Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Jainism, Daoism, etc. This, of course, involves taking on the burden and tie to this world and becoming of a muthos, historicity, understanding of spiritual reality through religious symbols and doctrines, limited and approximate spiritual and metaphysical understanding and praxis, and, usually, at least some amount of institutional and administrative structure and forms and involvement, in contrast to the direct, correct and unmediated understanding and practice of the Platonic contemplative ascetic or philosophos—a burden that sometime in a future birth along the Path will have to be shed—but is nonetheless greatly to be encouraged and applauded and stood shoulder to shoulder with.
In better and more traditional times, and even until the middle of the twentieth century, many, though still, of course, a, usually small, minority, did follow, though, of course, with very varying degrees of sincerity and true vocation and practice, this Way of the celibate religious vocation within the various systems. Now, however, in this ever more deluded secular, naturalist, materialist, post-sexual revolution brave new world, hardly anyone, or very few, are willing or want to follow even this second level celibate religious vocation Way—celibate ascetics and renunciants and religious of any type as a whole are an endangered species. So what about the many, most people, the vast majority even in the best times and almost everyone now? Here we take a much greater quantum leap downwards from the distance between the first two levels of celibate religious ascetics above, to the third level approximation for the many. This third level is the farthest we can go from and the most distant acceptable approximation to actual spiritual reality and practice and understanding and the way things are, as shocking as this may be to the present day. This, the law for the many, the nonnegotiable moral and spiritual standard for the masses and majority of people, is traditional sexual morality: that the only legitimate, lawful, acceptable, allowable, divinely sanctioned form of sexual activity is heterosexual intercourse in an indissoluble monogamous traditional marriage between a man and a woman in the context of the family and procreation. Everything else is proscribed—non- and extra-marital sex, homosexuality, sodomy, masturbation, transgenderism, etc., etc.--everything else. “What!” cry the modern naturalists and the masses that follow them, “Impossible, ridiculous, bigoted, discriminatory, authoritarian, the unenlightened relic of a bygone age, regressive puritanism!” Remember that the present day is the darkest and most deluded age in at least the last 25 or 30 centuries (at least since the 'axial age'). This is the nadir, not the zenith, of human history and development. In most all better, wiser times, in traditional societies more in tune with actual spiritual reality, this traditional sexual morality was, in general, the standard. Of course, always, many honored it more in the breach than the observance, but it was still the officially accepted and respected position, originated by those who understood the true spiritual welfare of the populace and what was truly most helpful to them. It is, in fact, quite possible for most people to observe this traditional sexual morality when it is clearly and definitely understood to be the inviolable norm and is strongly supported by the sanctions of society and culture and religion. Good, decent people did generally observe it for many centuries, even up until the mid-20th century. Just because one has desires, however strong, doesn't mean one has to act on them. Indulgence in sensual desire only strengthens it and begets more desire. Restraint and discipline becomes habitual and lessens desire and makes it more manageable. As the divine Plato points out, it is the acceptability and indulgence in unlawful forms of sexual activity that increases the desire for them. Just as moral people are generally not tempted by and are repelled from incest and other forms of sexuality that everyone considers unholy and morally repugnant, so when this traditional sexual morality is the universally honored norm and everything else is considered unholy and repugnant, it is possible and easier for people to reduce and restrain and abstain from their other sexual desires outside of the acceptable, lawful channel. This is greatly to their spiritual and ultimate and genuine benefit in that as far as they restrain their sexuality and sexual desires and limit their sexual activity to the sanctioned form, to that extent are they in accord with actual divine spiritual reality and are moving slowly towards freedom. On the other hand, to the extent that they freely indulge and increase their sexual appetites of various sorts, the more they move deeper into becoming and bondage and create karma binding themselves ever tighter to the wheel of birth and death. This, of course, requires the turning away from the naturalist, materialist and post-sexual revolution dogma that is the dominant weltanschauung of the present day and is enforced by the institutions of society. But this dogma is actually totally implausible and illogical and is easily refuted—it is only its current prevalence and official enforcement and all pervasiveness that makes it seem plausible and accepted unquestioningly by most people. For most people, re-acceptance of this traditional sexual morality will require acceptance of the muthos of their particular religion that this sexual morality is revealed divine law or the revelation through the superknowledge of the founders or sages of their tradition and that violation of it incurs divine penalty, but this is certainly much truer and closer, if symbolically expressed, to the truth and spiritual reality than the modern naturalist myth and misunderstanding that actually has no connection to Reality whatsoever. For a few, understanding of the philosophical, metaphysical and spiritual reality underlying the injunction to traditional sexual morality will be possible. Even when people do violate the standard, as they still often will, they will be ashamed and know that they are acting non-optimally, which will conduce to their spiritual benefit and ultimate progress in passing through the round of reincarnations. Those who still feel that their desires are absolutely homosexual or otherwise not possible to channel into the acceptable avenue can rejoice in that they have an unequivocal call, therefore, to holy celibacy and complete continence and the religious life.
The only thing that determines the well-being of a person is the closeness or distance of the soul from the Good or the One. Sexual desire, sexuality and sexual activity pulls the soul away from the Good and rivets it to this body and this world and binds it to misery and endless reincarnation. Restraint of sexual desire and continence in the context of a spiritual life moves the soul towards the Good and release from the cycle of birth and death. For the many who aren't going to follow the way of a celibate ascetic renunciant life, the only acceptable alternative is the traditional sexual morality of limitation of sexual activity exclusively to traditional heterosexual monogamous marriage. The sexual revolution and the naturalist worldview that spawned it is wholly pernicious and one of the greatest calamities of human history. (One wonders if Wilhelm Reich has much chance of ever obtaining another human rebirth anytime soon.) A return to a real spiritual weltanschauung and hierarchy and traditional sexual morality and respect for the celibate religious vocation is the only hope for the soul of the modern world.
© 2016 Eric S. Fallick
by Eric S. Fallick
“...but which things make not a small difference, and are hard to persuade about,
are especially the work of a god, if somehow it were possible for injunctions themselves
to come to be from that (god), but now there is likely to be need of some daring steadfast
person who, exceptionally honoring frankness of speech, will say the things seeming to be
best for a polis and citizens, among corrupted souls enjoining the fitting and pursuant
thing for the whole constitution, saying things opposite to the greatest desires, and not having
any person helping, alone following understanding alone.”
Plato, Laws, 835c
Sexual desire, in its broadest and most comprehensive sense and in all respects, including romantic love, is one of the principal things that binds us to the wheel of birth and death and repeated reincarnation and misery. It is the love and desire of the soul turned completely the wrong way, turned totally away from the Divine, the soul's true desire and love, and turned completely to becoming and sensate existence. It moves us further and further, only and always, into becoming and delusion and suffering and defilement, and further and further away from the Divine Absolute and re-union therewith and release from transmigration and individuated sensate existence in space-time. Complete celibacy, again, in its fullest and truest sense, and abstinence from any and all sexual activity whatsoever is required without question to tread the Path to freedom, release from becoming and divine union. It is an absolute ultimate soteriological necessity. It is an uncompromising requisite to even truly begin the Path and practice of true contemplation of the higher hypostases and to progress along it. At the end, at the telos, sexual desire in all its manifestations is, and must be, completely destroyed and eliminated. The true philosophos, the true Platonic contemplative ascetic and renunciant, clearly and intimately understands this and practices it to the best of his ability. Of course, he is in no sense free from sexual desire, this occurs only in accomplishment of the Path, and struggles with it constantly, but he always and without question maintains his physical celibacy and never willingly indulges his sexual desire in any way. Not being cloistered, he struggles continually with restraining his eyes and thoughts, and is always failing, but would never dream of compromising or abandoning his celibacy or of thinking or acting like an ordinary deluded worldling, and always picks up the battle again as soon as he realizes a slip of the eye or mind. The true philosophos, the true Platonist contemplative ascetic and renunciant, always views things from a transmigratory perspective and from an understanding of the actual spiritual nature and working of Reality, not from the superficial perspectives of the sense world and of worldlings. He is a stranger and alien in this world, always directed in every moment to transcending it and ascending to the Divine. He views the world and worldlings and their pursuits from apart, as a lonely outsider, looking down on this world and life from a transcendent, divine and metaphysical perspective and understanding. This is very much the case with the realm of sexuality and worldly love that so preoccupies the world and ordinary worldlings, to the horrible corruption and bondage of their souls and their continued re-becoming.
The real Platonic ascetics, the philosophoi, are, however, even in the best of times, let alone now in these darkest times, always very few. Real and full renunciants truly striving for release from the cycle of birth and death, genesis, and for divine re-union and actually knowing how to do so are rare and lonely outsiders in this world. This Path is not for the many (as upsetting as this may be to many in this democratic, egalitarian, relativist, naturalist age which denies the natural and divine spiritual hierarchy and won't accept, in the spiritual realm, that any way of life or practice or understanding is better than another and relentlessly works to level everything and everyone to the lowest common denominator). So what for the rest? The second and next best approximation, and which is a very good step indeed in a given birth and is to be greatly respected and admired and welcomed in fellowship, is a celibate religious vocation, clerical or monastic, eremitical or cenobitical, within one of the institutionalized religious traditions or systems—Buddhism, Hinduism, Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Jainism, Daoism, etc. This, of course, involves taking on the burden and tie to this world and becoming of a muthos, historicity, understanding of spiritual reality through religious symbols and doctrines, limited and approximate spiritual and metaphysical understanding and praxis, and, usually, at least some amount of institutional and administrative structure and forms and involvement, in contrast to the direct, correct and unmediated understanding and practice of the Platonic contemplative ascetic or philosophos—a burden that sometime in a future birth along the Path will have to be shed—but is nonetheless greatly to be encouraged and applauded and stood shoulder to shoulder with.
In better and more traditional times, and even until the middle of the twentieth century, many, though still, of course, a, usually small, minority, did follow, though, of course, with very varying degrees of sincerity and true vocation and practice, this Way of the celibate religious vocation within the various systems. Now, however, in this ever more deluded secular, naturalist, materialist, post-sexual revolution brave new world, hardly anyone, or very few, are willing or want to follow even this second level celibate religious vocation Way—celibate ascetics and renunciants and religious of any type as a whole are an endangered species. So what about the many, most people, the vast majority even in the best times and almost everyone now? Here we take a much greater quantum leap downwards from the distance between the first two levels of celibate religious ascetics above, to the third level approximation for the many. This third level is the farthest we can go from and the most distant acceptable approximation to actual spiritual reality and practice and understanding and the way things are, as shocking as this may be to the present day. This, the law for the many, the nonnegotiable moral and spiritual standard for the masses and majority of people, is traditional sexual morality: that the only legitimate, lawful, acceptable, allowable, divinely sanctioned form of sexual activity is heterosexual intercourse in an indissoluble monogamous traditional marriage between a man and a woman in the context of the family and procreation. Everything else is proscribed—non- and extra-marital sex, homosexuality, sodomy, masturbation, transgenderism, etc., etc.--everything else. “What!” cry the modern naturalists and the masses that follow them, “Impossible, ridiculous, bigoted, discriminatory, authoritarian, the unenlightened relic of a bygone age, regressive puritanism!” Remember that the present day is the darkest and most deluded age in at least the last 25 or 30 centuries (at least since the 'axial age'). This is the nadir, not the zenith, of human history and development. In most all better, wiser times, in traditional societies more in tune with actual spiritual reality, this traditional sexual morality was, in general, the standard. Of course, always, many honored it more in the breach than the observance, but it was still the officially accepted and respected position, originated by those who understood the true spiritual welfare of the populace and what was truly most helpful to them. It is, in fact, quite possible for most people to observe this traditional sexual morality when it is clearly and definitely understood to be the inviolable norm and is strongly supported by the sanctions of society and culture and religion. Good, decent people did generally observe it for many centuries, even up until the mid-20th century. Just because one has desires, however strong, doesn't mean one has to act on them. Indulgence in sensual desire only strengthens it and begets more desire. Restraint and discipline becomes habitual and lessens desire and makes it more manageable. As the divine Plato points out, it is the acceptability and indulgence in unlawful forms of sexual activity that increases the desire for them. Just as moral people are generally not tempted by and are repelled from incest and other forms of sexuality that everyone considers unholy and morally repugnant, so when this traditional sexual morality is the universally honored norm and everything else is considered unholy and repugnant, it is possible and easier for people to reduce and restrain and abstain from their other sexual desires outside of the acceptable, lawful channel. This is greatly to their spiritual and ultimate and genuine benefit in that as far as they restrain their sexuality and sexual desires and limit their sexual activity to the sanctioned form, to that extent are they in accord with actual divine spiritual reality and are moving slowly towards freedom. On the other hand, to the extent that they freely indulge and increase their sexual appetites of various sorts, the more they move deeper into becoming and bondage and create karma binding themselves ever tighter to the wheel of birth and death. This, of course, requires the turning away from the naturalist, materialist and post-sexual revolution dogma that is the dominant weltanschauung of the present day and is enforced by the institutions of society. But this dogma is actually totally implausible and illogical and is easily refuted—it is only its current prevalence and official enforcement and all pervasiveness that makes it seem plausible and accepted unquestioningly by most people. For most people, re-acceptance of this traditional sexual morality will require acceptance of the muthos of their particular religion that this sexual morality is revealed divine law or the revelation through the superknowledge of the founders or sages of their tradition and that violation of it incurs divine penalty, but this is certainly much truer and closer, if symbolically expressed, to the truth and spiritual reality than the modern naturalist myth and misunderstanding that actually has no connection to Reality whatsoever. For a few, understanding of the philosophical, metaphysical and spiritual reality underlying the injunction to traditional sexual morality will be possible. Even when people do violate the standard, as they still often will, they will be ashamed and know that they are acting non-optimally, which will conduce to their spiritual benefit and ultimate progress in passing through the round of reincarnations. Those who still feel that their desires are absolutely homosexual or otherwise not possible to channel into the acceptable avenue can rejoice in that they have an unequivocal call, therefore, to holy celibacy and complete continence and the religious life.
The only thing that determines the well-being of a person is the closeness or distance of the soul from the Good or the One. Sexual desire, sexuality and sexual activity pulls the soul away from the Good and rivets it to this body and this world and binds it to misery and endless reincarnation. Restraint of sexual desire and continence in the context of a spiritual life moves the soul towards the Good and release from the cycle of birth and death. For the many who aren't going to follow the way of a celibate ascetic renunciant life, the only acceptable alternative is the traditional sexual morality of limitation of sexual activity exclusively to traditional heterosexual monogamous marriage. The sexual revolution and the naturalist worldview that spawned it is wholly pernicious and one of the greatest calamities of human history. (One wonders if Wilhelm Reich has much chance of ever obtaining another human rebirth anytime soon.) A return to a real spiritual weltanschauung and hierarchy and traditional sexual morality and respect for the celibate religious vocation is the only hope for the soul of the modern world.
© 2016 Eric S. Fallick
Wednesday, March 7, 2018
Letter to a Modern Secular Materialist Positivist Skeptic
Letter to a Modern Secular Materialist Positivist Skeptic
by Eric S. Fallick
You are unwilling to adopt a definite spiritual understanding and contemplative ascetic life and practice because you think that you don't have direct empirical evidence or personal experience to know their truth. You don't realize that you are already full of undemonstrated beliefs, that it is impossible to operate without a belief structure, that you have to stand somewhere. Through lack of philosophical understanding, you have simply adopted without question or conscious awareness the most dubious and undemonstrable belief structure of the modern world and scientism that holds that only the things of the senses and individual subjective experience are actual and positively demonstrable, while actually it can be shown that these are the least reliable. This is most unfortunate, but perhaps not surprising since this is the attitude and environment all around you and is most insidious in presenting itself as self-evident rather than another most questionable belief structure and actually denies the validity of metaphysics while not realizing that it is, in fact, just based on another and unquestioned, but illogical, metaphysics—that of materialism, positivism, naturalism, sensationalism, etc. Ultimately, however, this is due to your own heavy karma and deep rooted delusion, which has resulted in both the circumstances of your present birth and, more particularly, your accepting the belief structure of the modern world around you and your inability to shift to a truer structure and your ongoing doubts and skepticism. Since, however, this is how you feel, let's see what your own personal, positivistically evident experience actually tells you.
Here is something you know directly for yourself from your own experience: You will die. Whether in five minutes or sixty years, you will die. You obviously know this to be the case since you don't know or have ever heard of anyone who hasn't or doesn't die. You also know directly from your own experience that nothing in the spatio-temporal sense world, no sense-perceptible thing, is permanent and lasts—everything perishes after a (relatively short!) time and disappears. You know this since you have never seen and can't think of any sense-perceptible or phenomenal thing that lasts forever. Thus, since you know that you will die and that everything in this world will pass away, you know that there is nothing you can pursue in this world that you can keep and have for more than a very short time and that you will have to leave everything behind at death. People, family, friends, wives, children, possessions, pleasures, worldly knowledge, etc., etc.—you can't keep anything. This you know yourself to be the case. Therefore, the only logical and reasonable thing to do under such a circumstance is to renounce and give up all these things that you can't keep and seek for something that is permanent and can give lasting satisfaction. What is there that you know from your own direct experience that is constant? Where can you look from your own experience for something permanent? In fact, it is the fact of experience itself, the soul or spirit or subject that experiences impermanence and all the passing phenomena, including the phenomena of body and mind. This must stand outside the space-time frame or it would not be possible to know of or experience the passing variety and series of spatio-temporal phenomena. Experience itself per se, the soul/spirit/subject must continue the same for any particular changing experiences to be possible at all. Thus, though you don't realize it, you really know directly for yourself from your own experience the fact of rebirth/reincarnation since otherwise it wouldn't be possible for you to know the experience of death. Since the soul/spirit/experience itself is the only thing that you have and have direct personal experience of that could possibly last beyond your death (which is coming very soon—a whole long lifetime of 100 years is only an instant compared to the whole of time), the only at all sane occupation of your life would be the purification and extrication of your soul from the impermanent, imperishable space-time world and objects. Thus, it seems to me, you actually already have the essential framework of the Indo-hellenistic spiritual systems and practice as a matter of your direct personal experience and the decision to become a renunciant/contemplative ascetic devoted to meditation, study, striving for liberation, etc. is already made for you as a matter of your direct personal experience.
Now, at this point, with your doubting mind, you might say, “OK, now I know from my own experience the facts of the immortality of the soul, the cycle of reincarnation and the logical desirability of release from this, but how do I know that there is actually something else besides this endless cycle of rebirth and that I can attain to it and attain release and thereby should exert the effort to do so?” From your own personal experience, you know that experience consists not only of your own self or soul, of the subject only, but also that there are objects of experience and that other souls are included in your own experience—that you experience the existence of other souls and of objects of experience, that you know yourself as bounded, with other selves and things beyond this boundary. This would not be possible if there were not another greater overarching mind that experiences the whole and with which you are connected and in which you are rooted, that goes beyond the boundaries and lets you experience beyond your own boundaries and, to a limited extent, the whole. Further, you know from your own experience that your knowledge is limited and imperfect and that you can err. You would not be able to recognize limited and imperfect knowledge and error unless there were a standard and fact of complete perfect knowledge and truth to compare it to greater than your own limited knowledge and unless you were in some way in contact with and rooted in it. Knowledge must exist in and for a mind. Thus, there must be a greater, all complete, all encompassing, true, unerring mind that you have contact with and that provides the standards by which you know that your own knowledge may be incomplete, imperfect or erroneous. Thus, you also know from your own personal experience that there is an Absolute, an Absolute Mind, greater than yourself outside of the limited time-space world of rebirth and finite experience and that you are already somehow and to some extent in contact with it. How do you know that you can attain union with this Absolute Mind and come yourself to be outside the finite world and cycle of rebirth? You know from your own personal experience that your own knowledge can become better and more complete and truer and you don't know and have never experienced a limit to this process. Since your own knowledge is by nature limited, your increase in truer and more complete knowledge and knowing that it is so can only come from gaining such knowledge from the complete true knowledge of the Absolute Mind, from greater contact with the Absolute Mind. The more complete and true your knowledge becomes, the more you have contact with the Absolute Mind, the more your knowledge resembles and is that of the Absolute Mind. When your knowledge would become coterminous with the complete knowledge of the Absolute Mind, there would be nothing left to distinguish you from the Absolute Mind, you would be the Absolute Mind. Thus, you know that it is possible to attain union with the Absolute Mind and come to be outside of birth and death.
Now, finally, you may doubt, “OK, I see that I have to logically grant all this, but how do I know for sure that contemplative asceticism is the way to this re-union and release? How do I know that meditation or contemplation is the method to accomplish this? Even if it is, how do I know that renunciation is necessary in order to do it?” You have already granted that the way to re-union and release is to merge your mind with the Absolute Mind, to make your mind coextensive with the Absolute Mind. How else is this to be accomplished but in formal contemplation or meditation, along with ancillary study? Contemplation is the very practice of consciously and continuously exerting your soul to come into contact with, be filled by, receive knowledge from and merge with the Absolute Mind. This obviously requires the formal sitting practice of contemplation in which you attempt to free your mind from other content and concerns to fill it from the Divine Mind. How else could your soul receive the impress of the Divine Mind if it is not trying, at least for the period of contemplation, to be free from the content and impresses of the limited sense world? Your mind or soul cannot be directed in two opposite ways and be filled with two mutually conflicting contents at the same time! Thus, it is clear that formal contemplation practice is the necessary way—though, of course, it needs to be informed by a proper understanding gained through study and reflection so that you know what you are doing. It is also obvious, upon even a little reflection, and logical that this requires full world renunciation and asceticism to such an extent as is possible. First of all, even a little beginning effort will show you empirically that this is a most, in fact, supremely difficult and lengthy task. It clearly requires all the time and energy you can give to it. How could you possibly devote such necessary effort to the spiritual path while still occupied with pursuing and indulging in worldly desires and pursuits—sex, relationships, family, career ambitions, entertainments, fancy food and drink for pleasure, hobbies, literature, activism, news, etc., etc.—all of which require much time and energy and thought and take all this away from contemplative practice and study, which, it should be obvious, requires all the time, energy and effort you can muster if it is to be at all successful. How in the world, again, also, can you fill your mind and soul with all these things outside of contemplation and then expect to suddenly empty yourself of them in contemplation to receive the impress of the Absolute Mind? It would be like trying to put out a fire while at the same time stoking it with fuel and gasoline, or trying to erase a chalkboard at one end while continuing to write on it at an even greater rate at the other end, or trying to record a disk with two completely different and discordant sound sources at the same time! All worldly pursuits and desires and indulgences, as you can easily verify in a short time from your own experience if you try to practice contemplation without renunciation and ceasing from these worldly things, turn the soul completely towards becoming, which is the state of the finite soul, as is clear from the discussion above, instead of to being, which is the state of the Divine Mind that you are trying to attain to. Can it be any more obvious and logical, even just from your own experience and reflection, that you can't turn in two opposite directions at the same time? Thus, it is clear without doubt that contemplation, meditation, renunciation and asceticism are the Path and the only way to accomplish the goal that has appeared as incontrovertibly logically necessary even just on the basis of the personal experience that each person indubitably has, if they would only reflect on it.
So, there you have it. Even just on the basis of everyone's common human experience, the understanding is clear and the only possible reasonable way to proceed is manifest. Slough off your deluded modern physicalist conditioning, my friend, and rouse yourself from your positivist slumbers. Awaken the innate understanding and aspiration of your soul and get going full speed ahead on the Path to freedom from rebirth and sensate existence and misery. You have nothing to lose but your bondage and suffering and ignorance!
©2016 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (with) (Gee) mail (period) com
by Eric S. Fallick
You are unwilling to adopt a definite spiritual understanding and contemplative ascetic life and practice because you think that you don't have direct empirical evidence or personal experience to know their truth. You don't realize that you are already full of undemonstrated beliefs, that it is impossible to operate without a belief structure, that you have to stand somewhere. Through lack of philosophical understanding, you have simply adopted without question or conscious awareness the most dubious and undemonstrable belief structure of the modern world and scientism that holds that only the things of the senses and individual subjective experience are actual and positively demonstrable, while actually it can be shown that these are the least reliable. This is most unfortunate, but perhaps not surprising since this is the attitude and environment all around you and is most insidious in presenting itself as self-evident rather than another most questionable belief structure and actually denies the validity of metaphysics while not realizing that it is, in fact, just based on another and unquestioned, but illogical, metaphysics—that of materialism, positivism, naturalism, sensationalism, etc. Ultimately, however, this is due to your own heavy karma and deep rooted delusion, which has resulted in both the circumstances of your present birth and, more particularly, your accepting the belief structure of the modern world around you and your inability to shift to a truer structure and your ongoing doubts and skepticism. Since, however, this is how you feel, let's see what your own personal, positivistically evident experience actually tells you.
Here is something you know directly for yourself from your own experience: You will die. Whether in five minutes or sixty years, you will die. You obviously know this to be the case since you don't know or have ever heard of anyone who hasn't or doesn't die. You also know directly from your own experience that nothing in the spatio-temporal sense world, no sense-perceptible thing, is permanent and lasts—everything perishes after a (relatively short!) time and disappears. You know this since you have never seen and can't think of any sense-perceptible or phenomenal thing that lasts forever. Thus, since you know that you will die and that everything in this world will pass away, you know that there is nothing you can pursue in this world that you can keep and have for more than a very short time and that you will have to leave everything behind at death. People, family, friends, wives, children, possessions, pleasures, worldly knowledge, etc., etc.—you can't keep anything. This you know yourself to be the case. Therefore, the only logical and reasonable thing to do under such a circumstance is to renounce and give up all these things that you can't keep and seek for something that is permanent and can give lasting satisfaction. What is there that you know from your own direct experience that is constant? Where can you look from your own experience for something permanent? In fact, it is the fact of experience itself, the soul or spirit or subject that experiences impermanence and all the passing phenomena, including the phenomena of body and mind. This must stand outside the space-time frame or it would not be possible to know of or experience the passing variety and series of spatio-temporal phenomena. Experience itself per se, the soul/spirit/subject must continue the same for any particular changing experiences to be possible at all. Thus, though you don't realize it, you really know directly for yourself from your own experience the fact of rebirth/reincarnation since otherwise it wouldn't be possible for you to know the experience of death. Since the soul/spirit/experience itself is the only thing that you have and have direct personal experience of that could possibly last beyond your death (which is coming very soon—a whole long lifetime of 100 years is only an instant compared to the whole of time), the only at all sane occupation of your life would be the purification and extrication of your soul from the impermanent, imperishable space-time world and objects. Thus, it seems to me, you actually already have the essential framework of the Indo-hellenistic spiritual systems and practice as a matter of your direct personal experience and the decision to become a renunciant/contemplative ascetic devoted to meditation, study, striving for liberation, etc. is already made for you as a matter of your direct personal experience.
Now, at this point, with your doubting mind, you might say, “OK, now I know from my own experience the facts of the immortality of the soul, the cycle of reincarnation and the logical desirability of release from this, but how do I know that there is actually something else besides this endless cycle of rebirth and that I can attain to it and attain release and thereby should exert the effort to do so?” From your own personal experience, you know that experience consists not only of your own self or soul, of the subject only, but also that there are objects of experience and that other souls are included in your own experience—that you experience the existence of other souls and of objects of experience, that you know yourself as bounded, with other selves and things beyond this boundary. This would not be possible if there were not another greater overarching mind that experiences the whole and with which you are connected and in which you are rooted, that goes beyond the boundaries and lets you experience beyond your own boundaries and, to a limited extent, the whole. Further, you know from your own experience that your knowledge is limited and imperfect and that you can err. You would not be able to recognize limited and imperfect knowledge and error unless there were a standard and fact of complete perfect knowledge and truth to compare it to greater than your own limited knowledge and unless you were in some way in contact with and rooted in it. Knowledge must exist in and for a mind. Thus, there must be a greater, all complete, all encompassing, true, unerring mind that you have contact with and that provides the standards by which you know that your own knowledge may be incomplete, imperfect or erroneous. Thus, you also know from your own personal experience that there is an Absolute, an Absolute Mind, greater than yourself outside of the limited time-space world of rebirth and finite experience and that you are already somehow and to some extent in contact with it. How do you know that you can attain union with this Absolute Mind and come yourself to be outside the finite world and cycle of rebirth? You know from your own personal experience that your own knowledge can become better and more complete and truer and you don't know and have never experienced a limit to this process. Since your own knowledge is by nature limited, your increase in truer and more complete knowledge and knowing that it is so can only come from gaining such knowledge from the complete true knowledge of the Absolute Mind, from greater contact with the Absolute Mind. The more complete and true your knowledge becomes, the more you have contact with the Absolute Mind, the more your knowledge resembles and is that of the Absolute Mind. When your knowledge would become coterminous with the complete knowledge of the Absolute Mind, there would be nothing left to distinguish you from the Absolute Mind, you would be the Absolute Mind. Thus, you know that it is possible to attain union with the Absolute Mind and come to be outside of birth and death.
Now, finally, you may doubt, “OK, I see that I have to logically grant all this, but how do I know for sure that contemplative asceticism is the way to this re-union and release? How do I know that meditation or contemplation is the method to accomplish this? Even if it is, how do I know that renunciation is necessary in order to do it?” You have already granted that the way to re-union and release is to merge your mind with the Absolute Mind, to make your mind coextensive with the Absolute Mind. How else is this to be accomplished but in formal contemplation or meditation, along with ancillary study? Contemplation is the very practice of consciously and continuously exerting your soul to come into contact with, be filled by, receive knowledge from and merge with the Absolute Mind. This obviously requires the formal sitting practice of contemplation in which you attempt to free your mind from other content and concerns to fill it from the Divine Mind. How else could your soul receive the impress of the Divine Mind if it is not trying, at least for the period of contemplation, to be free from the content and impresses of the limited sense world? Your mind or soul cannot be directed in two opposite ways and be filled with two mutually conflicting contents at the same time! Thus, it is clear that formal contemplation practice is the necessary way—though, of course, it needs to be informed by a proper understanding gained through study and reflection so that you know what you are doing. It is also obvious, upon even a little reflection, and logical that this requires full world renunciation and asceticism to such an extent as is possible. First of all, even a little beginning effort will show you empirically that this is a most, in fact, supremely difficult and lengthy task. It clearly requires all the time and energy you can give to it. How could you possibly devote such necessary effort to the spiritual path while still occupied with pursuing and indulging in worldly desires and pursuits—sex, relationships, family, career ambitions, entertainments, fancy food and drink for pleasure, hobbies, literature, activism, news, etc., etc.—all of which require much time and energy and thought and take all this away from contemplative practice and study, which, it should be obvious, requires all the time, energy and effort you can muster if it is to be at all successful. How in the world, again, also, can you fill your mind and soul with all these things outside of contemplation and then expect to suddenly empty yourself of them in contemplation to receive the impress of the Absolute Mind? It would be like trying to put out a fire while at the same time stoking it with fuel and gasoline, or trying to erase a chalkboard at one end while continuing to write on it at an even greater rate at the other end, or trying to record a disk with two completely different and discordant sound sources at the same time! All worldly pursuits and desires and indulgences, as you can easily verify in a short time from your own experience if you try to practice contemplation without renunciation and ceasing from these worldly things, turn the soul completely towards becoming, which is the state of the finite soul, as is clear from the discussion above, instead of to being, which is the state of the Divine Mind that you are trying to attain to. Can it be any more obvious and logical, even just from your own experience and reflection, that you can't turn in two opposite directions at the same time? Thus, it is clear without doubt that contemplation, meditation, renunciation and asceticism are the Path and the only way to accomplish the goal that has appeared as incontrovertibly logically necessary even just on the basis of the personal experience that each person indubitably has, if they would only reflect on it.
So, there you have it. Even just on the basis of everyone's common human experience, the understanding is clear and the only possible reasonable way to proceed is manifest. Slough off your deluded modern physicalist conditioning, my friend, and rouse yourself from your positivist slumbers. Awaken the innate understanding and aspiration of your soul and get going full speed ahead on the Path to freedom from rebirth and sensate existence and misery. You have nothing to lose but your bondage and suffering and ignorance!
©2016 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (with) (Gee) mail (period) com
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