Disappearing into Vastness

 24 September 2023 

Disappearing into Vastness

I’ve been thinking about the path of Platonism and its realization.  When I say I’ve been ‘thinking’ about this, I mean that I wonder how I might explain the path and its realization to someone new to Platonism.  ‘Path and realization’ are a kind of broad perspective, or overview, of Platonism; this contrasts with focusing on specific practices, or particular writings, or specific issues in the history of Platonism.  Here are a few thoughts derived from thinking about this:

1.  Overall, the journey as understood in Platonism is a letting go of differentiation and distinctiveness and a movement toward the less differentiated and the less distinctive.  It is a movement from that which is separated from other things and stands apart from other things, to that which unifies things, in other words a journey to unity itelf, or the One; it is a Return to the One.

2.  On a personal level, this Platonic journey is a letting go of one’s own distinctiveness and uniqueness and moving instead to comprehending oneself as a human being as such rather than as a unique individual.  This is not the final goal, but it is a step on the path of Platonism.  

This is a shift in awareness rather than a shift in material qualities or circumstances.

3.  On a social level, this Platonic journey is a letting go of attachments to social distinctions as defining one’s nature.  Again, this is a shift of awareness rather than a shift in material circumstances or qualities.  I mean that the practitioner remains someone with a particular status in society, with a particular job, who is biologically related to particular people, and so forth.  But these distinctions are no longer compelling or thought of as guiding the life journey.  

4.  This shift resembles how concerns we had when we were young no longer have importance for us when we reach a certain age.  Most of us have the experience of collecting some kind of objects when we were young, often competing with others in this regard.  When I was young many kids in my age cohort collected baseball cards.  A more recent generation often collected cards for a game called ‘Magic: the Gathering.’  Almost everyone can recall something along these lines such as collecting materials about some singer or actor who is famous for your generation.

At some point in life we lose interest in these collections.  Often this happens when we go away to college; we return home for a semester break or some holiday, and we find the collection still on our desk, or in a drawer, or in a box in the closet.  But it no longer interests us.  We can remember how passionate we were about acquiring the collection, but that is just a memory now.

This is the kind of shift I am referring to, but it is also focused on our interior states of mind, not only on exterior things.

5.  This journey, this Return to the One, continues as we step by step drop our identifications with differentiation and individuation.  This can be difficult, sometimes very difficult.  But as we practice contemplation, purification, and renunciation we slowly cultivate a habit of doing so.  

6.  It is like a cloud deciding to rest in the awareness of the sky.  The sky precedes the cloud.  The cloud changes, but the sky is eternal.

7.  This shift from cloud to sky is what happens when we no longer look at our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and tendencies as secure objects.  In contemplation we enter into a spaciousness where the thoughts, feelings, emotions, and tendencies are clouds in the spaciousness of Mind.  This feels similar to the way we let go of our accumulated collections from when we were young.  But in this case we release the collections of our opinions, our feelings, our emotions, and our tendencies, to the best of our ability.

8.  This process resembles what happens when we hear the last chord of a piece of music.  What follows is silence into which the music has disappeared.  The silence was there all along.

9.  This Return to the One means connecting to the source of all things.  The source of all things precedes individuality and its concerns.

10.  A drop of water finds its home in a cloud.  The cloud cools and the drop of water becomes rain.  The drop of rainwater falls into the ocean.

11.  Plato offers several descriptions of the philosopher in his Dialogues, notably in Phaedo and Theatetus.  In these passages, Plato refers to the ineptness of the philosopher in ordinary social situations.  This makes sense; if my attention is focused on the One, on the journey of Return, this diminishes the concerns we have with the activities of the material world and their importance.

12.  It’s like a ray of light that goes through a prism and separates into a multitude of colors.  The rays of colored light then flow out of a window and return to the original light.

13.  It is like incense smoke dispersing in the wind.

14.  Returning to the One means returning to that which is beyond affirmation and negation, beyond understanding.  It is a kind of disappearance, a disappearing into vastness.