10 November 2022

The Three Levels of Reality

“It has been shown that we ought to think that this is how things are, that there is the One beyond being, of such a kind as our argument wanted to show, so far as demonstration was possible in these matters, and next in order there is Being and Intellect, and the nature of Soul in the third place.  And just as in nature there are these three of which we have spoken, so we ought to think that they are present also in ourselves.”

(Plotinus, Ennead V.1.10, On the Three Primary Hypostases, Plotinus: Ennead V, translated by A. H. Armstrong, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1984, pages 45-47.)

 

This is a wonderfully succinct description of the metaphysical structure of traditional Platonism.  One of the things I have found helpful in this quoted passage is that Plotinus refers to the second level, the ‘next in order’ after The One, as ‘Being and Intellect’.  I have persistently had difficulty with the word ‘intellect’ because of its contemporary meanings related to being smart, as in ‘he’s an intellectual’, and the relationship the word has these days to a kind of analysis that separates things rather than unifying them.  There is even the phrase ‘an intellectual analysis’.  In this quote, however, Plotinus explicitly links Intellect with Being, implying, I think, that this is a region of unification from the perspective of the material world; Intellect and Being are not as unified as The One, but from the perspective of someone starting out on the Platonic Way, it is a movement towards the unity of The One. 

I don’t know Greek so I can’t enter into issues of translation.  I don’t know if there is a ‘better’ word than ‘Intellect’ to use.  Sometimes I think the word ‘mind’ might be better, but, as I say, I don’t know enough to argue articulately for that.  I have found, though, that keeping passages like this in mind helps me to understand ‘Being and Intellect’ more clearly. 

9 November 2022

Psychology and Spirituality

The other day I listened to a youtube post about Freud’s relationship to a contemporary mystic, Romain Roland.  It was a well done post with a lot of information about Freud’s hostility to religion and spirituality that I had not been aware of before.  This brought to mind some thoughts I have had about the role of psychology in contemporary spirituality that I have considered for a long time, but have never brought them together in a way that would make an essay or small book.  Here are a few of those thoughts:

1. Psychology has positioned itself as the arbiter of what counts for legitimate spirituality; in a sense Western Psychology has redefined spirituality to be a therapeutic process and that is why Psychology feels confident in its critiques of religion and spirituality.

2. For about thirty years I was involved with Western Buddhism in the U.S. (I don’t know what is happening in Western Europe.)  What I observed over those thirty years is that Western Buddhism gradually dropped, or perhaps we can say carefully ejected, anything in Buddhism that could be construed as transcendental or as relying on non-sensory experience.  In addition, Western Buddhism was gradually transformed into a therapeutic modality, or an adjunct to Western therapeutic modalities; so much so that in many Western Buddhist groups even the ideas of enlightenment and Nirvana no longer function.

3. Freud reinterpreted religious experience by imposing on those experiences psychological categories and explanations.  For example, the unitive experience reported by numerous mystics, from various traditions, was interpreted by Freud as a longing to return to an infantile state where the infant does not distinguish between their own experience and the mother’s presence; that is to say the feeling that mother and infant are merged. 

This set the tone, and provided the specific strategy, that psychology has taken towards spirituality ever since.  From this perspective the yearning for transcendence, for a return to The Good, The One, and The Beautiful is simply the imprint of infantile longings asserting themselves. 

4. One reinterpretation offered by Western Psychology is to understand enlightenment, realization, etc., in therapeutic terms.  Specifically, this means operating from the assumption that realization means being free from psychological afflictions such as neurosis or obsessions. 

What I want to suggest is that there is no reason to think that spiritual realization means having no neuroses or obsessions.  I look at it this way: if someone experiences a broken bone early in life, I mean a serious brake, it is likely that there will always remain a weakness in the bone for the rest of their life.  Some healing can take place, of course, but there are consequences for such deformation and they are lasting.  In a similar way, experiencing psychological difficulties early in life will likely leave as a residue similar weakness.  This is not a bad thing for someone on the spiritual path.  Having physical difficulties is not a barrier to transcendence and, I would argue, being neurotic is not a barrier either.  (I’m leaving aside the issue of what neurosis means because it would take me too far afield.) 

5. Another trend I noticed over my thirty years of Western Buddhist involvement is how ethical commitments have been sidelined.  Partly this is due to Western hyper-individualism and consequent strong resistance to being told how to behave.  But recently I have been thinking along the lines that the reason ethical commitments have been sidelined is because therapy has taken the place of ethical commitments.  Partly this is due to the fact that going into therapy is very common today and is seen by many as praiseworthy.  In contrast, taking on ethical commitments, particularly if they are traditional ones, is seen as backward, and, I would add, neurotic; that is to say if someone takes on commitments, for example, regarding sexual restraint this is interpreted by Western Psychology as a negative, as something that will lead to suppression of natural impulses, things like that.  In this way, for example, Western Buddhists can cheerfully ignore the basic ethical commitments of the Buddhadharma resulting in a behavioral profile that is no different from that of ordinary secular Western society.

In a Platonic context this appears as not seeing the practices of purification, such as vegetarianism, abstaining from alcohol, and sexual restraint, as foundational. 

6. There’s nothing that can be done about the place that Western Psychology holds in our culture at this time.  I mean there is nothing that can be done to displace its grip; at least from my observation it seems to be getting stronger and its assumptions have become almost entirely unchallenged.  For example, many Western Buddhist organizations are run by therapists who see nothing wrong with imposing Western Psychological categories on Eastern Spiritualities. 

But it is possible for individual practitioners to see through the distortions of Western Psychology’s reinterpretation of spirituality.  But there are consequences for this; the main one is that seeing through the strategy of Western Psychology will likely leave the individual who does so feeling alienated, to a greater or lesser degree, from fellow practitioners who operate under these assumptions; and this includes many spiritual leaders.  In my own case, this meant striking out on my own.  When I did so I found many others who had gone through the same process already walking on the Way to Transcendence and Eternity.

 

 

7 November 2022

Peter Kreeft Contrasts Modernity and Platonism

“Plato and Aristotle live in adjoining towns in the same country; we live in a different country, a brave new world, in which an idea is only an opinion, a form is only a shape, an end is only a personal motive, a substance is only a chemical, happiness is only a feeling, virtue is only prudery, justice is only legality, souls are only religious superstitions, and judgments that claim objective truth are only judgmentalism and intolerance.”

(Peter Kreeft, The Platonic Tradition, St. Augustine’s Press, South Bend, Indiana, 2018, page 39.)

 

I think Kreeft’s summation of the chasm between modernity and the view of Platonism is insightful and well-written.  A few comments:

1. I can’t remember where I read this, it was years ago, but it was pointed out that in the Classical world Paganism and Christianity and Judaism shared significant foundational understandings.  Both Paganism and Christianity and Judaism adhered to the understanding of transcendental realities.  All of these traditions also affirmed that a life devoted to understanding and experiencing the transcendental was a well-lived human life.  Pagan philosophy, and Platonism in particular, battled with Christianity over many issues, not the least of which was political power.  But from the perspective of modernity, Paganism and Christianity are opposed to the modernist project and share a world view.

2. There has never existed a culture like modernity, a culture that dismisses the reality of the non-sensory and the transcendental.  There have always been materialists; early Buddhist discourses mention them in India, and the atomists of Greece also come to mind.  But it is only in modernity that materialism and reductionism dominate the culture.  For modernity this simply means that all previous cultures were wrong.  But for some of us who are more skeptical about our own cultural situation, it suggests that modernity is disturbed, and disturbing, and leaves out the central realities that make human life worth living.

3. For the contemporary Platonist this situation is a challenge that previous Platonist writings are unlikely to address.  We will have to figure out how to negotiate the situation on our own, learning from each other how to walk the Platonic Way in spite of the drawbacks of modernity.

 

 

6 November 2022

 Aphele Panta

 “The soul runs over all truths, and all the same shuns the truths we know if someone tries to express them in words and discursive thought; for discursive thought, in order to express anything in words, has to consider one thing after another: this is the method of description; but how can one describe the absolutely simple?  But it is enough if the intellect comes into contact with it; but when it has done so, while the contact lasts, it is absolutely impossible, nor has it time, to speak; but it is afterwards that it is able to reason about it.  One must believe one has seen, when the soul suddenly takes light; for this is from him and he is it; we must think that he is present when, like another god whom someone called to his house, he comes and brings light to us: for if he had not come, he would not have brought the light.  So the unenlightened soul does not have him as god; but when it is enlightened it has what it sought, and this is the soul’s true end, to touch that light and see it by itself, not by another light, but by the light which is also its means of seeing.  It must see that light by which it is enlightened: for we do not see the sun by another light than his own.  How then can this happen?  Take away everything! (Aphele panta!)”

 (Plotinus, Ennead V.3.17, Ennead V, translated by A. H. Armstrong, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1984, pages 133-135.)

1. Partly this quote is an analysis of why words are inadequate to express the ultimate.  From the perspective of discursive thought things happen one after another.  But from the perspective of eternity things happen ‘all at once’; in a sense from the perspective of eternity things are not things if by things we mean one after another. 

2. The soul’s true end, the culmination of the Platonic Way, is to ‘touch’ that light which is the presence of eternity.  From a discursive perspective that light is an ultimate otherness, but the light that touches this light is simultaneously this light.

3.  This passage helps me to understand the nature of Platonic Grace.  When this passage refers to the light as being ‘from him’ I think of that as an aspect of divine charity, love, or grace.

4. The closing of this passage asks how we can access this experience of the light that is both inner and outer.  Plotinus writes, “Take away everything.”  I interpret this as meaning to understand the true nature of material existence; its ephemerality, its unsatisfactory nature, and its samsaric context.  Instead we shift our attention to the source of all these sensory things, to that which lies beyond all sensory things, to that which is eternal. 

(As an aside, I think ‘aphele panta’ could be an efficacious mantra.)

5.  The sun illuminates the material world.  The spiritual sun illuminates the path to transcendence. 

4 November 2022

We Need a Handbook of Platonism

Over the last ten to fifteen years there has emerged a growing interest in classical thought.  In particular there is a growing interest in Stoicism.  Before I retired this year, the small spiritual bookstore that I worked at had a section on Stoicism which we first created three or four years ago in response to growing interest.  In addition, authors of these contemporary books on Stoicism are interviewed on podcasts, often have their own youtube channel, and in general find a place in the growing regions of online social interaction.

Many of these authors create what I would call a ‘handbook’ of Stoicism.  Typically, these books contain chapters about basic Stoic concepts, and simple Stoic contemplations that the reader can easily use in daily life.  If you go to Amazon and search ‘Stoicism’ under books quite a few of these handbooks will appear. 

There used to be a handbook of Platonism.  It was by Alcinous who was a second century Platonist.  This handbook was used, intermittently it seems, in the Middle Period of Platonism, in the Byzantine Empire, and in the West from the Renaissance into the 1800’s. 

It is no longer in use.  I can understand why.  A significant part of the Handbook of Platonism is about cosmology and teaches that topic from a classical perspective.  Cosmology has radically changed and those sections simply do not speak to a modern reader with any sense of authority.  Apropos this point, many of the contemporary handbooks on Stoicism I referred to above leave out Stoic cosmology, concentrating instead on Stoic ethics and methods of self-cultivation.  I think this makes sense.  In a similar way, for example, contemporary Aristotelians tend to not dwell in Aristotle’s cosmology.

There are some spiritual traditions that I think of as having a weak cosmological commitment; by this I mean that their teachings are not necessarily linked to a particular cosmological scheme such as geocentrism vs. heliocentrism.  Buddhism is an example of such a tradition; as Buddhism was transmitted from one culture to another throughout Asia it tended to accept the cosmology of those cultures.  This is because Buddhism’s primary focus is on ascetic ethical cultivation and meditative practice.  For example, the First Noble Truth of suffering does not depend on whether or not the sun or the earth is at the center of the solar system.

In my opinion Platonism is similar to Buddhism in this regard.  The central teachings of Platonism, such as emanationism, the existence of forms and that material objects are instantiations of these forms, and the virtue ethics that drives the practice of Platonism, do not depend on a particular material cosmology for their efficacy.

What would a contemporary Handbook of Platonism include?  Offhand, the following comes to mind: A little about Plato and the history of Platonism, something about Socrates, an overview of the spiritual ascent, perhaps using the parable of the cave as a frame for this, a discussion about the ultimate goal of The Good, The One, and The Beautiful, a little about rebirth, and the deep peace that comes from walking the Platonic path.  The structure might begin with a look at the human condition, followed by the suggestion that Platonism offers a way to resolve the negatives of that condition, followed by the methods of ethics, asceticism, and contemplation.

There has been one attempt, sort of, for such a handbook.  I am thinking of the book ‘Return to the One’ by Brian Hines.  ‘Return to the One’ is an introduction to Plotinus and I have often suggested it when people ask me about how to access the writings of Plotinus.  ‘Return to the One’ does have an introductory character, and it has its virtues, but I am thinking of something simpler, something that could be read by a High School student.

Perhaps someone is already working on such a handbook; it wouldn’t surprise me. 

 

 

3 November 2022

An Observation on Purification

“The church officials who refused to look through Galileo’s telescope were guilty of willful ignorance.  The phenomena he claimed to have discovered can only be experienced by way of this procedure.  To reject his claims without employing the proper method is to violate all the canons of intelligent inquiry.  Similarly, to dismiss metaphysical propositions before employing our only means of understanding and evaluating them is to be obstinately ignorant.

“The greatest of the ancient and medieval metaphysicians taught that metaphysical knowledge is accessible only to those who practice purification.  Their conceptions of the process and the state of purification differ, but the variations are minimal.  Most descend from Plato’s Phaedo and emphasize the life of virtue.  According to this tradition, the virtues are purificatory acts.  The soul that has been purified through habituation to the intellectual and moral virtues is a soul prepared to receive metaphysical truth.  There is no other way: if you want to see distant physical objects up close, you must employ a telescope.  If you long to acquire metaphysical knowledge, your soul must be pure.”

(Mark Anderson, Pure: Modernity, Philosophy, and the One, Sophia Perennis, San Rafael, CA, 2009, page 71.)

1. I wonder if Anderson, when he writes ‘to dismiss metaphysical propositions before employing our only means of understanding and evaluating them’ is referring to the emergence of analytic philosophy in England in the early twentieth century.  I’m thinking specifically of people like A. J. Ayer who argued that metaphysical statements were ‘meaningless’ and that, therefore, analytic philosophers did not have to consider them.  It was a daring strategy and one that I still find frequently used among contemporary atheists in the anglosphere.

2. Anderson’s point is, I think, fairly easy to understand.  Suppose that a young man is learning how to play the piano and is studying with a good teacher.  The teacher notices that the young man has become more distracted, looks more unkempt, and that the young man’s skills are either not improving or maybe even declining.  After careful observation the piano teacher concludes that the young man is consuming too much alcohol and also, perhaps, is using recreational drugs.  The teacher takes the time to inform the young man that it is necessary to have a healthy diet and that drug use interferes with concentration and diminishes physical capacities as well.  This kind of advice is based on the idea of purification.  In a similar way, Anderson is putting forth the idea that the metaphysical ascent requires purification in order for such assent to be efficacious.

3. There are types of purification.  I tend to see them as focused either on body, speech, heart, or mind.  That’s not a specifically Platonic way of looking at them, but it is a tool I have used to understand these practices.  In Platonism purification is also an aspect of what are called ‘civic virtues’, and therefore has a social dimension as well.  In our hyper-individualistic culture that aspect is easily missed; I missed it for a long time and still grapple with how the civic virtues should be a part of spiritual life.  It’s not a minor issue; for example Socrates argued against an attempt to free him from jail in part because Socrates had consistently taught that members of a polis, in this case Athens, should follow the rules, customs, and laws of that polis.  If Socrates abandoned that teaching at the end of his life that would be seen as hypocritical by many.  This kind of argument is difficult for moderns to comprehend; we tend to be much more highly critical and much more unwilling to go along with civic institutions. 

4. The bodily practices of purification are types of asceticism.  The civic purification is to be a good citizen.  The purification of speech is something I brought in from my Buddhist practice of right speech; that it is not sufficient to say something simply because it is true, it must also be helpful.  Purification of the heart is the cultivation of empathy, sympathy, compassion, and love, as well as practices like prayer and the experience of wonder.  The purification of mind and soul is to cultivate an awareness of higher hypostases and, ultimately, to return to The One, The Good, The Beautiful, to that which is eternal.

2 November 2022

The Soul and Eternity

“But it is clear from the following arguments that if soul is a body, neither perception nor thinking nor knowing nor virtue nor anything of value will exist.”

(Plotinus, Ennead IV.7.6, translated by A. H. Armstrong, Plotinus: Ennead IV, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1984, page 353.)

“The virtues, then, are required to be eternal and abiding, like the objects of geometry.  But if they are eternal and abiding they are not bodies.  That, therefore, in which they are must be of the same kind: therefore it cannot be a body.  For the whole nature of body does not abide, but flows away.”

(Plotinus, Ennead IV.7.8, translated by A. H. Armstrong, Plotinus: Ennead IV, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1984, page 365.)

 

I have been reading Ennead IV.7 which is Plotinus’s discussion ‘On the Immortality of the Soul’.  The translator, A. H. Armstrong, in the ‘Introduction’ to the Ennead, refers to it as the most scholastic of Plotinus’s writings, meaning that in this Ennead Plotinus is deeply engaged with other views about the nature of the soul that were circulating at that time.  A few comments follow:

1. In the first quote Plotinus states that nothing of value can exist if the soul is a body of some kind.  That which has value is that which is eternal.  Bodies are not eternal.  This does not mean bodies have no value; as I understand it, Plotinus means that whatever value a body has, or bodies in general have, depends on, and is derived from, their relationship to that which is eternal.

2. I think quotes like the ones above highlight how difficult it is to access Platonism for most people embedded in modernity.  The entire Ennead is on the topic of the soul, and modernity does not believe in such a thing; at most it believes in psychological tendencies grounded in, and likely reducible to, material factors.  Therefore, discussions about the meaning of these quotes are likely to veer off into restatements of the meaning by reinterpreting the discussion in psychological, therapeutic, and material terms.

3. In the second quote Plotinus compares the virtues to the objects of geometry, arguing that just as the objects of geometry are eternal, so also are the virtues.  This is a good example of how deeply Platonism was influenced by mathematics.  Mathematical objects are considered to be eternal objects and Plotinus is arguing that the virtues are similarly eternal.  Since the virtues reside in, or are dependent upon, the soul, therefore the soul must also be eternal.

4. From reading this Ennead, and other related Enneads, my understanding of the soul is that it is the presence of eternity within the ephemeral, bodily, individual.  The soul is not only that, but it is at least that.  The soul is an instantiation, through participation, of the eternality of The Good, The One, and The Beautiful.