What Exactly are You?
Still pondering?
Peter Kingsley's writings are very compelling, and I recommend his work to anyone interested in his informed approach to ancient wisdom. His premise on the purpose of Parmenides poem is fascinating in and of itself. He proposes that not only was the poem an actual account of a genuine mystical experience, but further, that the poem is itself an incantation intended to allow other practitioners of his esoteric mystery school to make their journey to receive their own instruction from the goddess. I suspect he's right.
I depart from Peter Kingsley's position primarily in one respect. His writings clearly express a sense of urgency in respect to humanity broadly understanding what he has realized, while I'm convinced it doesn't make the slightest bit of difference if others realize it or not, since their realization is ultimately inevitable. (Although I do agree that global society would be transformed if it were). I'll explore these issues more in depth in a future post, but whatever differences I may have with Peter Kingsley do not affect the fact that I have no doubt that his conclusions regarding the ancient Greeks he's studied to be correct.
Manly P Hall would likely have agreed. The Secret Teachings of All Ages spends a great deal of time discussing Pythagoras, and many scholars since have acknowledged his relationship to mysticism and esoteric thought. Parmenides' adopted son Zeno left behind 40 paradoxes intended to illustrate the illusory nature of our world of time and motion - some endured for centuries and many remain fascinating today. Kingsley explores Empedocles in depth in Reality, positing that scholars have entirely inverted his teachings regarding the role of Love and Strife. Heraclitus was another obviously familiar with elevated states of consciousness. Plato's writings reveal Socrates as another, but it was with Plato, and especially with his star pupil Aristotle, that philosophy began its descent from being the Love of Wisdom to being the love of never ending arguments about the nature of reality. A brief resurrection occurred with Plotinus and Neoplatonist philosophy a few centuries later, but with the collapse of Rome, the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, the rise of the Christian church with the concurrent extinction of the Gnostics, and finally the arrival of the dark ages, interest in exploration and direct realization of higher levels of consciousness became nearly extinct in western civilization.
The revival of interest in Greek and Roman thought in the Renaissance was focused almost entirely upon Aristotle and his insistence that the application of reason was the only path to a truth with demonstrable validity. Pythagorean mathematics and music theory were embraced, but his philosophy was seen as impenetrable by the intellect that Aristotle worshiped, so dismissed as not worth pursuit. “We live in an objective reality, so let's apply reason to it, and the hell with worrying about where an insight comes from”.
It never really went away, though. Not that it could. As Parmenides' goddess reminds us, Being can't go away. It's forever eternal, unchanging, timeless, whole. And since it exists only in the moment, it's always available to be discovered, whether we're looking for it or not. It's always here now, and it's never anywhere else. It's the most obvious thing in all of existence, and it's conspicuousness is precisely what keeps it so well concealed.
I've reflected on the perfectly natural, self-evident and blindingly obvious nature of my own experience over the years, and I've chuckled at the absurdity involved in attempting to explain to someone, “Of course the cosmos arises moment-to-moment from a divine void.”
In several of his early audio tapes, Sydney Banks refers to “the great nothingness” from which everything emerges. Richard Bucke writes of his experience (in the third person), “Among other things he did not come to believe, he saw and knew that the Cosmos is not dead matter but a living Presence”. Jacob Boehme's passion is palpable as he strives to express the ineffable:
“Also, that I said, whosoever findeth it findeth nothing and all things; that is also true, for he findeth a supernatural, supersensual abyss, having no ground, where there is no place to dwell in; and he findeth also nothing that is like it, and therefore it may be compared to nothing, for it is deeper than anything, and is as nothing to all things, for it is not comprehensible; and because it is nothing, it is free from all things, and it is that only good, which a man cannot express or utter what it is. But that I lastly said, he that findeth it, findeth all things, is also true; it hath been the beginning of all things, and it ruleth all things. If thou findest it, thou comest into that ground from whence all things are proceeded, and wherein they subsist”.
Now compare Hall's discussion of Kabbalah:
THE Qabbalists conceive of the Supreme Deity as an Incomprehensible Principle to be discovered only through the process of eliminating, in order, all its cognizable attributes. That which remains--when every knowable thing has been removed--is AIN SOPH, the eternal state of Being. Although indefinable, the Absolute permeates all space. Abstract to the degree of inconceivability, AIN SOPH is the unconditioned state of all things. Substances, essences, and intelligences are manifested out of the inscrutability of AIN SOPH, but the Absolute itself is without substance, essence, or intelligence. AIN SOPH may be likened to a great field of rich earth out of which rises a myriad of plants, each different in color, formation, and fragrance, yet each with its roots in the same dark loam--which, however, is unlike any of the forms nurtured by it. The "plants" are universes, gods, and man, all nourished by AIN SOPH and all with their source in one definitionless essence; all with their spirits, souls, and bodies fashioned from this essence, and doomed, like the plant, to return to the black ground--AIN SOPH, the only Immortal--whence they came.
And now the Tao te Ching:
The Tao is like a well;
Used but never used up.
It is like the eternal void;
Filled with infinite possibilities.
It is hidden but always present.
I don't know who gave birth to it.
It is older than God
Tao te Ching, Chapter 4, Stephen Mitchell translation
So we have a “divine void”, a “great nothingness”, a “living presence”, a “supernatural, supersensual abyss … deeper than anything, and is as nothing to all things”, the “eternal state of Being ...the unconditioned state of all things . . . itself is without substance, essence, or intelligence, and “the eternal void … filled with infinite possibilities … hidden but always present”
What can any of these descriptions possibly be attempting to describe, other than the realization in the moment of pure, unfiltered consciousness itself? Of Parmenides' Being?
As I've emphasized repeatedly, the only aspect of reality any of us can be absolutely certain of is the very fact that we are conscious. Feel free to follow reason to its logical conclusion here. If consciousness is the one aspect of existence that materialism finds entirely inexplicable, yet is continually referenced in multiple cultures throughout history as the ground of being, and you are conscious, then what exactly are you?
And what is everything else?