Coffee With Pierre

Degrees of Unity in States of Mind:

An Exploration Based on Proclus’ Elements of Theology

Presented in England at The Prometheus Trust Conference

By Nobuya Teraoka

©2007

I divine a kinship between us. For you’re as strange as me and my friends back home. We’re into questions like, “What after all is my true nature?” “What makes me better so that I always and ever mindfully pursue what is just?” “How do I become a friend to myself and to the gods?” 1 Stranger still, some of us turn to texts like the Republic, or Elements of Theology, or Philosophical Midwifery for guidance. (2) Through them we try to understand the causes of Man and the conditions under which a cause can function as cause.

Now, if someone were to insist that the notion of cause is archaic, that the best we can find is correlation between multiple events, we simply reply that it is quite obvious to us that this kosmos is fundamentally causal in nature because it can be ordered into first and second, perfecting and perfected, ruling and ruled, generative and generated, and active and passive.(3) We make distinctions and understand relationships through the hierarchical orders all about us.(4) If there were no order then nothing would be stable and all unknowable.(5) Which means of course that you could not know thyself. Therefore, we reply, if there is to be a quest to understand thyself then it will be a quest to understand the causes and effects that constitute the hierarchical order.(6)
The philosophy set forth by Plato and Proclus can help in this quest. For instance, the Elements of Theology hierarchically orders precise metaphysical terms which are the basis for exploring ideas dialectically. For dialectical reasoning is the art of distinguishing and understanding metaphysical ideas through models in order to become free of them to behold the Good itself.(7) But the precision of the Elements is also its difficulty, for the structure is layered according to a series of analogous relationships wherein the terms of the layers nearer the Good are described using progressively more unified and excellent terms. Thus the distinctions of the terms must be preserved as one moves from layer to layer.

Pierre Grimes has been leading a group on a voyage through these pages for the last two years. I considered talking to you about the details of the Elements as they pertained to our quest to understand ourselves, but after a dozen attempts, I very fortunately talked with an acquaintance who has no background in the traditions of philosophy but who has a keen interest in understanding himself. He asked me about my paper. As I did my best to explain the significance of the Elements, I realized that though we were both speaking English Proclus’ models use language too alien for most of us. So I wondered, “What exactly does a hierarchy of terms have to do with understanding thyself?” And even if I could successfully explain Proclus’ models it would make no difference to a listener who did not see how it significantly pertained to his own nature. Therefore, so as not to risk repeating the same error, I am going to recount a state of mind that is common to most of us as a bridge into dialectics. By doing so, I hope to show that the nature of Man is understandable through the philosophy of Plato, Proclus, Pierre Grimes and other philosophers in the tradition.

Let us therefore begin this journey, and may it be ever upwards toward excellence.

1 The last two questions are from Socrates’ prayer at the end of the Republic, 621c.
2 Philosophical Midwifery: A New Understanding of Human Problems and Its Validation, Pierre Grimes and Regina Uliana, Hyparxis Press
3 Prs. 11, 18
4 For instance, Prs. 5, 7, 12, 14, 24, 25, 28
5 Pr. 11
6 Prs. 167, 186
7 Republic, 533c-d, 534b.

**

I begin with an overview of the Elements by describing a better metaphor for Proclus’ model of Reality than that of “layers of metaphysical terms”, for that makes Proclus’ model too divided and static to be able to appreciate its unified and dynamic nature. Rather, it is better to imagine that we are in an infinite sea of radiance which emerges from the brilliant luminosity that transcends all radiance and is the cause of all radiance, that we are filled by that overflowing luminosity and our being is constituted by its unfolding rays, each successive ray less powerful and with a more specific nature than the prior radiance and power. There is order in Reality. We are simply light, filled with ordered rays of radiance which turn back and lift us toward the purest luminosity.

Now hold this metaphor in mind as I read the way in which Proclus expresses the model of light using his stock of metaphysical terms. This is the statement of the proposition from Proposition 71: “All that has a more universal and more excellent order in the originative causes somehow becomes in what is produced, through the irradiations of those causes, a foundation for the gifts bestowed by the more particular. As the irradiations from the superior receive the processions from the secondary, so the processions from the secondary are founded upon the superior: there is thus an order of precedence in participation, and successive manifestations of light from above constantly alight upon the same foundation, the more universal functioning first, and the more specific supplementing their activities by the bestowal of their own gifts upon the participants.”(8)

As you can see it takes some practice to get into Proclus’ language. To understand it would require exploring such contrasts as universal and particular, superior and secondary and all the other terms and relationships mentioned. (And this is only from one proposition.) But essentially Proclus’ model is a model of luminosity. You and I and everything else are simply manifestations of light. So I will focus on that aspect.

We often participate in the luminosity but we have difficulty in recognizing it as such. But if you were to describe, say, the moment of “Aha!” after hearing a good joke, or your state of mind as you excelled in athletics, or the unity within your soul and with other souls singing in harmony in a choir, or an insight you attained while reflecting over a puzzling problem, then you might see that you are participating in luminosity to varying degrees. For such states of mind might be described as a flash of clear seeing—that the numerous ideas you were engaged in suddenly are unified into a whole, that for a moment you are nothing but that unity, all else disappearing, that at that moment your whole being is enlivened and you wake up to what is real and true.(9)

What are we to do with such states of mind? To ignore them or degrade them would be to ignore or degrade thyself. For if in that state of mind the qualities that seem to make you ‘you’ somehow disappear and only the realness of the insight is present, then by ignoring or degrading that state of mind, you are diminishing the real and true aspect of your nature. Well, it’s certainly a puzzle to me why I don’t appreciate those states in which at the very moment I am in them I know I am truly real. Even those states I record in writing because I believe they are significant lay about me as if dormant until a philosopher like Pierre can help me understand them. Invariably the process of understanding the insights and appreciating their significance involves understanding the false beliefs that block me from seeing the obvious.

8 Adapted from E.R. Dodd’s translation with the aid of Thomas Taylor’s translation.

9 For other descriptions of such states of mind, see for example Cosmic Consciousness ((esp. Edward Carpenter’s descriptions) Richard M. Bucke), Three Pillars of Zen (Philip Kapleau), Bhagavad-Gita (Ch. 11), Tibetan Book of the Dead (Evans-Wentz translation, pp. 95-96)

***

Now I present my own state of mind, as a way of inviting you to reflect on the connections between your insight, dialectic, and the nature of Reality. Mine occurred 6 years ago during a meditation retreat. I wrote it down the night after it occurred but it was only three years ago that I was able to understand its significance. And still now I benefit from reflecting on that state of mind. That night I wrote:

“Strong sitting throughout. Not sleepy at all. …Oh yes! An incredible electric shock in my last sitting. A green and red spark of light somewhere in front of my hara that made my whole body jump. I really experienced that. I was in a “no zone” before and that woke me up. Asked, “What was that?” And asked it some more before settling down again.”

The aspect of the state of mind that is most vivid is the “incredible electric shock” which seemed to lift me straight off my cushion and straighten my spine and head. That shock was energizing. It was a power that swept through me, enlivening my body and filling and awakening my mind.

But for a long time I discounted it as an insignificant experience—not at all the grand and overwhelming big bang of the enlightenment I desired. It was not until a few years later, when such states of mind were being shared with Pierre, that I shared mine and through a series of questions exploring the nature of the light realized that I was expecting the light to be like the overpowering brightness of directly gazing at the sun. That talk freed me to explore the state of mind. And now as I reflect again on the light itself and the light I expected to see, the differences jump out at me and I realize that I was expecting the power and crushing force that I describe my father light up with during his most sincere and omnipotent moments when he towered over me in my childhood. I now better see that with such false beliefs of what is good veiling my understanding, I could not receive the simple goodness, calmness and clarity of the radiance encountered in my meditation.

How curious indeed is self-reflection! In the course of writing I am experiencing the very thing I am writing about, for I have reached an insight about the false belief that blocked me from seeing the obvious goodness of the light. In fact, as I reread earlier drafts I see how often the language of force colors my descriptions of the event. And as I scan my life, I recognize that it has a strong power over me now in my relations with myself, my family and my friends, though indeed it is a state of mind I have previously explored and had insights about. Working through insights, understanding them in order to gain greater insights—is that not the game of philosophy?

In Proclus’ model of light, irradiations shine forth and some irradiations precede others according to their degree of likeness to the luminosity of the Good, for one of the principles of Platonic metaphysics is that like are produced before unlike.(10) And if that which is produced somehow becomes unlike its cause, then it can only participate of it when it becomes like it again(11) Thus the chain of beings from lowest to highest can be traversed because of likeness. Those that are always like their priors are always participating of them, while those like Man who must attain likeness to their causes can only participate of it so long as he or she preserves that likeness.

A telling example of a loss of likeness occurs in my next journal entry: “Didn’t go to daisan. Didn’t feel I had achieved anything this morning. Couldn't get the state of openness I had last night. Looked at breathing. Mind wanders on two themes: 1. What I should, or will, say to someone, 2. what I looked like. Couldn’t let go. Always fantasizing.” --Ah, the joy of sitting! Fantasies and expectations hung heavy on my soul. They diminished and in fact erased my recollection of the light experience during the previous night’s sitting. On my first opportunity for a daisan, or dialogue with the head monk, I did not remember that I had anything to share. In Philosophical Midwifery, such a block that makes one forget a meaningful success is called a counter-attack. Only now do I see it for what it was. It is often said by Pierre and is now worth repeating: We don’t know our past. Only as we reflect and understand how states of mind are functioning do we understand at what cost false beliefs have barred us from participating in Reality.

At the time of recording the state of mind, I only recognized its power to enliven me. Afterwards I was led through dialogue to see that false beliefs blocked me from appreciating and understanding the state of mind. Then in my search, Plato, Proclus and Pierre provided me the distinctions and models through which I could understand it better. This is the dialectical journey from the cave to the upper world which is described in Book 7 of the Republic. (12) The journey is transformative. As we proceed we are transformed by it and through the transformation new insights flower for us to be agents of transformation again.(13)

10 Pr. 28; Timaeus 30d
11 Prs. 79, 140
12 Republic, 532a-c

13 Four dreams during the composition of the paper have also led me to further insights. The philosophical journey includes dream work, as is taught by Socrates in the Republic and Pierre Grimes.

****

Let’s now turn to a few models of unity from Proclus. Please consider the range of insights you have experienced. Focus on one and contemplate the state of mind at the moment you reached that insight. Perhaps, like me, negative thoughts will try to diminish it. Tell yourself you will reflect on such thoughts later and refocus on that state of mind. Can you make two further distinctions?: First, the exhilarating recognition of the beauty of the insight, and second, that moment before the exhilaration when the mind becomes empty of all competing thoughts—that sudden freedom in which the insight flashes forth. I will henceforth push the metaphor “flash of insight,” by speaking about it as a light.

Now, in order to understand the state of mind one must get beyond the mere feelings experienced with the state of mind. But it can be a beginning for reflection. For since you felt that there was a force that affected you, there must be something that is the cause of that effect. Call it power. But can power wake you up yet have no existence? If you agree that it exists and is incorporeal, then the power has an elevated state of existence—call that the Being of power. But in addition the power works an effect: it compels you to turn and recognize its Being. Let us call that effect the activity of the power. So we have arrived at three distinctions: the power as cause of a change in you, the Being of the power, and its activity to compel you to turn toward its Being. (14)

As with power, so also with the light. Light’s Being is real, beautiful, and vitalizing. It casts no doubts, like shadows from the sun, for it is absolutely true. And you cannot help but turn and wonder at it.

And what is it that turns toward it? The Mind. It knows its object and preserves its activity of knowing by the power inherent in it. And if there is activity and power, then there must be a Being of Mind that is doing the activity and exercising the power.

As you consider your state of mind do you discern within it the three elements of this triad: Being, power, and activity? Yet though discernable as three, do you find that each intermingles with the other two so that none could exist independently without rendering the whole insight as either unreal, dead, or dumb? If so, then your state of mind is a triadic unity that is distinguishable but cannot be severed into parts.

But perhaps as you recall your state of mind and your reflections settle on the light itself, you find that Mind does not know light as something other, but as the same as itself?(15) But if they are the same then the Being of light and the Being of Mind are the same; and if Being is what really exists and thus is the object to be known and Mind the knower, then the known and knower are the same. And yet, though they are the same, they are still not a pure unity, for the Mind also knows that it knows.(16) For if it didn’t know that it was participating in the activity of knowing, then though it knows what it knows, it would be ignorant of the fact that it knows.(17) And if so, it would be a Mind ignorant of its own function.

Or, does Mind recognize that the Being of light is superior and separate from its own Being, that it perfects Mind yet remains transcendent as it communicates the gift of Being and fills it with real and true power to revert to the light (ousia)? (18) And if the light is so real, true, and unified that no other reality can be known beyond it, then Mind, in knowing it, has come to the boundary of the knowable. (19)

But as you reflect upon the unity of your state of mind, you may find that at the very moment of the insight there is not even the activity of knowing distinguishable from the knower and known. There is simply Pure Unity. You can only describe it as such by inferring what it must be and what power and activity it must have, because if Being, power, and activity are a triadic unity there must be a prior perfect unity which is the cause of that unity.(20)
But as you contemplate the luminous oneness of Pure Unity, perhaps you enter a state that is free even of that luminosity. Then you have proceeded by dialectics “to the very Beginning itself in order to find confirmation there,” as Socrates says in the Republic.(21)

But now, as you contemplate such a vision, you may grasp that the One itself and the Good itself are the same, as is argued in Proposition 13, and that all beings, including the Mind you participate, are unified into a whole by the most beautiful bond, the mean analogy, which joins the perfecting and the perfected in its eternal embrace, producing likeness and convergence through all, as is described in Proposition 148.(22) Then indeed you will have “proceeded downward to the last, making no use at all of your sense organs but only Forms that move through Forms toward Forms, and you will end at Forms.”(23),(24)

14 For this paragraph and the three following, refer to Prs. 102, 103, 197
15 Pr. 167
16 Pr. 167, 168
17 Prs. 168, 20
18 Pr. 161
19 Pr. 162; Republic, 532b
20 Pr. 123, 162
21 Republic, 533c (trans. Shorey)
22 Also, Timaeus 35a
23 Republic, 511b-c (my translation with change in person and tense of verb)
24 We must end here, but a longer paper should further explore at least three issues: analogy, dialectical reasoning, and the relationship between the two. For if Likeness is the fundamental principle of creation then our journey to our primary causes entails understanding through analogy the likeness that exists between us and our causes. In addition, if we are to understand those causes and the conditions under which cause functions as cause, then we should turn to the dialectic of the Republic. – As a place to begin reading about the nature of analogy, see Is It All Relative? (Pierre Grimes); for dialectics, see Philosophical Midwifery: A New Understanding of Human Problems and Its Validation (Pierre Grimes and Regina Uliana)

Nobuya Teraoka
California
n327teraoka@gmail.com