Dialogue ~ 4

A trail winds through history, by which thinkers and philosophers have served as custodians, to reveal the cultural beliefs and thinking of their times. We might begin with Heraclitus. He had put forward a doctrine of flux and of how it is natural for there to be an appearance of opposites in the midst of unity. He had observed that human conflict arises when identities gather around this and actions are taken as to which path is right or greater.

Heraclitus had said, “Though this Word is true evermore, yet men are as unable to understand it when they hear it for the first time as before they have heard it at all. For, though all things come to pass in accordance with this Word, men seem as if they had no experience of them, when they make trials of words and deeds such as I set forth, dividing each thing according to its kind and showing how it is what it is. But other men know not what they are doing when awake, even as they forget what they do in sleep.”

I had written in an earlier blog (Building Blocks of Reality, Part 5, April 2018) that: “Heraclitus appears to have contemplated on relationship between Logos (implicate order) and its appearance or whatever meaning which a human assigns to it in the world; he used language in a variety of ways, knowing that what was said would have multiple interpretations or overlay, but with insight would retain its capacity for common meaning.”

As for Parmenides, the ‘Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy’ writes of him that “He is commonly thought of as the founder of the “Eleatic School” of thought—a philosophical label ascribed to Presocratics who purportedly argued that reality is in some sense a unified and unchanging singular entity.”

There is Plato’s famous allegory of the chariot and his tripartite theory of soul, in which he put forward that the psyche consists of logic, the spirited and the appetites. He expanded his view of what he saw as comprising the elements or components of an individual psyche to be essentially the same in nature of how a larger body of people i.e. society in general is organised.

With each generation, it appears as if there has been an increasing fragmentation of the collective psyche, as the human will and its endeavours have sought to determine causality and to attribute meaning to everyday experience. It is as if the world has become magnified in the lens of its perceiver and has invited its observer into its complexity; ideas about how things are have been generated and which have in turn moved a perceiver away from abstract reasoning.

Consider that Parmenides’ teaching has suggested, “it is reason (and not sensation) which reveals reality by discerning whether the subject of enquiry is an expression of being-ness which exists by necessity (i.e. is truth), or is otherwise a human fabrication and contradictory (opinion).”

Knowledge has been written down and taught, put into practice in verbatim and students have lost touch with an ability to think about what they have learnt and to apply it in complex ways – nowadays isn’t it commonplace for there to be a protocol for how to respond to most situations and disciplinary procedures put into place for when procedures have not been followed? Compliance rules over compassion? Think about it, you say - is there a guideline for that?

Heidegger said that Heraclitus and Parmenides belonged together in ‘thinking the true’ and of experiencing the true in its essence; that what was thought in their thinking is primordial, preceding and anticipating all succeeding history - the beginning in that it does not reside in a past but is in advance of what is to come. This reminds me of what Jesus had said to his disciples in the Gospel of Thomas, verse 18: "Have you found the beginning, then, that you are looking for the end? You see, the end will be where the beginning is.”

Interestingly, it is desire to stand in a place of truth, to think the true, from the beginning or primordial which has formed the basis from which all esoteric and exoteric knowledge and doctrine has grown; a complex web indeed. Fortunately, the perennial philosophy or perennial wisdom maintains that all of the world’s religious traditions share a single, metaphysical truth or origin.

The modern world with its achievements, particularly in technology, is one which contains secular as well as traditional religious and cultural views. It is a puzzle for many that in an interconnected and increasingly transparent world, there is global dissatisfaction with where we are as a species. Social media has been revealing this through the form of a hive mind, whereby people from all walks of life have been coalescing into various camps and are generating a collective voice, otherwise known as populism. Populism is an outcome of a particular way of perceiving and of being in the world that has proven unsustainable and is essentially at a tipping point. Whilst such an intensity of focus is powerful, it is only as permanent as it is true; flare-ups will happen fast and appear to come out of the blue.

To return to what Jesus had said to the disciples in the Gospel of Thomas, verse 83: “Images are visible to people, but the light within them is hidden in the image of the Father's light. He will be disclosed, but his image is hidden by his light." 

I had ended a recent blog with, “We are not individually responsible for any instance of ‘knowing’ (seekers take note!) but we are capable of receiving a light that is of wisdom.”

Consider that this is about coherence; whilst we listen to opinion and create the world in our image, we project a hue or frequency; as we revisit truth and open up to the primordial sound of the cosmos (what is referred to as the silence), we become coherent; reason begins with intent and reality abides in coherence.