Non-duality in the Western tradition - 2

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Namaste,

 

Here is an extract from the second of Professor Stephen Clark's

papers on non-dual truth in the European tradition.

 

 

How Many Selves Make Me?

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The Plotinian Self

 

So what is the older theory that I would hope to see brought back

into the light of philosophical conversation?... One of its most

familiar versions is the Kantian, but Kant was actually reproducing

something far older.... The Aristotelian synthesis, in [Kathleen V.]

Wilkes' interpretation, identifies us unproblematically as social,

language-using animals. But Wilkes thereby (and quite consciously)

omits one of the oddest features of Aristotle's analysis, and

ignores the treatment that Aristotle had from his successors for

over a thousand years.

 

Nous, the undying intellect, has no bodily organ, and (qua nous

poetikos) actualizes what would otherwise be mere potential, as

light brings colours into light and being. Nous, strictly so called,

is intellectual, but Aristotle does not mean that it 'thinks things

through': rather is it the sheer awareness of its proper objects and

may even, loosely, be named as the subject of sensory awareness.

 

Whatever Aristotle's intention in this, the later Platonists had no

difficulty with the concept. Nous is mirrored or shadowed in soul,

sentience, multiplicity. Thus: awareness, attention, is in its

ordinary form irreducibly polar, a union of subject and object.

Awareness of a wider realm than that immediately given to the

struggling animal-self may be present to us, exactly, as a presence,

a 'higher self'. As that grips our attention, 'we' are elevated to

that higher level. What has been an invading or guiding 'daimon' is

revealed as our very self, and a wider self and realm becomes

faintly visible to us [Plotinus, Enneads III 4.3].

 

So by successive rises 'we' (all, so far, at the level of 'Soul'

['Psyche']) may find ourselves identified with Nous, properly so

called, the intellectual vision of a rationally ordered whole in

which Thinking and Being are the same. Without such a union ... our

hopes of cognitive success are small.

 

Beyond Thought-and-Being for Plotinus, lies the One: that One is not

subject to any rational analysis, but it is perhaps reflected -- for

us -- in the glimpse that we may have of a non-polar awareness,

where the object, fully tamed and recognized, drops out of sight,

and 'unfocussed' or 'unprojected' awareness stands free, as the very

Self. 'The Self is identical with unprojected consciousness' [C.O.

Evans, The Subject of Consciousness].

 

Wherein lies the unity, the sameness, of that Self? Not in the

sameness of an object, nor any particular character. Nous as such

has no character (for else it could not 'receive', could not attend

upon, just any object). Those who mistakenly identify themselves by

what they have so far 'attended on', whatever project, memory chain

or passion, are understandably startled and adrift when that object

is removed, when they find themselves 'they know not where',

released from the chains of their own forging. It is easy for them

to conclude, especially with the aid of a helpful psychotherapist,

that 'they' must be someone else.... The banal response that they

inhabit 'the same body' is of no help at all, since the sufficiency

of bodily continuity ... for the sameness of selfhood is exactly

what the such experience calls into question....

 

The Self is the *same* self because that is what it is: what other

self could it be? In our moments of awakening we are quite

untheoretically aware of the identity of what wakes here and what

woke then (from which experience, more theoretically, we may infer

the possibility of transcending time). To wake up is to know

ourselves, so far. By the same token it may well occur to us, in

ratiocinative mood, that the Self in me is just the same as that in

you; that only the One Self attends on parallel and successive

states of mind and action, separating itself out as One in Many.

 

What makes my self is no other than what makes yours, and the

differences between us lie at the level of what that attends on, or

how it is -- as it were -- refracted. That is indeed an inference

that Averroistic interpreters of Aristotle (and non-dualist

Vedantins) have preferred; there is one nous only, and that the

divine mover. But at the level of particulars, the Self here and the

Self over-there are differently reflected.

 

So how many selves make me? In one way, indefinitely many: for any

mood or memory track or organic part or member of my squabbling

congregation may move into the light. In another way, one only, and

that only one the very same that finds itself continually renewed,

as the moon's reflection in the trembling of the water's surface....

 

And why accept my, Plotinian , story? For at least three reasons.

First, that without some such story we have warrant neither for

supposing that we shall ever find out how things really are, nor for

endorsing the vision of individual worth that lies at the root of

our political and moral liberalism.... Second, that the story's

abandonment by enlightenment philosophers rests upon bad arguments

(for example, Hume's claim not to have found the self by looking).

Third, that it is true to experience: not the experience, perhaps

that we lazily call our own, but the experience available to anyone

who seriously seeks enlightenment....

 

 

Comments from an Advaita Vedanta perspective

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The main comment I would make here is to explain a little more about

the Ancient Greek concept of 'nous' and how it is translated into

English.

 

'Nous' and 'noesis' are similar in meaning. In general, they refer

to 'intelligence' or 'mind'. And they are noun forms of the verb

'noeo', which generally means to 'think'. But these words have also

a special meaning in Greek philosophy (or at least in some schools

of Greek philosophical thought, ranging from Parmenides, through

Socrates, Plato and Aristotle to Plotinus).

 

In this special meaning, 'nous' and 'noesis' refer in particular to

the underlying principle of intelligence or mind. Thus, 'nous' is

sometimes translated as the 'intellectual principle'. In this

philosophical usage, 'nous' and 'noesis' are associated with

'aletheia' (or 'awakened truth') and they are distinguished from

'eikasia' (or 'illusion', 'imagining'), 'doxa' (or 'belief',

'assuming') and 'psuche' (or 'psyche', 'soul').

 

But when 'nous' is thus used philosophically, to mean the

'underlying principle of intelligence', there is a problem of how to

translate the verbal form 'noeo'. Greek scholars usually translate

it as to 'think'. Here, the 'thinking' has to be understood in a

special way. It has to be understood as distinct from any put-on act

of mind, from any act of imagining or believing or intellectualizing

or conceiving or feeling which the mind puts on psychologically.

 

Parmenides makes this clear when he says: 'Thinking and Being are

the same.' These words are a translation from Parmenides' poem 'On

Nature' (and you'll find them neatly used in Stephen Clark's paper

as extracted above). Here, 'Thinking' translates the Greek word

'noein' (literally to 'think'). And, according to Parmenides, that

'Thinking' is no superficial and changeable act which mind puts on.

Instead, it is the underlying Being of the thinking principle, which

stays unchanged through all the changing acts that come and go at

the mind's apparent surface.

 

In modern Advaita Vedanta, we use the word 'consciousness' to denote

the underlying principle of mind's intelligence, and accordingly we

would translate the verb 'noeo' as to 'know'. So we would translate

Parmenides to say: 'Knowing and being are the same.' Some years ago,

I met Stephen Clark and asked him about this. He said: 'Yes, you

could translate it like that.'

 

A century or so after Parmenides, Aristotle distinguishes two forms

of nous, which later on came to be called the 'nous pathetikos' and

the 'nous poetikos'. The 'nous pathetikos' is the 'passive or the

driven mind', which suffers change imposed from elsewhere. The 'nous

poetikos' is the 'active or originating intelligence', from which

all acts arise. It is a pure awareness that stays unchanged and

unaffected in itself, while all changes and all movements rise from

it. Thus, it is what Aristotle called the 'unmoved mover'.

 

In the Advaita Vedanta tradition, the unchanging awareness of the

nous poetikos is called 'sakshi' or 'purusha'. As sakshi, it is the

unaffected witness to all changes that appear. As purusha, it is the

inmost knowing principle, for whose sake all nature's acts are

spontaneously inspired. Prakriti or nature acts 'purushartha', 'for

the sake of consciousness'. The meaning here is much the same as

Aristotle's conception that nature (phusis) acts out of love for the

unmoved mover.

 

Some six centuries after Aristotle, Plotinus talks of three

'hypostases': 'psuche', 'nous' and 'to en'. Psuche (psyche) is

changing mind -- proceeding through successive perceptions, thoughts

and feelings to create our pictures of the world, and to breathe

life and meaning into them. Nous is pure, unaffected

consciousness -- illuminating everything from beyond time, and thus

knowing each manifestation as an appearance of itself. 'To en' ('the

one') is just that non-duality where all distinctions are dissolved,

by realizing that what knows and what is known are ultimately one.

 

Accordingly, at the heart of the European tradition, there is a

living core of investigation into non-dual truth. It's had a

profound influence on religion, art and science; and I'd say it is

still very much alive, despite a recent period of suppression by

mechanistic sciences in modern schools and universities. In the end,

it only stays alive in living individuals who ask its questions for

themselves. What institutions teach of it cannot be more than

theoretical.

 

Ananda