Zhongyongdaoist

Last time I introduced the notion of Rational Mysticism, here is an excellent example of it, one of my favorite quotes from Volume One of Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy: Right at the beginning is something of great general importance “Light . . . is . . . a representation of the understanding”, thus light is not the understanding itself, but rather it is an image (“imago” in Agrippa's Latin is translated as “representation”) and it is “. . . diffused from the Mind of God into all things . . .”, in other words Light is not the understanding itself, but rather an emanation of that understanding that represents that understanding to imagination and sense. What is important for our purposes is “. . . in men, it is a clear discourse of reason, an knowledge of divine things, and the whole rationall . . .”, which takes us back to the two “mental” divisions of Plato's Divided Line (See John Uebersax's site), where “a clear discourse of reason” is the lower section, "dianoia (discursive thought)", and the higher one, "noesis (immediate intuition, apprehension, or mental 'seeing' of principles)", is “knowledge of divine things” and “the whole rationall”. The idea being that there could be a logical and rational “discourse” about “divine” matters, which is the provenance of dianoia, but of course this is not the same thing as the direct intuitive “apprehension” of “divine things”, which is noesis, but that both of these will be related to and complement each other and “the whole rationall . . . “ as a result. This attitude is typical of Platonic thinking from Plato, through the late Platonists like Plotinus, into the Renaissance and through the Seventeenth Century, and is basically what I mean by “Rational Mysticism”. By 1900 it was virtually unknown and considered an would be considered an oxymoron. What happened in between? I gave the short answer in a previous post, Romanticism, but Romanticism is only the last ingredient in the degradation of the Western mystical (and magical!) tradition. As I noted in my commentaries on the intellectual/historical necessary to really understand Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy: Part of the reason for the delay in posting this, aside from getting busy again, is figuring out how much detail to go into in regard to these "schisms" and how they contribute to, on the one hand a certain smug, but not rational, confidence in the correctness of reductionist materialism and on the other hand to an unquestioning rejection of logic and reason in matters mystical which is a limiting and no more justified attitude than that of the doctrinaire materialist. While many people here may have no problem with the noetic notion of direct apprehension, the idea that logic in its propositional form could be used, is more of problem and I will have some suggestions in my next post. Until then I will leave you with this quote from J. N. Findlay's essay "On the Logic of Mysticism": I first started reading Findlay back in the late 1970s because of his work on Plato, he was a very prolific author and, while I believe that I started using the term "Rational Mysticism" as early as mid-1981 and independently of any usage of his of the term, his writings certainly gave my own developing thought encouragement.

Your original reference was here: But the problem with both is that they are only different editions of Volume One that were prepared by Willis Whitehead in the 1890s from French's translation. Looking all over the place for a version of all three in the past has mostly resulted in illegal copies of Peterson's, until now! This site: Early English Books Online Is hosted by the University of Michigan and has a transcript of French's translation that is complete, though in a quick look through I did notice some lacunae, which is apparently licensed under Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0 1.0 Universal), which you can read about here: EEBO-TCP Phase I Public Release The Text Table of Contents is here: Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy at EEBO Though I wonder if, bearing in mind all of the illegal copies of Peterson's version running around, he might not appreciate some acknowledgment of his contribution and an occasional plug for his CD-rom collection.

First of all thanks to Bubbles for an excellent contribution. At first I wanted to respond more directly to it, but I decided to continue with my original plan, but I will certainly refer back to it. So what is my plan? Why did I quote from the introductions of two different sets of the “Collected Dialogues”? In my discussion of the first one, I took quotes that are hard to deny the mystical or esoteric nature of, both Raphael Demos own statements and the quotes from Plato with which I elucidate them, but Huntington Cairns practically starts right off with, “(Plato was) . . . not a mystic.” Now there are a lot of interesting ideas in Cairn's discussion, many of them requiring a closer look, just to mention to focus on an important one, is Cairns account of mysticism and mystics: And if this is what I thought mysticism was, I would be in complete agreement with Cairns, and many people reading this would also probably more or less agree with Cairns. Mysticism they would say has nothing to do with words and logic and certainly the “mystical” experience which most reading this are either searching for or claim to have experienced, is just that an experience and not talk about experiences, but are mystical experiences necessarily “beyond discussion” and “subjective” and “emotional”, are they necessarily “based on feeling” and do they “deny the rational order”? Eventually I was to call this particular “model” of mysticism “Romanticist Mysticism”, because it is largely a post 1800 view of mysticism which developed as part of the “Romantic Revolt”, that was gathering steam around 1800, against what was being heavily propagandized as “Scientific Rationalism”, but was really Epicurean materialism dressed up in Newtonian fashion, and which I think should be more properly called Reductionism. I came to this conclusion based on readings in Seventeenth Century philosophy and what is called Neo-Platonism, all the historical niceties had not fallen completely into place, but based on my research there definitely was something that could be called “Rational Mysticism”, and Plato's work was the key to understanding it. I will return to this theme many times in the posts to come, and in point of fact have posted elsewhere on the Dao Bums about the confusion between Reason as conceived of from antiquity to the Eighteenth Century, and how it has been thought about through the Nineteenth and Twentieth. Now to get back to my question, why did I quote from this two very different views of Plato, it was to show two different “models” of who Plato was. Both of these quoted authorities think they “know”, who Plato is, as several people here, have also claimed to know exactly what type of person Plato was, and in some cases quoted someone who also claims to know exactly who Plato was. But from Antiquity to the present many who have studied Plato in great detail complain about how hard it is to understand who he is and why he is doing what he is doing, but how someone understands an author is key to how they will understand his work and a person who thinks that Plato is just some ancestor, however distant, to modern "academics" is going to miss him entirely.

Back to Agrippa! A lovely idea I have been saying that for decades now. Oh, wait a moment, you mean back to posting in our little study group, WELL, that is even better! To celebrate I will have to post more in my thread on Occult Virtues. In a few days, hopefully . . ., but with BaguaKicksAss here for inspiration, who knows what may happen.

Paul Case devised an entire metaphysical practice around the color wheel: Though Agrippa gives attributions of colors to Planets, etc. in Chapter 49 of Volume one of his Three Books of Occult Philosophy, color wheels seem to have been developed by Newton, a famous alchemist wannabe, from his work with the colors of the spectrum in the late Seventeenth Century. They were adopted by artists in the Eighteenth Century. One version of the story behind these manuscripts states that they had their origin with an adept of the German Gold-und-Rosenkreuz: I never thought that this was a convincing account. Furthermore, the cipher manuscripts (to my knowledge) contain no references to color attributions: The origin of the complex color scales of the Golden Dawn probably owes more to Mrs. MacGregor-Mathers and her art study at the Slade School than anything else, though an interesting case can be made that these ideas are an adaptation of ideas that occur in Plato's Philebus and that they are a useful systemization and extension of traditional correspondences. The ideas in the Philebus are specifically applied to musical notes and letters of the alphabet, whether this was correlated with colors within higher teachings of the Golden Dawn or later, as appears in P. F. Case's work is not clear. See The Enjoyment and Use of Color by Walter Sargent for a good introduction to Nineteenth Century color theory in art. You will see what I mean.

but it give the possibility to become conscious in another body and have some forms of control on the physical body: I haven't thought seriously about Gurdgieff/Ouspenski since the early 1970s at the latest, but based on the material you referenced, I would have to say that, if you mean that the "astral body" body mentioned here is an independent body which can control the physical while in an "out of body experience", than no, that does not seem to be what Gurdgieff means by "astral body", but rather these passages should be interpreted more like the Theosophical Society models, which are best likened the Russian matryoshka doll in which the lower body is "nested" within the higher body, but is not really separable from it, but to develop it means to reorganize oneself so that the "lower body" is now completely integrated with the "higher body" and runs on a different set of "rules", which are determined by the higher body. Following this analogy developing the Mental would again fuse the two lower bodies with the higher one and create a new type of integration which is run by the rules of the "mental" body. Finally these are fused into the "will" body, which creates a higher level of integration at which point "immortality" is achieved. The implication is that the Fourth Way allows one to achieve these goals as part of an integrated practice. How much training in "out of body experiences" may have been a part of Gurdgieff's teaching cannot be determined from these passages, but based on them it would seem there is no need for such training to achieve "immortality" in Fourth Way teachings. While I don't have time now to enter into a detailed discussion, it is possible to put this in a very clear Indo-European context involving four element theory, Indian Yoga and and also Greek Philosophy from the Pre-Socratics through Hermetic thinking. There are indications that practices involving "exteriorization" were known and practiced in the West, but the subject is complex and is confused in modern times by different approaches between Continental and Anglo/American occultists to the notion of an "out of body experience". It would be much more difficult to make any direct comparison to Chinese practices, especially those which are more properly considered native to China, rather than those imported with Buddhism, or influenced by such imports. Do you think is the Ghost Immortal Body (Gui Xian) in daoist paths: Based on the above, I would have to say no, but please bear in mind that this is based solely on reading the referenced passages and some subsequent pages and thinking about them for a couple of hours within the context of the last forty years of study, thought, and practice. I hope this is helpful.

Bernard d'Espagnat wrote a very readable article on the fundamental issues in the November 1979 issue of Scientific American: The Quantum Theory and Reality Apparently this experiment leaves very little wiggle room for those people wish to deny what Einstein called, "spook-like action at a distance". Though they may take some comfort in the penultimate paragraph: No matter how how ultimately irrational such comfort may be. Edit: I discovered a problem with the link to the article on d'Espagnat, apparently the apostrophe in d'Espagnat creates a problem with the Wikipedia address. I seem to recall a work around, but can't remember what it was offhand. I will see if I can repair it.

Was I granted a vision of the abyss? Is the feared abyss of modern Thelema influenced western occultism the Anima Mundi herself: Simple answer, NO. The long answer can be found by reading Mather's Kabbalah Unvieled, where you will read about the Kings of Edom "who reigned ere there was a king in Israel" and other stuff like that. It is essential background to understanding both the Golden Dawn teaching and Crowley's interpretation. In the online version I linked, read the introduction for a good overview, unfortunately the online version does not seem to have the actual subject index that the printed book does, which makes looking up passages related to the specific subject of Daath, abyss, Edomite Kings, etc., easy. Happy Reading. Edit: Added "that the printed book does," to the last paragraph.

the "inner city"—which is his own soul—is governed by reason: This is a reference to the conclusion of Book Nine of The Republic, which is one of the places where the psychological orientation of the Republic becomes clear: which he follows with this, “Well,” said I, “perhaps there is a pattern of it laid up in heaven for him who wishes to contemplate it and so beholding to constitute himself its citizen." Which while it is usually held to be a city that exists solely as an “idea”, may also refer to a cosmological level and the patterns of the planets and the stars and a type of “astrological” contemplation/meditation such as Plato refers to here in the Timaeus, prefacing it “(690a). . . that we are not an earthly but a heavenly plant up from earth towards our kindred in the heaven.”: he is for ever tending his divine part and duly magnifying that daemon who dwells along with him, he must be supremely blessed: In this quote the word "daemon" has a purely positive reference and has been used, for example by A. C. Graham, as a translation for Shen. Moving on to the Seventh Letter. my philosophy does not admit of verbal formulation, but after prolonged application to the subject itself and after living together with it, it is born in the soul on a sudden, like a flame which is kindled by a leaping spark: The complete quote puts it in an interesting context, starting out referring not merely to his contemporaries, but to all who seek to find his deepest thought in his writings, he says: What Plato is describing here is the experience of the “noetic” part of the Divided Line, the highest mental functioning in which the soul has an “insight” experience that confers understanding and competence. In other words the person who has had the noetic experience of the “Just” is not only capable of behaving in a truly just manner, but will always chose to do so, and will be able to explain in detail the hows and whys of the matter. This is not some sort of “gut feeling”, but a very articulate state of understanding guiding action. He continues: This is part of the season for what I have referred to as the “purposeful ambiguity of Plato's text” In his writings Plato wishes both to avoid, in so far as possible, the contempt of the worldly, and to fill the fevered imaginations of the would be "philosopher" with opinions about truth that may eventually stand in the way of their truly apprehending that truth. The highest rapture possible to man is the rapture of the contemplation of the ideas. The pursuit of knowledge is animated by the eros for the ideas: While this concept occurs in various places in Plato, most notably, and in a sense obviously, in Diotima's ascent to the idea of Beauty, this passage in the Republic is very important: This is an extremely important passage, though I will probably not say more about in what way it is important in this series. The other ones I will comment on more later Edit: Repaired link to The Republic, Book Six, 490a-b, above

Since Plato's Seventh Letter has come up already, and I was going to have to refer to it anyway, I am going to go ahead and say some things about it now. I first read about Plato's Seventh Letter in the introduction to the 1937 Random House edition of Benjamin Jowett's translation of Plato's dialogues, and as it was important to me I will quot it in full: The similarity to descriptions of the mystical experience is striking as the student after years of preparatory study has an “instantaneous enlightenment” experience. This was one of the first indications that I had that Plato was a “mystic” and not a mere “philosopher” in the modern intellectual sense. Demos follows this up with this description: I became very interested in this Seventh Letter and wanted to learn more, but ironically, the Seventh Letter is not included in Jowett's translation of the dialogues! I would have to wait until I bought another set of the “collected dialogues”, the one edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, where I could finally read the whole Seventh Letter, but found this description of Plato in their introduction: Gosh, are they talking about the same person? There is so much in these differing introductions that is worthy of comment, that I will separate them into two posts and comment on them separately before comparing them and putting them in a wider historical context. To anticipate part of this, my unspoken response to "(Plato) . . . never exalted feeling above reason", was, and neither did Plotinus!

http://blog.fair-use.org/2008/12/04/plato-and-the-greek-tradition-of-misogyny-susan-moller-okin/ I discovered that book in my favorite used bookstore - back in the day - 10 to 15 years ago. It doesn't surprise me in the least that Innersound can find and post a source critical of Plato, those are the only ones he looks for and the only ones he posts. Search under "Plato champion of women's education" and you find a different set of results. There is an interesting series that begins here: Plato: Women in the Ideal State - Part I and ends with this, which I quote at length: Please read that passage aloud at least three times. No analysis or commentary that I could offer will convey these complex ideas and images with the power that Plato imbues in them. > Do these words resonate for you with insight and mastery of communication as they do for me? If so, then you share with me an experience of the richness that Plato brings to thought and that philosophy creates for human potential. The metaphor of nakedness as the striping away of appearances and prejudices imposed by society upon nature reveals Plato's deep intent. This position of total gender equality is a radical claim bound to be dismissed by his contemporaries. In anticipation of that rejection, Plato is asserting that it is society itself that must be challenged. It turns out that not just Plato's society needs challenge, but yours and mine. The norms and conventions of our culture are based in appearances, not natures (reality). Enforcing such norms creates an unnatural and corrupted society. Only by the courage to face truth through reason and to accept the consequences of change based in reason, can the society be redeemed. Otherwise, the culture and the people in it are doomed to ignorance, injustice, and repression of the fulfillment of human potential. The theme of appearance vs reality is pervades The Republic and Plato's work generally. The most famous statement of that issue is The Allegory of the Cave which is also in The Republic. This is pretty much how I interpret Plato, and all that this does is show what I have maintained practically from the beginning, which is that there are different interpretations to Plato, these are all just someone's opinion, and that these opinions are more or less accurate. I am not done with my exposition of Plato and why there is a: But I am done with the question of Plato's misogyny for now. Some might find the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's discussion of the Feminist perspective on Plato's discussion of women in the Republic interesting: Plato's Ethics and Politics in The Republic, Feminism section Edit: I replaced "replace" with "replaced the " in my note above.

Thanks Brian, for taking the time to state your appreciation. In Plato's Seventh Letter, Plato gives an account of the evolution of his ideas. Plato is writing this in his old age, Seventy or so, but in the letter says that he had formed these opinions by the time he was about forty: The final section is a reference to a famous quote in the Republic. Plato did in point of fact found a school, usually referred to as the Platonic Academy. Edit: Corrected some paragraph spacing in the quote, I am following the paragraph divisions of a printed version, not the online one, which I find clearer than the online one, but the text is from the online version at Perseus. Edit: It suddenly occurred to me that some people reading this might not know that Plato did in point of fact start an actual "school", so I added the last sentence.

Have you and your Doctor considered that you might have Empty Heat which arises from yin deficiency? Giovanni Maciocia's blog post on the differentiation is very useful: Maciocia on Empty Heat This might explain both the fatigue from the herbs which you are taking and the fact that it is hanging on rather than clearing up. Blood and yin are related as "bodily fluid", a deficiency of yin will dry out the blood making it harder to move.

I had been studying what I could of Cornelius Agrippa's Occult Philosophy since the summer of 1972, and reading what, at the time, was the standard literature on Renaissance magic and occult practices, and indirectly acquiring something of a vague understanding of Plato and what is usually referred to as Neo-Platonism. Sometime in around 1976, 1977 at the latest, I had a curious idea, it occurred to me that within the context of what I understood of Platonism, Agrippa's Occult Philosophy could be understood as a rational system of magic. This came as a surprise to me, since at the time I accepted the unquestioned post romanticist meme that all mysticism and magic was irrational, it not anti-rational. Now what I mean by rational is this, it seemed to me that given a set of premises derivable from Platonic doctrine as I, admittedly superficially, understood it at the time, one could work out an equivalent to Euclid's Geometry, in which all of the “laws” of magic as Agrippa wrote about it, and apparently understood it, could be derived from these “first principles” as a series of theorems and corollaries, etc. This idea fascinated me as I came to think of magic as possibly being a type of “Platonic” engineering, and I decided to undertake a study of Platonism to see if in point of fact this was the case. This was a surprising turn bearing in mind how negative my earlier evaluation of Plato, as I have noted elsewhere on the Tao Bums, in my teens was, but since I had been as much a teenage science nerd as magic nerd, a rare combination in the mid-Sixties, I found the idea irresistible and started on a study into Plato and Neo-Platonism that was to last several years, and one which much to my surprise, had very fruitful results. As part of this study I read a lot of secondary literature on both Plato and Neo-Platonism before finally starting to read the dialogues themselves. Nothing in the secondary literature really prepared me for all the details of the dialogues themselves, many of which were very interesting from an esoteric point of view, but I will get to that later in this series. At a certain point I wanted to organize the dialogues, there are a lot of them and not finding the categories in the secondary literature really convincing or useful, I decided to look at them in a way that I had used for a long time and which I call “functionalism”, the idea being, assuming that there is an end in view, how would any particular dialogue help to achieve that end. Based on everything that I had read it seemed reasonable that Plato intended to found a school, so that was my basic criteria, but I also looked at the social conditions of ancient Athens to get some idea of what this would entail, which is why awhile ago I said: Apeiron&Peiron talks about publication in ancient Athens Which refers to this: Though there are also some other interesting points in his post, which I hope to be able to address at another time. In a bit I will quote from one of my little essays “An Intellible Order of the Dialogues”, which I wrote almost thirty years ago, giving my own classification of Plato's dialogues, but first we need to examine teaching in Athens in Plato's lifetime. At this time in Athens being a teacher was pretty much a do it yourself thing, so that Plato would have had to start from the bottom up, not merely working out a curriculum, but also writing the “textbooks”, because at the time there basically were none. Books were hand written scrolls, written either by oneself or a professional scribe, and in either case were expensive and time consuming items, which few people could afford, thus “publication” basically meant public reading. Interestingly a fair number of the dialogues are written in narrative format and thus would probably be read by one person, on the other had some are written more like plays with parts and may represent a point at which Plato had been successful enough that they were performed by groups of students at Plato's academy. Now, what types of things would Plato have to write? Well, he would have to write his own advertising. Interestingly there is even a Greek name for this, protreptic, or exhortation, meaning an exhortation to the study of philosophy and several examples of this exist from antiquity. So here is my short introduction and discussion of those dialogues that I considered protreptic: Plato gives us a little bit of an answer here in the Gorgias. Socrates is doing his usual annoying questions routine, to a rather tough customer, Callicles: Callicles is about to erupt into a fit of extreme umbrage over these "niggling" questions, but if there is anyone who deserves "Death by Niggling", it is surely Callicles, but why the nigggling questions in the first place? Hint, it all has to do with the Lesser and Greater Mysteries and the purification of the Soul, with which we will deal shortly.

(I had originally prepare this before my post on "congruence" above, which I chose to post first, then, as I noted above I got very busy and did not have time to return to this. I was not happy with its length and decided to say some other things first, but I have decided to go ahead and post this, to make abundantly clear that Knowledge in Platonism way more than merely opinion of any type, right, good, or bad.) I want to talk a bit about knowledge to contrast it with opinion. Going back to the divided line, which I pointed to on Uebersax site, “knowledge” is the province of “noesis” or mindfulness and is achieved only through direct contact with the “ideas” themselves, one thing about this contact is that it is not merely a contact with something outside of oneself, it is really a connection with and an awakening to a part of oneself, thus the goal of Philosophy is self-knowledge, not some mere “intellectual” acquaintance with opinions of this or that. To emphasize this I want to point out a very old synomym for “idea” in Plato's sense which started to be used among the Middle Platonists, those active from about the First Century BCE to the Third Century CE, and that is “archetype”: Thus all real knowledge is soul knowledge and self-knowledge. Again all well and good for the mystics among us, but what about the magicians? Quoting from my discussion on Agrippa's doctrine of Occult virtues, which is too long to reproduce here: What is referred to as man's intellect above is, Dianoia, the lower of the “inlellective” faculties of the divided line, I will deal more with that later, but why am I introducing Occult Virtues? Because: they define an Idea to be a form, above bodies, souls, minds, and to be one, simple, pure, immutable, indivisible, incorporeal, and eternall: On the highest level they are simple, but as they descend they mix with each other and become more complex. they place Idea's in the first place in very goodness it self (i.e.) God: While Agrippa my mean God in a circa 1500 Roman Catholic sense, this is not to be confused with god as thought of by your local neighborhood fundamentalist yahoo and it can also be separated from any taint of Abrahamic revelation by being conceived of as Plotinus' One, or even the Dao. In the second place, they place them in the very intelligible it self (i.e.) in the Soul of the world: Here they are on a lower level and are a part of the animating power of the Universe. It must be remembered that a Platonic world is a living soul, filled with souls, not a mechanical universe consisting of dead matter. They place them in nature, as certain small seed of forms infused by the Idea's: Here we start to get closer to our own world and this idea of a seed of forms was to prove “fruitful” as I began to look at them as “seeds of power” which the Platonic Magician learned to cultivate, both in him or herself, but also in the external world. For Idea's are not only essential causes of every species, but are also the causes of every vertue: This simply reaffirms what I said before, the causal efficacy of the “ideas” is manifest all the way down to our world, where they manifest as “power” that can be harvested and harnessed. This cosmological structure going from ideas in the “Mind of God” to their manifestations as physical objects here on earth, is called “the Great Chain of Being" and was the fundamental idea of how the Cosmos functioned from the Hellenistic period to about 1800. Its History and development have been admirably chronicled by A. O. Lovejoy in his book of the same name, The Great Chain of Being. Because the whole practice of traditional magic is dependent upon these “ideas” as the creative power and structure behind all physical appearance, and by using Natural Magic, we can start an ascent to higher and higher levels of that knowledge, as Agrippa outlines in his work. The post from which these quotes are taken can be found here: Introduction to Agrippa's Doctrine of Occult Virtues and is worth a look, unfortunately the series of posts was not completed as I had hoped because I ran into some problems with free time, but I hope to post more there and finish it up at some point. To summarize the above, for a Platonist, Knowledge is Power. We can also use the type of training for the “Mystical Ascent” such as Plato outlines here, in the famous speech of the Priestess Diotima to Socrates: Uebersax's complete discussion is worth reading here: Diotima's Ascent to Beauty (Symposium 201-212) This in a sense brings us back to Maldor's comments: Having introduced the origin of the word "archetype" in Platonism, at some future point I will address its relation to the theories of Carl Jung.

Thank you for your interest, no it is not dead, but I have become extremely busy offline, some of which has even been productive! In general I find that Innersound's ramblings are the best ad hominem accusations that anyone could ever ask for, which is why even though I could ask for owner permissions and get rid of all of them I have chosen to simple bridge over them. However, I also somewhat concerned with whether nonsense like this actually needs addressing: Anyone who has actually read what Plato has said will know that this is nonsense, but how many here have? The evil misogenist Plato naturally has his sock puppet, Socrates, cite the teachings of Diotima as authoritative in the Symposium, oh, wait a minute she is a priestess, how did she get out of the house? The evil misogenist Plato advocates the education of women and their participation in the government of the state in the Republic, oh, that must be a pack of lies to cover up Plato's real sinister intent. G.E.R. Lloyd is pulled in for some respectable window dressing to citations from a Lesbian Feminist whose opinions about sex and culture are controversial to say the least, which bracket Innersound's amazing fantasy: Certainly the most "original" take on platonic love that I have ever seen. Oh, wait a moment, platonic love is a lie too, how silly of me, and I suppose just about everyone else, never to have noticed. I hope that I have not been wrong to ignore nonsense like this, and to try to keep this thread on a high level of discourse, because frankly, as much as it would be fun to lampoon Innersound's nonesense, I don't have the time to address junk like this, and for now I am going to continue to assume that most readers of this thread understand that, and appreciate the amount of time that it does take to undertake a thread like this. Now, to address something more interesting, if less salacious, an important point in the interpretation of some dialogues, of which Laws and Republic, are the prime example, is that they are applicable both to human psychology and to cosmology, their applicability to the political life of the ancient Greek city state, or to political theory in general being much less important. The reason for this is that in Platonism the Cosmos, in both its visible and invisible aspects, has the same relation to what Plotinus would call the "Soul of all", as the individual soul has to our body and mind. They are in point of fact basically the same type of entity and that is the reason for so much that is important in Platonic doctrine, not the least of which is the Microcosm/Macrocosm analogy which is so important to the Platonic theory of Knowledge, about which I will post next.

An especially warm welcome, Michael has been a stellar addition to the Dao Bums and I look forward to your own unique contributions and perspective.

As I mentioned when I finished my earlier post: where previously I had proposed a cosmological interpretation of this quote as a description of “the communion of all souls”, I now wish to give it an interpretation that is relevant to personal development. To concentrate on the most important part of it: On John Uebersax Blog to which I referred in the first post, about interpreting Plato's Republic as psychology, it says: Its hard for me that this point to say how much familiarity I had with psychology in my mid-teens, I know I had some, but what I remember most was early Transactional Analysis and on an esoteric level a familiarity with Fourth Way material. Gestalt psychology was also an influence, but I don't recall that it emphasized a plurality of selves. I had my own take on Transactional Analysis, and didn't think that the “parts” were different selves except in pathological cases, such as multiple personality disorder. Circa 1987 when I was preparing a series of lessons based on traditional Western Magic as expounded in Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy, within its Platonic context, I worked out a technique of personality integration based on Transactional Analysis and Platonic psychology and ethics. In 1990, I met a group of NLP practitioners who were anxious to study Magic and in return I learned NLP, they were astonished at how much my personal integration techniques mirrored NLP, and I learned about NLP's version called Congruence: I think that Plato's description is also an example of this state of congruence, of internal consistency and cooperation between the various selves, as the most desirable state of consciousness for a person, that of complete internal agreement. I have pointed out two different, but in my view of Plato complementary interpretations of this passage from Laws, none of which have anything to do with politics, the ostensible subject of the dialogue, so why are they here? Is this another hint like those in the Republic that there is more here than politics? So why am I emphasizing this? Because the notion that the Laws is about politics is someone's opinion, the only person who ever knew what is was really about, has long since passed from this world, and those who may had received right opinion from him, have also departed. So there is no knowledge of what Plato meant, but of those opinions put forward as interpretations since then, how close do any of them come to Right Opinion, and how should you judge that claim? This is the reason why I posted about the contrary interpretations of Plato: So that people will not be unduly swayed by citations of secondary sources, which are necessarily only the opinions of the authors, and may or may not be good ones, but instead to weigh the matter in their own minds, and reach their own conclusions. When secondary sources disagree, there is only one recourse and that is to the primary text, the dialogues and letters themselves. I decided to do some examination of knowledge and opinion first, before addressing in more detail those reasons for different opinions which result from what I consider the very purposeful ambiguity of Plato's text.

Bridge over Garbled Waters to previous post Since Innersound is being a bad again I have put in another “Bridge over Garbled Waters”. Most of what has been past over is Innersound's spam attack and Apeiron&Peiron's responses to it, however Apeiron&Peiron's last post is an interesting contribution and I would like to specifically address this now: One of the the things that I am trying to address here is that “Neo-Platonism” doesn't just pull these things out of nothing, but they called themselves Platonists because they saw their own doctrines as rooted in Plato's writings. There is no “henosis” without Plato's Parmenides and specific passages in the Republic point in the direction of this type of use. This is just one example, though an important example, and I hope to develop these throughout this series of posts. Now to return to Innersound, who aside from also being a Pythagorean Fundamentalist is also, to use a polite phrase, a conspiracy theorist, thus: Anyone who wants to read his garbled posts is certainly free to do so, but as a service to those people who find his interruptions irritating, I will continue to create bridges as needed. By the way, probably everything that Innersound will say here has been said before here: Daoism and neoplatonism Which is a perfect example of what I am trying to avoid. He has of course said it elsewhere also, over and over again, but that thread is a prime example. My next post will continue with my exposition. Edit: Added bridge to my previous post.

One is better off just reading Plotinus rather than bringing in Leibniz in particular, though Hegel is a more complex proposition. I am mindful of Voegelin's criticism and Findlay's appreciation and thanks to Mouni Sadhu's The Tarot, am something of a closet Hegelian in my treatment of logic, but it is too complex to get into here. I consider post Seventeenth Century Western Philosophy to have been hopelessly corrupted by the revival of Epicureanism by Pierre Gassendi circa 1600, and Descartes' botched attempt to preserve some notion of consciousness within a materialist framework by creating the mind/body problem. I much prefer Henry More's solution, which is to toss out the Cartesian Baby, a miscarriage anyway, with the bathwater: Though my thinking in terms of higher dimensionality arose more in the context of modeling "The One" as the "The Unity of a Whole", part of the problem set by Plato's Parmenides. The most stimulating modern discussion of this is Mark Faller's "Being as Power in Plato": Download an earlier PDF Version here Read or download a more complete version at Academia.edu here Too quote from the PDF version: The interesting thing is how how well Faller derives all of this as an implication of Plato's treatment of geometry, and a play on words of the meaning of the Greek dunamis as both power in the ordinary sense and the mathematical sense. There is also another interpretation of the Laws passage quoted above, which brings it back from a cosmological context into a model of the healthy functioning of the personal soul, but that will have to wait, I have kind of rushed to write this reply and it is long enough already. Innersound's spam post merit another "Bridge over Garbled Water", though you can go ahead and read them if you want. Edit: Took out a messy and unnecessary footnote reference to Flatland in Faller quote, see PDF for details. Edit: Added "Bridge over Garbled Water".

My main reason for calling this "Plato and Platonism 101" is not merely to deal with Plato, but to point out how what is usually called Neo-Platonism, but which I prefer to call Late Platonism, and its mysticism, but also its relation to Theurgy and practical magic, so, lest people get overly bored with the presentation so far. To spice things up, I am throwing in the following: Part of the reference here is to taking the Republic as a treatise on the soul and not a book of politics and I pointed out in my first post, and it questions whether Laws should be so interpreted. In the Laws it is proposed to examine three “model” constitutions, the best, the second best and the third best. A lot of opinions about Plato's “political theories” are are really descriptions of the “second best” constitution, this is how Plato describes the Best: Aside from the question what does Plato mean by "That constitution which we are now engaged upon, if it came into being, would be very near to immortality" in describing the "second best" constitution, I think a good case could be made that the above description of the "Best" state in this way: "even things naturally “private” have become in a way “communized,” —eyes, for instance, and ears and hands seem to see, hear, and act in common,— [739d] and that all men are, so far as possible, unanimous in the praise and blame they bestow, rejoicing and grieving at the same things, and that they honor with all their heart those laws which render the State as unified as possible . . . In such a State,—be it gods or sons of gods that dwell in it,—they dwell pleasantly, living such a life as this." is part of the inspiration for Plotinus' discussion here: A state which I often refer to as "the Communion of all Souls". All great for the mystics among us, but for the magicians among us, here is a possible reflection of it in the Goetia: Is the Goetic Spirit Dantalian the "infernal reflection" of Plotinus' image of the "communion of all souls"? Probably just a coincidence. This is already long enough, and may even be to some, surprising enough, so I will end this post here, but over the course of these posts I will return to the various issues raised here.

I want to talk about "knowledge" and "opinion". One of the useful distinctions that I got from reading Plato was a good understanding of the relationship between knowledge and opinion. This distinction has a lot of practical importance because just about everything that is bandied about in ordinary discourse as knowledge is nothing but opinion. Now opinion in and of itself is not bad, it is in point of fact for most things in life all that we have, however opinion also varies in value, whereas knowledge is always useful and therefore valuable, opinion can vary from very useful, to useless to downright harmful. One of Plato's dialogues that deals with knowledge and opinion is called the Meno after Socrates chief interlocutor, Meno, and it was here that I learned a very useful beginning distinction between knowledge and opinion and also about the important concept of "right" opinion. The ostensible object of the discussion is "virtue" and can it be taught, which leads to the question of knowledge, Socrates and Meno have reached the agreement that the person who "knows" is the person who can guide, but then Socrates continues, as he was wont to do: [97a] Socrates But our assertion that it is impossible to give right guidance unless one has knowledge looks very like a mistake. Meno What do you mean by that? Socrates I will tell you. If a man knew the way to Larisa, or any other place you please, and walked there and led others, would he not give right and good guidance? Meno Certainly. [97b] Socrates Well, and a person who had a right opinion as to which was the way, but had never been there and did not really know, might give right guidance, might he not? Meno Certainly. Socrates And so long, I presume, as he has right opinion about that which the other man really knows, he will be just as good a guide—if he thinks the truth instead of knowing it—as the man who has the knowledge. Meno Just as good. Socrates Hence true opinion is as good a guide to rightness of action as knowledge; and this is a point we omitted just now in our consideration of the nature of virtue, [97c] when we stated that knowledge is the only guide of right action; whereas we find there is also true opinion. Meno So it seems. Socrates Then right opinion is just as useful as knowledge. Meno With this difference, Socrates, that he who has knowledge will always hit on the right way, whereas he who has right opinion will sometimes do so, but sometimes not. Socrates How do you mean? Will not he who always has right opinion be always right, so long as he opines rightly? And the discussion continues from there, but it does establish a point that "right opinion" can be useful, but also that it differs fundamentally from knowledge, the analogy that I made was that right opinion was like having a very accurate map to Larisa, without having actually made the journey, but that knowledge was something that only a person who had made the journey and experienced the journey would have, with the implication that someone who had made the journey could make the most accurate maps and also correct inaccurate ones. I'll expand on this in my next post and examine different types of "opinion" and then expand on what is involved in knowledge. As a passing note, some of Plato's dialogues are written like this, more like scripts of a play, and some are narratives written in the the first person of someone recounting their memory of the discussion, sometimes it is Socrates who recounts it, sometimes it is someone else. Finally, this may seem pretty dull, but this is after all "Plato and Platonism 101" and we need to start somewhere and really this distinction is very useful and will help understand a lot about Plato and also about life itself. Edit: Corrected some spelling.

All good points which is why I said that I would respectfully disagree. Your English by the way is very good.

Bridge over Garble Waters to previous post When I started this thread I of course anticipated that our local Pythagorean fundamentalist would come over and share with us his inimitable style of spamming attacks. I had already worked out a strategy for that which I want to use as an experimental examination of a post that I made sometime back about dealing with such situations: This reminds me of what I said here: A little ignoring goes a long way too. This is how I will implement this idea. When I make a new post I will edit my previous one with a link to it so that someone can follow my exposition without having it be broken up intervening periods of incomprehensible twaddle. I may add some links to parts of the discussion which I think are particularly worth considering, or add them to my new post like this: Apeiron&Peiron Brings up the relationship between the Republic and Laws Apeiron&Peiron talks about publication in ancient Athens both of which I intend to respond to shortly. I have no intention of responding directly to any of Innersound's rants because that simply buys into his strategy, which is to shout down and exhaust the original poster and at the same time fill the thread with spam making it incomprehensible to all but the most dedicated reader. His criticism all comes from a perspective that could best be described as “Pythagorean Fundamentalism”. I don't accept his musical taboo's based on the Devils interval, nor his criticism of all of modern mathematics based on it. Fundamentalism is not welcome here and will largely be ignored, even, if there should be such a thing, Platonic Fundamentalism! Aithrobates contribution is duly noted, though I must and will respectfully disagree, but the basis of that disagreement can only emerge if I continue with my exposition of "Plato and Platonism 101." Edit: Added "Bridge over Garbled Waters" to previous post.

My concern is not with the quantity of Innersound's quotes, which are plentiful, indeed, often a tangled overgrowth, but with the quality. Whether or not they are faithful to the context from which they are taken is another matter. That they are a fair representation of the author's thought and not a distortion is the duty of the person making the citation. I am going to go back to one of the original quotations to show why I originally dismayed by Innersound's use of it: Luigi Borzacchini, THE SOPHIST. GENESIS OF FORMAL THINKING IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY AND MATHEMATICS. (Dipartimento di Matematica, Università di Bari). Reading this for the first time I focused on the other passages that I have emphasized, as well as the one Innersound had emphasized and interpreted it in the light of my experience with Gödel in my own high school "advanced" math class in number theory, as I recounted here: Seeing Borzacchini comments in light of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, which as part of the actual quote, I saw nothing which merited taking “preestablished disharmony” and pasting it all over the place, because it is paired with “preesablished harmony”, which is not pasted all over the place. The disharmony is identified as a “hidden evolutive primciple”, and the matter is also identified with “formal thinking” without any mention square root of two, all of which was compatible with my own original understanding. Later when I read the whole paper, in which the square root of two is not mentioned at all, but “preestablished harmony” is mentioned two other times and which ends with this: Following directly after the aforementioned quote, I was really staggered by the disconnect from context which characterized Innersound's use of “preestablished disharmony”, from any faithful interpretation of Borzacchini's quote. The essential and changing 'incompleteness', reinforced my own initial reaction and the conclusion that this incompleteness was "a wonderful adventure not only 'outside', but even 'inside' us”, showed and emphasized Borracchini's positive evaluation of this interplay of “preestablished harmony" and "preestablished disharmony", just as I had positively interpreted Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, in late 1967. There seemed at that point no way to justify Innersound's use of the quote and as I pursued other sources I found more examples of this type of noncontextual use of citations. I have posted this here as my last post dealing with Innersound's attacks on Platonism in this thread, I have started my own thread Plato and Platonism 101, where I will continue this type of analysis of Innersounds use of citations. At this time he has already started spamming that thread, but I have a "fun" way that I will deal with that. I will post a little more on Confucianism, at least some of which should be very interesting to everyone and I hope that the OP will find them interesting enough to have made this derail worthwhile.