This is a subject I am currently researching, and I have found my initial investigations to be fascinating. I wanted to create a thread where I could summarise, share various links to articles I've found fascinating, and explore the subject with any who are interested.
I found this article (in two parts, the second linked at the bottom of the first) completely fascinating, as it's fundamental premise is that Plato has been largely misinterpreted by almost every 'philosopher' since Aristotle: http://www.hermes-press.com/plato_index.htm
This first post is by way of introduction, and I hope that as I research further, and get deeper into the subject, the thread will evolve. I should add the disclaimer that I am not a tenured academic, or currently any kind of Platonic Scholar, although I hope that latter part may change. I am at the beginning of my research into this subject.
To start, it would make sense to define terms, and provide some background on the subject, and the kind of mindset that is necessary to tackle the material effectively:
The Perennial Tradition is the idea that there is a single stream of initiatory teaching that runs through all the original and authentic expressions of the great schools of Philosophy and mysticism. The idea being that there is a fundamental truth, unbounded by the mortal realm, that is realisable by man during his time on earth. There are many different names for this state - 'Enlightenment', 'Dharma' and the Tao being just a few. The essence of the Perennial Tradition is that within all of us is a 'soul' or a life force, with forms part of an ethereal whole. By removing the distractions of the conscious intellect, and turning our attentions inwards, it is possible to see through the eyes of the soul, without the tint of the applied intellect - this is my understanding of the principle.
I should say at this point that I understand many will be skeptical, and understandably so. However, I believe any serious attempt to study the esoteric requires an open-minded approach. As the Illuminist philospher Shihab al-Din al-Suhrawardi said: 'One who seeks God through logical proof is like someone searching for the sun with a torch'.
Plato himself might argue that our current state of skepticism is the result of the delusions that are placed upon us by our upbringing, and the external and cultural influences that decide for us, in many respects, how we will think, and what assumptions form the lense through which we see the world. Plato might argue that unless you are prepared to countenance that you in fact 'know' nothing, that all that you know is a distortion of truth through the lense of the unenlightened given to you by a lifetime of conditioning and 'education', you cannot begin to search for any kind of a priori truth in yourself.
I am willing to countenance the possibility that there exists some kind of animating spirit which is a division of a greater whole. Whether you call this God, the Universe, or something else, does not really matter as far as I am able to discern. The Perennial Tradition makes the case that an aspect of us exists independently of the mind and body as part of a greater, eternal whole.
For Plato, realisation of this state was achieved by 'Philosophia', literally 'Love of Wisdom'. This involves a fundamental transformation of the inner-self, through the practice of dying (meditation on death is something Buddhism also encourages). This does not literally mean going out and having near death experiences. Rather, it means attempting to live in and through the soul - the eternal part of us - and achieve a knowable seperation between the body with it's conscious intellect, and the soul's ability to intuit truth (it forming part of the larger, eternal animus). For Plato then, philosophy could be defined as 'the Soul's discovery of itself'.
The article I linked above explores all of this in far more depth, and more eloquently than I. One of the most interesting points that it makes, although not in so many words, is that Aristotle essentially started the modern, nihilistic, cult-of-the-self way of thinking, and of skepticism of all things which could not be explained by application of logical intellect. If Plato's assertion that our conscious, intellectual selves are the product of the delusions put upon us by our education and upbringing, then what we think of as progress - indeed much of what modern civilization represents with its technical advancement and obsession with indulging the corporeal at the expense of the soul, and indeed much (though not all) of what we regard as our genius, is actually the result of thousands of years of erroneous thinking (a blink of the temporal eye in reality), and has only served to remove us from real truth and meaning.
A question of my own, which seems illustrative to ponder on the matter of how we think, is to ask: 'were it true, that enlightenment were a realisable, knowable state, would it matter to you that you could not explain it intellectually the absolute truth you were able to intuit?'. Since we are guilty, as a species in current times, of subjecting all experiences, thoughts and phenomina to the application of science and deliberate intellect, we are surely also forced, paradoxically, to accept that if phenomina exist for which there is no intellectual explanation, we are unable to experience them or know them through our own worship of only that which the intellect can comprehend? It is an equally logical, indeed unavoidable, step from accepting that position to suggest that if such esoteric/mystical/non-logical states and experiences are possible, then far from advancing us, our insistence on intellect and progress achieved through the application of such is what actually holds us back from our true potential?
I found this article (in two parts, the second linked at the bottom of the first) completely fascinating, as it's fundamental premise is that Plato has been largely misinterpreted by almost every 'philosopher' since Aristotle: http://www.hermes-press.com/plato_index.htm
This first post is by way of introduction, and I hope that as I research further, and get deeper into the subject, the thread will evolve. I should add the disclaimer that I am not a tenured academic, or currently any kind of Platonic Scholar, although I hope that latter part may change. I am at the beginning of my research into this subject.
To start, it would make sense to define terms, and provide some background on the subject, and the kind of mindset that is necessary to tackle the material effectively:
The Perennial Tradition is the idea that there is a single stream of initiatory teaching that runs through all the original and authentic expressions of the great schools of Philosophy and mysticism. The idea being that there is a fundamental truth, unbounded by the mortal realm, that is realisable by man during his time on earth. There are many different names for this state - 'Enlightenment', 'Dharma' and the Tao being just a few. The essence of the Perennial Tradition is that within all of us is a 'soul' or a life force, with forms part of an ethereal whole. By removing the distractions of the conscious intellect, and turning our attentions inwards, it is possible to see through the eyes of the soul, without the tint of the applied intellect - this is my understanding of the principle.
I should say at this point that I understand many will be skeptical, and understandably so. However, I believe any serious attempt to study the esoteric requires an open-minded approach. As the Illuminist philospher Shihab al-Din al-Suhrawardi said: 'One who seeks God through logical proof is like someone searching for the sun with a torch'.
Plato himself might argue that our current state of skepticism is the result of the delusions that are placed upon us by our upbringing, and the external and cultural influences that decide for us, in many respects, how we will think, and what assumptions form the lense through which we see the world. Plato might argue that unless you are prepared to countenance that you in fact 'know' nothing, that all that you know is a distortion of truth through the lense of the unenlightened given to you by a lifetime of conditioning and 'education', you cannot begin to search for any kind of a priori truth in yourself.
I am willing to countenance the possibility that there exists some kind of animating spirit which is a division of a greater whole. Whether you call this God, the Universe, or something else, does not really matter as far as I am able to discern. The Perennial Tradition makes the case that an aspect of us exists independently of the mind and body as part of a greater, eternal whole.
For Plato, realisation of this state was achieved by 'Philosophia', literally 'Love of Wisdom'. This involves a fundamental transformation of the inner-self, through the practice of dying (meditation on death is something Buddhism also encourages). This does not literally mean going out and having near death experiences. Rather, it means attempting to live in and through the soul - the eternal part of us - and achieve a knowable seperation between the body with it's conscious intellect, and the soul's ability to intuit truth (it forming part of the larger, eternal animus). For Plato then, philosophy could be defined as 'the Soul's discovery of itself'.
The article I linked above explores all of this in far more depth, and more eloquently than I. One of the most interesting points that it makes, although not in so many words, is that Aristotle essentially started the modern, nihilistic, cult-of-the-self way of thinking, and of skepticism of all things which could not be explained by application of logical intellect. If Plato's assertion that our conscious, intellectual selves are the product of the delusions put upon us by our education and upbringing, then what we think of as progress - indeed much of what modern civilization represents with its technical advancement and obsession with indulging the corporeal at the expense of the soul, and indeed much (though not all) of what we regard as our genius, is actually the result of thousands of years of erroneous thinking (a blink of the temporal eye in reality), and has only served to remove us from real truth and meaning.
A question of my own, which seems illustrative to ponder on the matter of how we think, is to ask: 'were it true, that enlightenment were a realisable, knowable state, would it matter to you that you could not explain it intellectually the absolute truth you were able to intuit?'. Since we are guilty, as a species in current times, of subjecting all experiences, thoughts and phenomina to the application of science and deliberate intellect, we are surely also forced, paradoxically, to accept that if phenomina exist for which there is no intellectual explanation, we are unable to experience them or know them through our own worship of only that which the intellect can comprehend? It is an equally logical, indeed unavoidable, step from accepting that position to suggest that if such esoteric/mystical/non-logical states and experiences are possible, then far from advancing us, our insistence on intellect and progress achieved through the application of such is what actually holds us back from our true potential?
