Plato's Parmenides and the Cosmic One

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The King and the Queen in the Quest
Presentation 6 of 12

Plato's Parmenides and the Cosmic One
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, February 12, 1981

Transcript:

The date is February 12th, 1981. This is the sixth lecture in the series of lectures by Roger Weir on the subject The King and Queen in the Quest. Tonight's lecture is entitled Plato's Parmenides and The Cosmic One.

I don't know if this will work. I'm hoping to give you an image which will be indelible. This is the middle of this lecture series. The music that you're hearing is by Ralph Vaughan Williams. It's the conclusion to his Symphony Number 6 and it is a symphony that he wrote looking at the ruins of Europe after the Second World War. And I'm going to use it as accompanying music to read to you a characteristic passage of Plato's Parmenides because the compositional tone of The Parmenides is remarkably like Vaughn Williams Sixth Symphony. It is an exercise in what is known in music as pianissimo. That is a long grey melodic line that has slow rises and falls that always come back to the unending average line all the way through the end. And the end simply tapers off. And Plato's Parmenides is intoned with what this symphony that we're hearing is in [inaudible]. I hope you can organize it.

Thus, it appears that the one has being if it is non-existent. And also, since it is not existent has non-being. Now a thing which is in a certain condition cannot be in that condition only by passing out of it. So, anything that both is and is not in such and such a condition acquires transition and transition is motion. Now we have seen that the one is existent and also is non-existent. And accordingly, is and is not in a certain condition. Therefore, the non-existent one has been shown to be a thing that moves, sensitiveness transition from being to not being. On the other hand, with the one is not anywhere in the world of existence. And if it does not exist it cannot shift from one place to another. Therefore, it cannot move by shifting its position. Nor yet can it revolve in the same place since it has no point of contact with what is the same for what is the same is existent and the non-existent cannot be in anything that exists. Therefore, the one, if non-existent can revolve from that which it is not. Nor can the one either when existent or when non-existent altered from itself in character. If it did, we should no longer be speaking of the one but of something other than it. If then it does not alter in character and neither revolves in the same place nor shifts from one place to another. There is no other motion it can have and the motionless must be at rest. And if at rest stationary. It appears then that the non-existent one is both at rest and in motion. Further if it does not move it must become unlike, since in whatever respective thing moves to that extent it is no longer in the same condition as before but in a different condition. So, moving the one does become unlike. Also, in so far as it is not moving on any respect, it will not be becoming unlike in any way.

The question is what happened? What became in the space of one single lifetime the most incredible promise of enlightenment that we've seen on the planet so far, condensed into one city, within the talents of people who knew each other, and they let it unravel in the space of one lifetime until Plato in his anguish for the deterioration of the mind wrote The Parmenides in about 367 B.C., like Vaughn Williams writing the Sixth Symphony, to say I have all the civilization in the world and the only thing I can do with it is to paint a long gray line - a pianissimo tone - and I can't move beyond that.

Plato, in choosing Parmenides like a master craftsman chose the very fulcrum, the very time, the very person, who occupied the apex of the triad and in the nature of his integration presented the key to the flaw and the fatal unraveling. And very soon after The Parmenides was written the life in Athens became almost unbearable. So that it was almost a mixed blessing when Alexander finally came and usurped the reins of the city.

All this fits into a pattern, in an enormous, long pattern starting with the Trojan War and Homeric presentation of that into and epic and The Iliad and The Odyssey. It had somehow filtered through the dark ages of Ionian exploration. It had come home in the city of Athens about the time of Solon and in the space of about 150 years it developed into the age of Pericles and the symbol of Athens in that age was the building of the Parthenon. Picture-perfect ultimate building of the Gods. But at the same time showing man's comprehension of the Gods. And from that point in about 350 BC when this conversation between Parmenides and Socrates and Zeno and several other philosophers was set. This conversation took place in this timeframe. And Plato was having the young Socrates as an observer who had in his person had the experience of this positing of conundrums of the mind in such a complex labyrinthian way that the mind, once conditioned by this labyrinth, could no longer with natural abandon look to nature and simply understand things as they are. Could no longer used that Homeric natural image base. Could no longer take anything as it was but ground everything up in a mill of exquisite and ever refined logical conundrum systems. And Socrates alone, of this generation, out of this era turned inwards and began his famous examining. And it was the character of Socrates that found this amplification in Plato. And Plato then schooled for 20 years the person that we come to know as Aristotle. And Aristotle in his wonderful opportunity to focus all of his learning for a few years as the private tutor of Alexander the Great took that experience and put it back into one man who almost like the opposite end of a reverberating cymbal of energy, stepped out of the classroom of the mind. And [inaudible] of the world at that time. Alexander's empire, of course, took this legacy and made it the common intelligence of the civilization. Which we are still in and which we inherit.

In this development one key image that should concern us - the title of this series is the King and the Queen in Quest - and that is the idea that a powerful leader, the idea of that one who uniting in themselves all of these capacities is able to order and organize the society becomes of paramount importance because it's easy for us to understand kings like King [inaudible] or King Metalais. Or even kings like Odysseus. And even a king like Pericles. We get lost, and everyone has since, in the jungles of the mind that were initiated by the kinds of objections to thinking that Parmenides as a person raised and personified.

And Plato in his dialogue, The Parmenides, restates some 80 to 90 years after the fact, the conditionals that led to this almost fatal impasse. And I mentioned, I think last week, the famous Parmenidean dictum, "what is, is and what is not, is not." This is a sort of a loggerhead presentation. What is and what is not are incommensurate. There is further refinement on this. And that is the statement that "what is, is what." That is to say we must in some way be able to formulate in our mind and in a discursive language the idea of a cosmos. Not a cosmos like we see on television series and so forth. Something philosophical. Something more essential. Something down to the very roots of the sternum.

In the beginning of The Parmenides there is a meeting of course between the various persons and for the first, five, six, seven pages there is a conversation that begins to develop. And Socrates and Zeno are talking and Parmenides, a very distinguished man with the white hair, the elder statesman of philosophers, hears Socrates talking to Zeno and finally interrupts and makes this remark. And this begins the dialogue to take the form that I read to you just at the beginning of this lecture. Parmenides says,

"That is because you are undertaking to define 'Beautiful', 'Just', 'Good', and other particular Forms, too soon, before you have had a preliminary training. I noticed that the other day when I heard you talking here with Aristoteles. Believe me, there is something noble and inspired in your passion for argument; but you must make an effort and submit yourself, while you are still young, to a severer training in what the world calls idle talk and condemns as useless."
[From Plato and Parmenides, translated by Francis MacDonald Cornford, 1957]

This of course is philosophy. "Otherwise, the truth will escape you." And Socrates says, well then, "What form, then, should this exercise take, Parmenides?" And he is told that it should take the form of the treatise that Zeno just described. And that one has to learn to take a hypothesis and by rotating that hypothesis in the mind until every iota of possibility, logically, has been covered and you discover to what final ultimate purposes that hypothesis of thought will lead you, well you know nothing, you have no way of knowing. And so, Parmenides brings this skepticism of nature into the lap of Socrates. And Socrates says, well I'm not quite sure that I can follow you; perhaps we should have an example. And everyone there says, yes let's have an example; let's have Parmenides display for us the workings of the mind as it takes this form of a hypotheses and this logical investigation. And Parmenides says, I'm an old man. I really can't face these kinds of riddles. But Zeno and Socrates and the others finally prevail upon him. Parmenides, stretching himself, begins, and he began it this way.

"Then who will answer the questions that I shall put? Shall it be the youngest? He will be likely to give the least trouble and to be the most ready to say what he thinks; and I shall get a moment's rest while he is answering." Well this is strange because in the rest of The Parmenides there's hardly twelve lines of anyone else. And the young questioner barely has a chance to say, I think so, or it seems so, because Parmenides with his avalanche of infinitesimal logic granulating every conceivable possibility before the youngster and Socrates and Zeno and himself, and us reading the dialogue, simply granulates out of existence every capacity to believe that one could think of anything at all because he begins with the hypothesis. Perhaps the most difficult one of all. If there are one.

"Well then, said Parmenides, if there is a One, of course the One will not be many. Consequently, it cannot have any parts or be a whole. For a part is a part of a whole; and a whole means that from which no part is missing; so, whether you speak of it as 'a whole' or as 'having parts', either case the One would consist of parts and in that way be many and not one. But it is to be one and not many. Therefore, if the One is to be one, it will not be the whole nor have parts."

And so, from such a simple beginning the hypothesis, 'is there one,' finds its way through page after page of The Parmenides. And Parmenides begins taking this hypothesis and rotating it around logically to each infinitesimal possibility. Will it have thoughts small or large. Will it have likeness or unlikeness. Will it have sameness or difference. Etc. etc. Until finally this hypothesis has swept life aside and flattened the entire field of nourishment and all that is left is a desolate plateau of realization that the mind in Parmenides' time has achieved a power of analysis that simply can obliterate all nature, including its own self-nature. The mind has become so powerful, such a flaming sword of differentiation, that it simply leaves this dull gray line at the end.

And so, then Parmenides says,
"Well perhaps we have made a mistake. Let's change the hypothesis. Perhaps we misstated this and misunderstood it. Perhaps it's better instead to say is there a one. Perhaps we should backtrack a little bit and bring in the question of existence. Well let's take then as a new hypothesis, a little bit different, does the one exist? Or let's phrase it this way, this is one and is."

And so, then he began saying well as we've said that, is an existence [inaudible] all very strange. And so, he begins to rotate this hypothesis. And we find that the same thing happens. The very same thing. And this is how, this is how the first hypothesis ends and the second hypothesis begins. And you'll get in the transition the way in which Parmenides simply has polarized the mental capacities of everyone there.

"Therefore, the One has nothing to do with time and does not occupy any stretch of time. Again, the words 'was', 'has become', 'was becoming' are understood to mean connection with past time; 'will be', 'will be becoming', 'will become', with future time; 'is' and 'is becoming', with time now present. Consequently, if the One has nothing to do with any time, it never has become or was becoming or was; nor can you say it has become now, or is becoming or is; or that it will be becoming... Now a thing can have being only in one of these ways. There is, accordingly, no way in which the One has being. Therefore, the One in no sense is."

So, he concludes this devastation with the sum total. He draws the bottom line. And he says, "Therefore the One in no sense is." Then he turns around, forty seconds later, and takes up a hypothesis which takes the other side of that - suppose the one is. And you are filled with this great admiration for Parmenides' capacity. And one would hope that in this examination that the very opposite would come out. All the wonderful things will occur to us. And we will re-establish again that wonderful world that the mind ascends to yes everything of course must be, but not so. And as Parmenides goes through arguments and rotates that hypothesis and brings it to its fruition, we find again the devastation; the mind granulating all possibility using a formidable object and at each stage of the way the basic laws of contradiction which has been realized by Parmenides' time. The basic notions of suppositions and logical consequences from holding them; lines of arguments that had coherence to them. All of these properties, all of these characteristics developing here.

So finally, we have the... the end of the second hypothesis. "Thus the non-existent One both comes to be and ceases to be." Oh, this is the end of the third. The end of the second comes into play with the statement that we can't posit an 'is'. And finally, Parmenides takes the other side of the statement, suppose there is a one, not so. Suppose a one is, not so. Let's suppose that a one is not. Let's take the negative, perhaps we can back into reality. Perhaps by using our great capacity here, our fantastic tool, we can recreate what we have destroyed out of possibility by taking the negation and that comes to this one. "Thus the non-existent One both comes to be and ceases to be. And also, does not come to be or cease to be."

In other words, what's coming up now are incredible ambiguities, you can have it either way. It makes no difference. You can have anything; you can have nothing. It makes no difference. And so,

"The words 'is not' mean simply the absence of being from anything that we say is not. We do not mean that the thing in a sense is not, though in another sense it is. The words mean without any clarification that the thing which is not in no sense or manner is, and does not possess being in any way. So what is not cannot exist or have being in any sense or manner."

And later on, "Thus, in sum, [to] conclude: If there is One, there is nothing at all. To this we may add the conclusion: it seems that, whether there is or it is not a One, both that One and the Others alike are and are not, and appear and do not appear to be, all manner of things in all manner of ways, with respect to themselves and to one another."

And the comment tersely, grimly, tenaciously at the end. Most true to [inaudible] as most do.

And so, you have a brief idea of the activity here in The Parmenides. We have a brief glimpse at its place in the development of Greek thought. What about, for us, what about for the kind of process that we been in? Let's go back find our way to where we are. And see what The Parmenides has hidden.

We began with a motion and we will create for ourselves something we will designate as a field of inquiry. We will add materials to this by lecture and slides. [inaudible] in here. [inaudible] Chagall in here. And King Arthur(?)… [inaudible]. And each week we will enlarge this field of inquiry and we'll be in real particular [inaudible] integrate or organize with these materials. We will simply keep them suspended for our appraisal later on and hope that at some time in the future with the shock of recognition or the lightning of understanding, we will be able to precipitate out of the field of inquiry some kind of a thesis for ourselves to temporarily carry around and observe.

What about Parmenides? What is he recommending? Has he not recommended something similar? What are the results? What are the differences? The differences lie, primarily, that if we do this only in a mental realm, that is a frame of reference that exists only here. This process will lead us, finally, to the appreciation of logical form. And that unfortunately will lead us into more and more silence. And I think one of the best statements of our time, made by a very great magician some time ago [inaudible], where upon man cannot speak [inaudible] silent.

And the mind is capable through logical refinement to produce an exquisite sound. We can rise indefinitely. So that we have to add to this field of inquiry, not simply elements that register as mental phenomenon, they are ideas. But we have to bring something else into play here. To keep it as it were, grounded in a natural image base. That is to say, it has a feeling tone and individual and relational to the world in which we find ourselves.

Now at the beginning of The Parmenides as the conversation is just getting underway, Parmenides is careful to point out that there are some very peculiar things that happen when one begins to think. And especially if one is beginning to have ideas. And if one supposes that these ideas have ultimate forms, which through some way of emanation or influence give a coherence to the world. And Parmenides objects. And in a very careful argumentative way brings around the notion that the world that we find ourselves in has a certain [inaudible] of meaning. The realm in which any ultimate forms could be this and a different [inaudible] and then there's a gap in between the two horizons of meaning. They do not in fact touch or have contact anywhere. We must, in our investigation, suppose that there is in fact one horizon of meaning only. But the capacity of the mind to differentiate are illusory. That the wonderful realm that can be spun exists as entertainment and not as nourishment for the quest. And that's a very big differentiation.

So that in our field of inquiry we are not simply adding elements for our intellectual stimulation, or elements for a kind of mental juggler. But we're hoping that within this field of inquiry we are adding other things. Myself as a human being for you. Occasional times when you talk to each other, the ambience of the PRS [Philosophical Research Society] and its equivalency. The act of extracting yourself of your daily lives once a week to come and build up some sense of continuity in this experience. And somehow trying to take that back to where you work and making all kinds of bridges and relationships. So that the fields of inquiry, more properly than being something which can be put on the blackboard exists as an experiential matrix. If I can use that kind of terminology. Which we ourselves in moving in, in this particular way. Using that motion of inquiry as the prime thesis, that is not an idea, it is not a preconceived notion, it is not even an idea that is extracted out of the material or out of our lives. But simply is a motion, is a process of inquiry with no blinders and no preconceptions which allows us to move freely and return and finally create a set of hypothetical situations, what we would call Hermetic situations so that this great chain of being which expresses its harmonies in the facts of our lives can have a chance to work. It's quite different. It's quite different from something hypothetical. It is determined.

Now in order to give ourselves, as Parmenides correctly says, we need to have some way in which to fix for ourselves, even if just temporarily, some notions which we can examine assiduously when some kind of a self-correcting everything procedures. The fact of our participation, our presence. And that of course, is very much like the idea of the course that we have before us. Stringing together of certain lectures in a sequence so that increasingly what occurs to you is the fact that we haven't just been entertaining ourselves but in fact involved ourselves in a process of discovery of uncovering primordial relationships which are made in fact by the process of our questing here and now. That is, they don't exist - I guess the philosophical term, a priori - but they come into actuality by the fact of our doing it. The doing makes it be, just so. Without any doing we could prove that not only does not exist but it's not nonsense. And we could go on from there.

Well let's take a break. This is a lot to digest. And we'll come back to it and use it. And meanwhile I'll play some more pianissimo so you can feel how that should be.

…time that, if you get a chance the second volume of Plato and collected by [inaudible] of Hamilton and Huntington [inaudible] seem to be a very workable volume. It was published in the Bollingen Series and it selects some of the best translations of Plato's dialogues out. It's expensive - it's $17 or $18 - but I would consider it a very great investment. That if you intend to pursue these things it really does pay to have an excellent translation of Plato nearby.

When you are considering, as some of you will, reading The Parmenides of Plato. There is another dialogue that was written supposedly almost at the very same time. So that the two dialogues exist as a tandem presentation. The other dialogue is The Theaetetus. Theaetetus. T-H-E-A-T-E-T-U-S. Is that right? And The Theaetetus concerns 'knowing'. How can we know? How can we know wisdom? And The Theaetetus and The Parmenides together are an interesting presentation. And they were written about 367 or so B.C. Plato was at that time, let's see at that time he would have been about 60. And it's interesting to consider The Theaetetus and The Parmenides in connection with Plato's great and longest work The Republic. I think those of you that have been coming will recall, I think two weeks ago we finally got to the expression that led to the positing of the image of the World Tree going up through the circular universe. The horizon being available to us and our presence. And that down in the roots of this World Tree as it were there is an experience of presence which has a certain underground character.

The Parmenides of Plato is a kind of an intellectual [inaudible], if you will, that creates this sense of presence in the roots of experience. What we could say and what we cannot say and all the ultimate therein. The Theaetetus looks at this. Brings us into this kind of understanding. And The Republic itself massively occupies this kind of a level of presentation. So that, in reading through Plato, one has to use an articulation of time that's considerably longer than you would expect. that you can't use days or weeks. Or if someone says days, weeks, months they're the rags of time. You don't know how long it's going to take. Comprehension is sometimes wonderfully elusive and until we've built a sufficient image base for it to occur to us, the integration will not occur. That's all. So, we simply have to work on building and nourishing and extending and hoping that at some time we will bring to bear enough focuses of information and understanding and insight to create this additional sense of or the sense of the sacred. [inaudible] The various weeks that we have come to use and today a sense of philosophy. The term is the lover of wisdom.

If you're going to pursue it beyond, reading the dialogue themselves, and if you wish to get involved in something a little more complex there is a work, a translation, Plato and Parmenides it's usually in libraries you might find F. M. Cornford's book, Plato and The Parmenides. And it's a running commentary written by a very bright man. This is towards the end of his life. He had written three or four other books on Plato, and Cornford will do. He's an excellent companion to have. I believe that we must have it here in the P.R.S. library.

On Parmenides himself - and this will be of interest to you - we have an excellent edition from Leonardo Taran, Princeton University Press no less, T-A-R-A-N. And his book on Parmenides is a translation. We have only 146 lines of Parmenides and they're in fragments. And I think longest fragment is I don't know somewhere around 40 to 50 lines. Somewhere in that order. It is interesting in view of the way in which I have exposed Plato's Parmenides to you that Parmenides' writing style was an imitation of Homer. That he used the hexameter. He used the very same kind of language and syntax that Homer would use, only instead of writing about Odysseus he wrote about the way of truth. He was concerned only with a sort of a non-political statement or what could be said and what cannot be said.

It's interesting that we have had the wonderful occurrence in our time of some of the most delightful beings. They seem to have resurfaced just to review the classical world. And W. K. C. Guthrie, his wonderful History of Greek Philosophy, it's now in four volumes, and hopefully before the 90th year is out, then we'll have the other two, and you'll have a complete history of Greek philosophy. Volume two deals with the pre-Socratic philosophy after Parmenides. And Guthrie, rightfully denotes that Parmenides is like this sword that cleaves the book of the pre-Socratics - those who came before, those who came after - because no one who had run into Parmenides or into his observations was the same. You can be resigned. You can be indifferent. Or whatever. But eventually when you've been bitten by Parmenides but the thoughts will occur to you that, gee, there's something there that I can't get rid of. There are some problems. There are some words. There are some definitions. There are some aspects of things that I myself have noticed. And of course, you're well on your way to observing life in the Parmenidean way.

Now, I think to rehabilitate Parmenides just for a second, I'd like to read you a few of his own words in translation and see a very curious dreamlike quality to his imagery. Quite distinctly different from the way in which Plato some 80 years later represented it.

"The mares that carry me as far as my heart ever aspires sped me on, when they had brought and sent me on the far-famed road of the god, which bears the man of knowledge over all cities, on that road was I borne [for bit it the wise steeds took me, straining at the chariot, and the maidens led the way. And the blazing axle in the axle-boxes made the sockets sing,] driven on both sides by the two whirling wheels, as the daughters of the Sun, having left the house of Night, hastened to bring me to the light, throwing back the veils from their heads with their hands. There are the gates of the paths of Night and Day, set between a lintel and a threshold of stone. They themselves, high in the sky, are blocked with great doors, of which avenging Justice holds the alternate keys. Her the maidens beguiled with soft words, and skillfully persuaded her to push back swiftly for them the bolted bar from the gates. The doors flew back and revealed the wide opening between their leaves, swinging in turn in their sockets the bronze-bound pivots made fast with dowels and rivets. Straight through them the maidens kept the chariot and horses on the highway. And the goddess welcomed me, graciously, took my right hand in hers, and addressed me with these words: Young man, who comest to my house companioned by immortal charioteers with the steeds that bear thee, I greet thee. No evil lot has sent thee to travel this road - and verily it is far from the footsteps of men - but Right and Justice. It is meet for thee to learn all things, both the unshaken heart of well-rounded truth and also what seems to mortals, in which is no true conviction. Nevertheless, these things too shalt thou learn, namely that what seems has assuredly to exist, being indeed everything."
[From A History of Greek Philosophy, Volume 2, by W. K. C. Guthrie, published by Cambridge University Press]

What a remarkable personage. And a contemporary, near contemporary, to Pythagoras, who presents very interestingly, another surface of the same images. If - and to continue just to end this recommending - if you get interested in the history, The Pelican History of Greece by A. R. Burn - a wonderful Spanish professor - Burn is very good. And this little pocket history of Greece can fill you in. There is no more coherent rise and fall of human nature and all of its ramifications than the history of Athens from the time of Solon to about the time of Alexander the Great. You can see it all. It's just incredible. And if you would like a first-hand observation of its essential nature other than Plato, other than the tragedies and so forth, Thucydides, a great Athenian general, wrote a history of the Peloponnesian War. And he says on the first page that the reason he's writing it is because human nature, being what it is - and we all know damn well what that is - it will all happen again. And that only by knowing the mistakes of the past can we sidestep these incredible patterns that seem to force man again and again and again into the molds of triumph and failure. Night and day. And that man somehow, some way, has got to discover a way, a key to unlock himself from the shackles of blind pattern habitual necessity, and wake up and get out and be free. And this is of course what all this is about.

Now next week we take a shift. This course of lectures is half over. Now we enter a new half. A new application. Where we've been stirring around with the classical world. We've been stirring around in Homer and it's parallel in Arthurian times. We've found that somehow from the Homeric matrix that thought sprung into flame about the time of Socrates, about the time of Parmenides. And in this short great burst of its career, by the time of Plato and Aristotle, had already seemingly run most of its course. So, we would like to know if the Arthurian mythological ethos is similar to the Homeric, was there ever a follow-up to that commensurate with classical Greece? And if so, perhaps we could learn a little closer where we are now. Well we'll look at that.

This book by Manly Hall, in The Orders of the Quest series on the topic of the Holy Grail. This might be of interest to you. I think it's only about five dollars and 75 cents or something like that. This will be the main topic next time. Manly Hall's Orders of the Quest. Especially The Holy Grail. Because we want to develop from Geoffrey of Monmouth, Malory and so forth, what happens if we internalize these cycles, these patterns? What happens in the internal pressure when the mind comes to bear and the sense of the sacred compels us to have a little bit deeper experience? And bringing reflection into play. And bring ideas into operation. And begin synthesizing for ourselves some new vision. What happens then? And that's what we'll be getting into next week.

Well I have some slides. And this is an idea that I think will [inaudible]. These will be, these will be exactly the same slides that we saw last week. And I think [inaudible] we had in the last two weeks it will be interesting to see how differently we look at them now. Let's see what they look like.

Ok we were talking about what is and is not. And [inaudible] line verdict.

I think the first place in the line of any questioning is just the simple what do you see? What do you see? How do you describe or characterize what you see? Do you talk in terms of recognizable forms? Do you talk in terms of just pure color? Or in terms of [inaudible] organization? Or in terms of associative feelings? How do you think and what is the very first level on which you feel capable of expressing?

Go to another one. Let these questions turn.

How do you see? What do you see? And more particularly, not only what it is that you observe but how in yourself do you begin to express their experience to yourself? Or that you're going in the [inaudible] someone else - me for instance - what do you see? [inaudible]

Now suppose this slide [inaudible] reflected on inner and mental space. What can you say? And try to be aware, try to catch yourself in trying to say.

Okay, let's try another one. The very same questions. What do you see? [inaudible] How does it sound? How does it feel from the initial [inaudible] and sensations to the next step and the next step and so forth. How do you actually begin responding to yourself. Try to articulate to yourself. Talk out loud to yourself. What did I see? Why is it I notice this versus that? Where does my eye move, how does my mind move?

Are there reverberations, that is, are there elements that are in play in our capacity to express what we see. Are there elements in that that are outside of our capacity to put into, if you say logical form. Not that we are drumming up an argument that one could use on this. But into something else [inaudible] you can feel it, play it for one's sense of something else. And how are we not [inaudible].

The form and capacity that we begin to recognize emerges from the context of [inaudible]. Does that factor exist as the form in the same way? Or does it have a different quality?

Let's use this. Let's use the I Ching [inaudible] a second. The form, the creative form, emerges here because of the receptivity of the background. Which one has the upper hand? Which one is more important? Do the form and the background present a polarity? Or does it seem to manifest a complementarity? Does the energy follow the form into [inaudible]? What is form anyway in here?

Ecstatic, ecstasis, a state outside of oneself, outside of possible, outside of probable possibilities. That's ecstatic. Does our mind stay take to impose form quickly on an experience or are we [inaudible] messages to articulate our observations spacing them with the experience of being conscious that we're seeing. Perhaps after that, that you're seeing something, and sometimes feel things.

[inaudible] constellations. What do you see? [inaudible] Why do we see the form so strongly, and why does the formless background seem so and what is the role of the background? You can see in just about the same way the form leaps out into consciousness and has forms in this case., swirls and lines. [inaudible]

What do you see? Let's add a second question. what do you think about what you are seeing? For yourself. The experience here is that the big [inaudible] shows things that are [inaudible]. And this is just the way in which [inaudible] occurs in experiential mode. There are some [inaudible] carry on from moment to moment, year to year and so forth. [inaudible] are the part of it, if we are aware of of it. The symbol is unknown at first experience. how do we [inaudible] in relation to that and not make it a quandary? That is how to we [inaudible] what we know what know with what we don't know. and [inaudible] because it doesn't mix into something that is [inaudible]. That's what we're dealing with.

And part of the enticement is transformation, transformation.

[inaudible]

The name? This is a [inaudible] Chinese [inaudible] coming into his space of [inaudible]
How, if we do not see this simply as a slide [inaudible] the example is something mysterious. How [inaudible] we see is a teardown of Parmenides, while trying to draw our attention to that which we perceive from an [inaudible] of mental composition inspires us [inaudible]. We get to a point where you begin to disintegrate out of [inaudible] our own intellectual capacity. You see the [inaudible] begin to transform into their opposite or other side. Their [inaudible] these kinds of considerations I think are really paramount.

[inaudible] the experience that we run [inaudible] in our times right now, 1980-81, is [inaudible] by considerations parallel [inaudible].

This of course, I urge you again, [inaudible]. It gives you [inaudible] the highest quality which you can have in a different way from the [inaudible]. In other words, instead of just looking at it and you can actually move around it and find your feelings. Find your presence. coming to you from your [inaudible] experience [inaudible] a photograph or a book [inaudible] it surrounds you.

[inaudible] Again, just simply the beginnings of our philosophy [inaudible] What do you see? How do you see it? Does it [inaudible] every mark. Some of these images are so primordial that they occur to us again and again even after they are gone. Something else is keyed in here besides [inaudible] organize something else after it.

What we want to do is to test ourselves in the process of discovery and know how we do it. That it's hard to become increasingly aware what this meaning is. People over her meaning as we talked about in the very first lecture of the series. Meaning is an phenomena at first. But aspiration and inspiration and their sight inspire to know or inspire to [inaudible]. We want to reach down with experience to comprehend. And we want to bring it into control and understanding. And in this process of breathing(?) life as it were, meaning arises. And meaning is in the shape of the pattern of discovery. So that rather than following a logical form we are following a Hermetic path.

[inaudible] In that a [inaudible] of your living and your experience with [inaudible] Wherein this kind of [inaudible] do you find that logical form to either [inaudible] to have the inspiration of the [inaudible] operating.

So, this [inaudible] first and second and third each time. The best way, hopefully, [inaudible] it will occur.

During [inaudible] what you see. Move with our capacity and [inaudible].

Let me try this for you with [inaudible] words and [inaudible] description for this Hermetic process. My eye enters this work with the [inaudible] that seem to put up to the window, which is the [inaudible]. And I know that because it is sequestered there [inaudible] the apex of [inaudible] which seems to me to be the hinge on which all formal capacities of the world rest. Then my eye naturally comes back to [inaudible] the vegetation goods almost indifferently [inaudible] trees. And fix onto the tree behind the barn. And if [inaudible] tearing up the branches. My eyes see the branches, but my feelings simply have become aware of the [inaudible]. And I begin to get a good deal stronger in my feeling tone then simply the excursion of my eye is perception. And once I have these gray clouds and feeling tones I come down in feeling from those clouds and fall in feeling like snow. And I fly off the roof where I started onto these other roofs and staring down at a beautiful 30-degree sloping, 60-degree sloping to the ground. And while I'm doing that, I'm aware that I'm participating in very [inaudible] triangular motions and not just looking at a [inaudible]. I could go on from there. That should give you some idea [inaudible] of what happens in the process [inaudible].

Just move around with the experience. Try to become conscious of what is it that you are doing. [inaudible] and express it. And remember the expressions. The [inaudible] and
imagination, [inaudible] reverberates through some meaning. And the meaning [inaudible] at least temporarily into an idea.

Represented here [inaudible] haphazard sketch at the last minute [inaudible]sophisticated painting. A remarkable philosophical experience in penetration of heaven and earth, through the structure of man and time [inaudible]. The tree of life reaching up into the grey clouds [inaudible] presence of being. And like black lightening, like the reverse [inaudible] lightening bringing it back down to the earth. [inaudible] structure.

Anyway, that's the [inaudible] And we'll talk about the Holy Grail. [inaudible] wonderful painting of [inaudible].

I don't know if you can stand it but [inaudible] wonderful painting of [inaudible] is very much like the [inaudible]. It's not [inaudible] alike but perhaps by [inaudible]

Well, we will see how that works next week.

Thanks very much.

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