Introduction to a Vision of the Possibility of Religious Meaning

Today we require a methodical introduction to that vision of the world outside of which religious vocabulary is meaningless.

In other words, we need what amounts to a "pre-religious" vision of the world, into which religion can then be possibly fitted. 

Why do we need that, Bob?

Shut up Dupree. You're out of your element.

Isn't such a vision already religious? No, not necessarily. For example, there is nature mysticism, nor did Buddha need no steenking deity. Likewise Plotinus, who, come to think of it, had an excellent preconceptual paradigm that could later be re-purposed for Christianity by the likes of St. Augustine.

Plotinus is more than  an episode in our passage from Plato to the Fathers. In him we find the supreme exponent of an abiding element in what we might call "mystical philosophy." He represents man's inherent desire to return to heaven at its purest and most ineffable (Andrew Louth).

Here again, the use of the term "heaven" already hints at a religious vision. Instead, what if we focus on the inherent desire, which is obviously vertical and unique to man? Unless one is prejudiced against religion, or simply came into the world with what amounts to vertical autism, we can all agree that this restless desire exists, for we can find no culture in which it is absent. 

This is what we call (↑).

True, in the past century or more there have been cultures that have systematically attempted to suppress, deny, and/or redirect (↑), most obviously in communism and Nazism, but also increasingly in our own culture. Indeed, it is one of the defining differences in our uncivil war, as illustrated in the following graph:

The gap between the two is a measure of the tension between us and them -- or between upright (↑) folk and downwrong (⇆) folkers. 

Plotinus at once represents a convergence of "eight hundred years of Greek speculation," from which "issues a new current destined to fertilize" -- we can't help saying vertilize -- "minds as different as those of Augustine and Boethius, Dante and Meister Eckhart, Coleridge, Bergson and T.S. Eliot," vertilized visionaries one and all.

So, let's stipulate that the religious vocabulary to which the Aphorist alludes is necessarily meaningless in the absence of (↑). And even then, the question comes down to the ontological status of (↑) -- both whether it, and the object to which it points, are Real.

Are they?

Too soon to tell. At this point were still outlining our methodological introduction. Could be that we are enclosed in immanence, so (↑) is just circular -- an existential tautology, so to speak. It doesn't rhyme with reality but just stutters and stammers with opinions about it.

If that's the case, then we have to disregard the experiential visions of thousands of mystics who have journeyed to the toppermost of the poppermost and back. Of course, they could be delusional or deceptive, liar or lunatics.

So, who you gonna believe? The corner atheist or the dazzlingly self-evident testimony of your own experience?

Mysticism is the empiricism of transcendent knowledge.

The objectivity of mystical experience cannot be demonstrated. Just like that of any experience.

The mystic is the only one who is seriously ambitious. 

Experience. What is that? What is it like? It's not like anything, for there is nothing to which it can be compared, and anything to which we compare it presumes its existence.

So, the larger question is, is experience sealed in the absurcularity of immanence -- (⇆) -- or does it furnish a kind of window into transcendence?

While thinking about that, let's sketch Plotinus' vision and see where it leads. I mean, we know it leads down to such vertical luminaries as Dante, Eliot, and Eckhart, but let's not prejudge the case. There are rules. 

Plotinus' hierarchy is expressed in terms of three principles.... Beginning with the highest, these are the One or the Good; Intelligence, nous; and Soul, psyche. Soul is the level of life as we know it, the realm of sense-perception.... Beyond this, there is the more unified realm of Intelligence, nous.

Let's try to render this in a more abstract and unsaturated form: for the One, let us call it O; for the soul, let us call it (¶); and for intellection -- the link between -- let us call it (↑). 

Turns out we can say a great deal with just these three pneumaticons. Equally important, there is a great deal we can never say if we try to exclude any one of them up front. 

For example, with the preconceptual principle of (↑), "knower and known are one" -- any knower and any known, for knowledge per se is already transcendent; to merely affirm that man is a knower is already to know a great deal indeed. 

Let's talk about O. What is the least we can we say of it? It must be "absolutely simple, beyond any duality whatsoever." In this context, simple does not mean "simplistic," rather, composed of no parts, eternally abiding in itself. 

It is the One, because beyond duality; it is the Good, because it has no need of anything else. It is the source of all, it is beyond being. Nothing can be affirmed of the One: "we must be patient with language.... everywhere we must read so to speak."

Now, assuming transcendence, it seems that (↑) is really (↕), which implies the immanent drive at one end, the transcendental attractor at the other; for our three terms -- O, (↕), and (¶) --

are related by processes Plotinus calls emanation and return. Intelligence emanates from the One, and Soul from Intelligence: out of the utterly simple there comes multiplicity, and that multiplicity is further diversified and broken up at the level of discursive understanding. 

This process of emanation is a process of "overflowing," the potent simplicity of the One "overflows" into Intelligence, and Intelligence overflows into the soul. Emanation is met by return. Emanation is the One's unfolding its simplicity: Return is the Good's drawing everything to itself. Everything strives for the Good, longs to return to the Good: and this is Return.

Not a bad start to the vision we're seeking. Nor is it difficult to Bobtize this vision. The question is whether it can be baptized. I think so, but that's enough for this morning.