https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=Bl0hwihZ9v8

Welcome to Cultivating Wisdom with John Vervecki. So you’re just joining us for this first time. We’ve been in community together and in practice together since I believe March or maybe early April. And what we’ve done is we’ve done an extensive course drawn on the Asiatic wisdom traditions of Buddhism and Taoism, especially Buddhism. And we’ve done an entire course on Vipassana meditation, metacontemplation, Parajna practice of non-duality, flowing practices, moving practices, Qigong practices, etc. So if you’re joining us for the first time, please find the link in the description to this video and go and do Lesson 1, Lesson 2, Lesson 3, work your way through. You’re welcome to keep joining us. A while back we finished drawing from the Eastern traditions and we’ve turned to draw from the Western wisdom traditions. We’ve gone through Epicureanism and Stoicism and we’re into Neoplatonism. You can also find links for the Cultivating Wisdom course. And you’re welcome to start there too. And the idea is to give you a rich repertoire from which you can cultivate a viable and ecology of practices while situating it within a vibrant and hopefully vetting community. And there is such a community. We have a Discord server in which you can join with other people who are regularly doing all of these practices and figuring out ways in good fellowship together of how to practice them together, how to create, curate, and correct practices and ecologies of practice in a mutually supporting and mutually aspiring fashion. You’ll find links to the Discord server within this video. So there’s a lot of resources there for you to make use of. Now today what we’re going to do, we’re going to do this a few more times. We do this Saturday mornings at 10 a.m. Eastern. Today what we’re going to do is what we normally do, we’re going to first sit, we’ll begin with a chant, then we’ll go into a silent sit, and then we’ll switch cameras and I’ll go to the board and we’ll have the Logos talk and we’ll finish the background of Alia Sofia of Neoplatonism and then we will begin with one of the practices hopefully today. So, just sorry, I’m just going to try and get rid of that barking noise. Alright, so that’s our practice for today. So please get yourself into a comfortable position. Please set your phones on do not disturb. We will begin together when I say begin and as I said we will begin with the chanting. And if you haven’t seen us do the chanting, just try your best. This is not a standard of sort of a harsh perfectionism, this is a standard of virtuous friendship. So if you’re just joining us, just try your best and when we go into the meditation, just follow your breath in and out and as you learn more, as you go through the course, you’ll be able to deepen and enrich this practice and you’ll find it more transformatively valuable to you. Alright, so we’re all going to begin together when I say begin. Begin. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Begin your silence set. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Om. Slowly come out of your practice, trying as best to integrate what you cultivated in your practice with your everyday consciousness, cognition, character and community tasks, perhaps by reciting the five promises to yourself. All right. Let’s move to the whiteboard. All right. So we have been looking at the philosophical background for neoplatonism. And what have we taken from Plato? We’ve taken from Plato the notion of the tripartite psyche, and we got the notion of getting an inner justice within that affords a deeper realization throughout. And those reinforce each other in the ascent out of the cave, the anagogia. We noted that this, what is it to become aware of these real patterns? This is Plato’s idea of the idos, the forms. These are sort of power patterns, principles, paradigms. You draw those all together. This is that by which things are, by which they have their structural functional organization, and by which they are known. And those two are deeply non-logically identical to each other. The intelligibility of being and being as such are completely interpenetrating. And then the idea is what we want to do is we want to bring about that anagogic realization of the forms without and then the forms within in a resonating ascension. And the idea is this will satisfy two of our deepest longings, which is a way of understanding what our meta drives are, our longing for inner peace, inner fullness, inner wholeness, and our longing to be in touch with what is most real, what ultimately concerns us, to use Tillich’s phrase. We then took a look at what does Neoplatonism take from Aristotelianism, because Neoplatonism is the grand unified field theory of Western spirituality. It is the fundamental cultural cognitive grammar of all Western spirituality and wisdom tradition. What does it take from Aristotle? It takes the idea of the conformity theory, that we really know something when we know it by being it, by taking on its structural functional organization, by taking on its logos. I’m just going to use that word. Remember logos is simultaneously a principle and a process. It’s how process is gathered into principle and how principle is expressed in process. And so what we do is we take on the logos of something, we internalize it so that we can realize it, so that we can internalize it, so that we can realize it, so that we can internalize it, so we can realize it. And you see how the anagogic notion and the Aristotelian notion of conformity, not knowing by conformity, sharing the idos conform, idos, comes in here. So this participatory knowing is a way in which we are fundamentally transforming the process of co-identification. So that’s a very powerful idea. And there’s of course a lot in Plato and Aristotle that I have to leave off, but I’m just zeroing in on what we need for our practice. What does Neoplatonism take from the Stoics? And the Stoics are the high school and Neoplatonism is the university, so they take a lot from the Stoics as you can imagine. All right, so they take from the Stoics this notion of internalization, knowing by internalizing something, being it, and like I said, they put this into the anagogic resonance between internalization and realization, back and forth, grasping the real patterns and then conforming to them by internalizing them, etc. The Stoics have this part of it and then the Neoplatonists put it into this bigger process, although it’s implicit within Stoicism. Obviously from the Stoics they get this very powerful notion of self-discipline. And so the Neoplatonists divide virtue into two kinds. They divide it into what they call the civic virtues and basically this is what you have to be in order to become a person. And so the idea here is Stoicism gives us the way to become rational moral agents. That’s what a person is, a rational moral agent. And so Stoicism gives us this. And you have to do this first. And then that leads to what they call the purification virtues. Now that word is dangerous because of purity codes and etc. What they mean by that is these are the virtues that afford this, that afford anagogy. So you’ll see when we do one of the practices today why they have this model of purification. But I don’t want to use that term. I don’t think it’s inaccurate or unfair to them. I think it’s because we have so many negative associations around purity codes. I think perhaps we want to put that aside. So we have the civic virtues and then what I think, and they talk about it this way too, anagogy. We have the anagogy virtues, the virtues that afford us engaging in the platonic process of anagogy. What else do the Neoplatonists? So we’ve done this. We’ve learned this. We’ve learned this. We’ve got this. And you can’t, and the Neoplatonists are really, really strong about this. And this is a critique of a lot of, I don’t know what to call it, New Age spirituality. You should not be practicing this unless you have deeply cultivated this. Unless you’ve gone through primary school and high school, you should not be in university. And trying to separate this from this and even the Epicurean disciplining of desire and pleasure is, according to the Neoplatonists, and I agree with them, I think a very significant mistake. What else do they take from the Stoics? Well, they take this notion that we were just talking about a few minutes ago, the notion of the Logos, and we talked about that a lot when we talked about the Stoics. The Logos is a big part of what’s going on in Neoplatonism. And so, remember, we talked about this as, right, how you have this interdependence between a principle and a process. The principle constrains, structures the process, the process causes, gives birth to, flows into the principle, fills it out, etc. And we’ve talked about the Logos. So you can think about it this way. The Logos means something like a self-gathering order, right, and a self-ordered gathering. And of course, I’m using this deliberately to show you two sides of the same thing. And this is this notion of Logos and it’s behind our, right, it’s, again, it is that which makes conformity possible because it is the intelligibility of beings, the being, but also the way in which beings come into a self-gathered order and a self-ordered gathering. And so you have, we’ve talked about a lot of this before, so I’m just going over that. And then in connection with the Logos, and we did this practice, you have the scale of nature. We did that practice where you sit like a stone and then you sit like a poppy and then you sit like an ocean and then you sit like a sage. And what’s going on here is the level of Hexis, which is the level of stones, and then the level of Fuses, this is the level of living things, like plants and stuff like that. And then we have the level of Suke, these are the self-moving things, like animals. And then at top, this is the scale of nature, I’ll just write that out. At the very top we have Nus and this is the level of intelligibility, where you get the musicality of being. Okay, and so we did that exercise, right, and so this is the scale of nature. And what the Neoplatonists think is that you can use this scale of nature as a scaffold for Anagagae. You can use the scale of nature as a scaffold for Anagagae. So when we do the first Neoplatonic practice today, you’re going to see it having elements from Epicureanism, from Stoicism, and of course also bringing in a lot of these Neoplatonic ideas and the Aristotelian Conformity theory. All right, so basically the way you get Neoplatonism is you take Aristotelian Conformity theory, the Platonic notion of Anagagae, the Stoic notion of Logos, and the scale of nature, and the scale of nature is a scaffold for Anagagae. And what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to ultimately engage in participating and participating in. So it’s interesting, and some of the authors in translations play with this. We have to use this word in both a transitive and an intransitive sense, participation. Participate as something you’re doing, but participation as something you’re undergoing, because we have to capture both sides in participation. So what are you participating? Remember when I say that, I mean it in both ways. Well what you’re participating is this idea. You are enacting, but also instantiating, you’re actualizing this process, the universal process of participation. What’s that idea? Well it’s that everything, so down here you have pure potentiality, and if you think, oh what a strange abstract idea, who would ever think that? We think it. Modern quantum mechanics, at the bottom is pure potential, pure possibility, and out of that the particles, the particular things emerge. And then what you get is an emergence. You get emergence upward. What do you get? You get particular things emerging, and then they self-organize and self-coalesce into molecules and into life and into self-moving things and then into self-aware things, and that’s how you’re here. Emergence. And what you see is an emergence upward of things coming out of possibility and moving towards an increasing integration, an increasing determination, an increasing oneness. So the particles into molecules, into living things, into self-moving, self-aware things, into those aspects of reality that are only disclosed to us when that whole movement upward, that emergence upward that affords our self-transcendence into a kind of realization of what’s at the top, and we’ve talked about this, the one. So there’s the emergence of everything towards the one. This is all of the processes gathering into, logos, gathering into order, gathering into oneness, but simultaneously there’s emanation. Because all of these principles, this is the form of the forms. This is all of the way, these are all the laws of the possibilities of being that are there, and they are constraining how the emergence. Now, I have to describe it to you as if it’s two things, but it’s not. This is the whole point of dialectic, which comes from through the logos, is to realize the non-logical identity of this. Everything is emerging towards, and notice what’s happening. Things are coming into their individual oneness, and then they’re joining it. And what we’re seeing is more, and we get this increasing sense of unity, of oneness, but at the same time, well, what’s the field in which all of that is happening? There is some structuring. Like I said, there’s the laws of being, and some of those, of course, are the laws of space and time and matter that physics discovers, but there’s also the laws of thought and logic that we discover in reflection, etc. These are happening completely bottom up and top down, and your cognition is exactly like that. We’ve talked about how you have bottom up from perception, and then top down from conception, from pre-hending, comprehending, apprehending, right, all the hending words, pre-hending words. This is also you in microcosm. This is macrocosm, and you are the microcosm, and you can realize it in your mind. You can realize it in your mind. You can feel and experience and ultimately be the self-transcendence, but right, the self-transcendence towards moreness, fullness, but you can also experience how you are here now, your suchness, moreness, suchness, moreness, suchness, right? This is taking you towards the one that is beyond all things. This takes you towards and helps you realize the unique individuation, the oneness in everything. Everything is one. This is one. This is one, but they’re not the same, but they’re the same in their wanting, right? What you’re getting is when you move down, you realize the power of this. Power means real potential, right? Real structure and real order, because the multiplicity reveals the powder, right? The emanation reveals the power that was here. The return gives you the peace of integration. You get the realization of the power. You get the realization of the peace of pure being. In fact, the Neoplatonists say that the one is actually beyond being, because it’s what makes being possible. What we want to do is we want to engage in individual dialectic practices that have us enact this, enact it, not think about it, not theorize about it, but enact it, because according to the Neoplatonists, this is what we ultimately are doing in anagogy. As we do anagogy, we are doing this. We are enacting the fundamental logos of reality. This is the deepest kind of realization. The deepest kind of realization. We’re going to start. That’s the theoretical background. That’s the philosophia. You can see Neoplatonism in terms of four interpenetrating, interaffording, interconstraining kinds of practices. There’s theoria, and they all have theos in them, which is the word for God, but don’t get hung up on that, especially if like me, you’re a non-theist. Think of the God as what’s ultimately real. Sacredly real to you. Transformatively real to you. Theoria. You’ve heard this before. These are the contemplative practices. We’re going to do one today. And then you have … Maybe I should do it this way. Yeah, let’s do it this way. It’s a very Neoplatonic thing to do. You have theoria, and then you have theologia, and you think, oh no, theology. I don’t believe in theology. Neither do I. If you want to think about it that way, I’m not that interested in it. Some theologians are, like Paul Tillich and others, because this, again, doesn’t ultimately have to do with talking about the gods. It has to talk about the sacred symbolon, the sacred joining together of the intelligibility and being. This is the kind of philosophia that is directed towards our transformative self-transcendence. That’s what it means. It doesn’t mean sitting around exchanging propositions about whether or not the arguments for the existence of God are workable or not. Okay. Now there’s the one we’re going to talk a lot about next time, theurgia. This is enacting the gods, and this is to move beyond contemplating and transforming. This is to actually realize, to instantiate. These are all the ritual enactments. You have been doing some of these practices already. The way Lexio Divina. This is where you’re invoking. You’re invoking. You’re not just representing. You’re not just feeling. You’re invoking it. You’re realizing it. You’re instantiating it. You’re enacting it. You’re embodying it. You’re in minding it. You’re doing this in Lexio Divina. You’re doing this in philosophical fellowship when we are invoking the presence of the sage. Whenever we’re invoking and presencing something so we can participate in it in a transformative fashion, that’s theurgia. This of course has degenerated over time into kind of a popular culture practice of magic and all kinds of things. That’s like sort of a very degenerate form of that. And then these are all interpenetrating. And then I want you to see this as like a pyramid coming to an apex. At the top of it is theosis. This is still in Eastern Christianity, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, this is their word for salvation. Salvation means to save or to heal. This literally means to become God. And most of us go, what? That sounds so hubristic. This is, what theosis is, is the noninflationary, non-egocentric, full participation in what’s ultimately real. Instead of thinking about it, this is the fullest possible realization of the deepest possible patterns of reality. That’s theosis. Okay, so we’re going to talk about a practice. I’m going to go through it and you’re going to see all the elements of the traditions in this practice. And it’s drawn and it has to be reconstructed like Bizzare did from sort of elements of what we see in Stoicism, what we see in modern, you know, Neoplatonic Christianity, Eastern Orthodox. But this is a, so I’ll describe it and then when we sit down, I’ll take you through, I’ll talk you through the practice. Okay, so this is a practice of theoria. And you’ll see elements here, you’ll see elements here, like I said, of Epicureanism and Stoicism. You’ll see elements of the view from above, using the scale of nature as a scaffolding of anagogae. Remember that was the invoking, see there’s an element of theurgia here, invoking the logos. Okay, so the first stage of this is recollection, recollecting. And this is a big idea from Plato and this has two senses in it. It means to collect together, so gathering together, there’s the logos, gathering together. But it also has this other sense of remembering. And Plato has a sense here, it’s a special kind of remembering, it’s anamnesis. We know this word amnesia, the kind of forgetting in which you’ve lost your sense of identity, which is your knowing by being. So what you’re doing is you’re remembering, but it’s not just remembering an old fact, this kind of bridges between remembering something old and discovering something new, because what you’re doing is you’re recovering your true being. So discovering, but also remembering. What that means is you are coming into a way of inhabiting your mind, your body, and your world that best affords the anagogic satisfaction of your deepest longings of inner peace and outer connection to what is most real, the kind of real empowerment. So what we’re going to do is you’re going to recollect your inner sight. And that obviously plays on the word insight, a number of epistemic insight. So what I’ll have you do is I’ll have you sit, you’ll get into your position, I’ll have you experience all five of your senses, and then you’re going to, your sense of sight is a way of being aware, your sense of touch, your taste, even if you’re just looking at the inside of your eyelids. And then what you’re going to do is you’re going to recollect and you’re going to come into your, not the dispersed awareness in each sense, but the common awareness. You’re just going to become, and this is the purification, you’re going to become aware of your awareness. And then you’re going to move beyond the ways we still divide our awareness, beyond the division between your inner awareness and outer awareness. And you know about this because we talked about this with prajna, beyond the inner and outer awareness. And then you’re going to move also beyond how we divide it up into top-down prehension, conception, bottom-up sensual perception. You know this, you did this in savoring. You’re going to move beyond the way it’s happening to you and the way you’re directing it and you’re going to move into full participation. So, neither in, so this is the purification. You gather it, awareness of awareness, beyond inner and outer, beyond bottom-up and top-down. So you’re into deeply savoring, notice the epicureans, your awareness. That’s stage one. I’ll talk you through these when we do this practice. We probably won’t get much time for questions today, so, because I want to give you this practice. So hopefully we’ll have more time for questions next time. Second thing, so the first is recollecting the inner sight. The next is realization and remember we need to play on both senses of this word, realization of the logos. And what I’m going to have you do is in this pure awareness, purified is maybe better, awareness, you realize that there is something that is empowering. Your awareness is emerging from what you know not what. You don’t make your awareness, it emerges for you. There’s the bottom-up, right? But, so you are being realized by the logos, made real. But at the same time, you are actualizing and in that way you’re a microcosm for the macrocosm of the universe. You’re also realizing you have this capacity to make sense, right? And so you are being realized as you realize the logos. You’re being realized by the logos as you’re realizing how your awareness has this capacity to make sense, to disclose intelligibility. Rising to the one, this is the anodotic accent. And you know this already. I, in fact, that’s how it’s more traditionally put. I like to do this, rise and play on these words, rising to one. In one sense this is rising towards the run and this is also a verb, rising to one, as wanting is a verb. So, if that helps, that helps me, I play on words. And this is where we go through. We go through the scala natura, the scale of nature, as a way of scaffolding anagogy. We realize within and without, so within this pure awareness there is a self-sustaining, right? And we’re realizing the logos and that is in deep conformity with how there is an aspect of reality that is self-sustaining. And then we move to how it’s the self-organizing vitality. So we start with the self-sustaining stability, like the stones, the self-organizing vitality, like the living things, the self-presencing musicality, the flowing intelligibility, right? Like things that are psychological, suke. And then we move to that self-transcending ineffability. We’ve done this. This is the, we’re like, that’s why that process, that meditative, stoic meditation, that stoic contemplation practice, as I said, was abridging. Okay, so then we do that. We’re rising to one. And then the return. Okay, so returning. Okay? Returning is dialectic in nature. Because you are participating in how everything is participating. You are simultaneously returning to the one in emergence. And you’re simultaneously returning to world, and again, world as a verb and a noun. And this is the emanation. This is going out of the cave. This is returning back into the cave in order to try and enlighten the world. Okay? So, here you experience this sort of stereoscopic superimposition, stereoscopic fusion of the opening to moreness. And see how this is like prajna? And then, right? The coming into, right? The horizon of transcendence into the deepest home of imminence. The moreness into the suchness, the suchness into the moreness. The mystery of moreness and the mystery of suchness. The fact that we can’t capture this ultimate unity beyond all things, and also we can’t categorize the absolute unique oneness of every individual thing. We’re talking about a oneness that is beyond the one of the all and the one of the each. So, we’re going to go through this whole process together. So, we’re going to switch cameras again. And we’re going to go through this practice. And like I said, we will not have time for questions this time. I apologize for that. Please submit your questions. Jason and Amar will store them, and we will be able to address them next time. We’re trying to get through the course for you guys. Okay, so we’re going to move back here. I’m going to talk you through the practice. So, take a moment, please. Take a moment and find your… We don’t have a lot of time, so as succinctly as possible, get your core for, find your center, find your root, find your flow and your focus. So, I’ll be quiet for about a minute or two, and then I will take you through this practice. I will take you through the theory. Okay. Okay, come into your self-awareness. You’ve already cultivated with finding your core for. Now, let’s go through the individual senses. Your eyes are closed, but you can still see. Perhaps you’re just seeing darkness, the inside of your eyelids. See. Experience seeing. It’s a kind of awareness. Now, shift to touch. Feeling your legs touching the ground, perhaps your fingers touching each other and how you’re holding your hands for your meditation. Feel touch. Notice you are aware again, but this is a different kind of awareness. You’re aware of your body. You’re aware of your body. You’re aware of your body. Feel again, but this is a different kind of awareness. Now, hearing. Listen. Now, taste. All you can probably taste right now is just the inside of your mouth. That’s fine. Taste. Now, smell. Just smell. You’re breathing through your nose. You can smell. Now, more rapidly. Sight. Touch. Hearing. Taste. Smell. You have that capacity to move your awareness around, but throughout all of it, you have awareness. Now, turn that capacity, gather it together. Just be aware of your awareness. You’re purifying your awareness. Pure awareness of awareness. Now, let’s purify it more. This awareness is neither your inner awareness nor your outer awareness. It’s beyond and includes both. So, beyond, inner and outer awareness. Purify it more. This is not just a perceptual awareness. It’s not all the ways you perceive or sense. It’s also your conceptual awareness, how you prehand, how you pick up on all the patterns of the world. It’s beyond perceptual. It’s beyond and includes perceptual awareness. It’s beyond and includes perceptual awareness. It’s beyond perceptual. It’s beyond perceptual. It’s beyond and includes perceptual and conceptual awareness. Purify your awareness. Beyond in and out. Beyond bottom-up perception. Beyond top-down conception. Pure awareness. Let’s continue. So, that’s recollecting our inner sight. So, that’s recollecting our inner sight. Our pure awareness. Now, we’re going to realize the logos. Your awareness is emerging. Your awareness is emerging. It’s constantly emerging. It’s constantly happening. You’re being realized, actualized by the logos. You’re not making it. It’s emerging. You participate in it. You’re not just passive. You’re top-down. You realize in awareness. So, you’re realizing the logos. So, you’re realizing the logos. As the logos is realizing you in pure awareness, but now also pure being. in pure awareness, but now also pure being. Now, rising to one. Now, rising to one. Feel within the logos. Feel within the logos. Self-sustaining stability. Self-sustaining stability. Equally within and without. Equally bottom-up and top-down. Realize the self-organizing vitality. Realize the self-organizing vitality. Realize the self-groups. Realize the group. Realize the self-presencing musicality, the flowing intelligibility. Pass into pure silence. This is nothing you can know by thinking. You can only know it by pure being. The oneness. Now returning. Feel the upward movement towards more-ness. The more oneness. But equally, the downward suchness of each individual one, each individual thing. Returning to one. Returning to world. Down. The way up and the way down are the same way. Slowly come out of this practice, trying as best you can to integrate this practice with your everyday consciousness, cognition, character, and communitas. I recommend that you, of course, do this at taking more time when you do it on your own. Take a lot longer to set up the core four. Take a lot longer in each one of the steps. Recollecting the inner sight, which is this purification of awareness process, and realizing the logos, then rising through the scale of nature, which we’ve already done before. Rising to one, and then returning. Returning to one and returning to world. So as I said, we don’t have much time. We don’t have any time for questions today. I didn’t foresee that, so I tried to forewarn you. So as I said, I will try and make space next time for more questions. Next time, we’re going to move into the practice of theurgia. I’ll remind you of the theurgic practices that I’ve already taught you within the overall ecology of practices. And then we’ll take up some new ones. And then we’re moving towards the completion of the wisdom of Aipatia. I want to thank you for joining and for this wonderful community. I want to thank my dear friend, Atekna Mae Jamar, my beloved son, Jason, who is behind the scenes making a lot of this happen. Please subscribe to this channel to be notified of the next video. Also follow me on Twitter for any updates to these streams. Please help others who might benefit from this series. I think recovering our own Western wisdom tradition and putting it into loving dialogue with what we can learn from the Eastern traditions, wisdom traditions, is our best chance. It’s our best chance. Please join the Discord server to chat with others, to practice all of these, well, the entire ecology. The Discord server is this amazing community where they’re sitting and they’re meditating, they’re in contemplation, doing lexio divina, trying to begin philosophical fellowship. Hopefully they’ll take up some of these neoplatonic practices. So please join the Discord server. You’ll find a vital and vibrant community that will help you to deepen this practice, as I mentioned at the very beginning of our session today together. So everyone, remember that continuity of practice is more important than sheer quantity of practice. Don’t hold yourself to a standard of harsh perfectionism. You’ll never achieve it. You’ll only kill yourself against the rock of eternity. Instead, hold yourself to a standard of virtuous friendship because of everything we have, what we most have is each other. There is no friend, no ally, no true companion on the path better than your own mind and body. Be lamps unto yourself and to each other. Take good care, everyone. I’ll see you next Saturday at 10 a.m. Eastern Time.