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The Monistic Theory
by Nhân Tử Nguyễn Văn Thọ
TOC |
Preface | Chapters:
1 2
3 4
5 6
7 8
9
10 11 12
13 14
15 16
17 18
19
Chapter 1
The Monistic
Theory
The Oriental Monistic Theory, with its
counterpart, the Western Emanation Theory, can be considered as a
perennial philosophy. It is truly the connecting link between religions
and philosophies of East and West, serving as foundation to Hinduism,
Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism as well as to many Western occult
societies and esoteric schools such as Kabbalah, Freemasonry,
Rosicrucianism, Alchemy and Theosophy. It can be found complete or
incomplete in the writings of past and present mystics of all religions.
Narrated in diverse mythologies, it was conveyed in symbols and
monuments of past civilizations, suggested in numerology, veiled under
allegories and metaphors of diverse literatures.
Though discovered independently, by
different peoples living in different geographical, historical, cultural
and linguistic contexts, it presents itself majestically identical and
unchanged through time and space, as the main tradition of humanity, and
as the universal, perennial and unadulterated truth, void of biases and
distortions.
An earnest study of this theory will
enlighten us about theogony, cosmogony, man's nature and destiny, and
the meaning of the universe and human life.
The main features of the Monistic Theory
can be presented as follows:
This world is not created "ex nihilo",
but emanates from one Principle, from one Essence. In other
words, this word proceeds from One Principle, by emanation and by
division. This Principle has two aspects:
1. The non-manifest aspect: (The
"before the world appearance aspect"), or "Xian tian" (Tiên Thiên),
according to Oriental philosophers).
The Principle was then indifferentiated,
homogenous, ineffable, infinite. It was then designated under various
names: Wu-Ji (Vô Cực), Sunyata, Bhutatathata, the Universal Substance,
Parabraham, En-Sof (AinSoph), Nothing, the Void, the Primordial Chaos -
not in the sense of disorder, but in the sense of the Cosmic Energy not
yet manifested in the myriad of beings.
2. The manifest aspect: (The "after
the world appearance aspect") or "Hou tian" (Hậu Thiên), according to
Oriental philosophers.)
From this Principle, made manifest,
proceeded everything by successive emanations, and division.
After this 'so-called' creation, the
Principle, the One, was veiled by the multiplicity of phenomena; but It
was and is always pervasive, omnipresent.
It is then designated under various names:
It was called Substance, or Natura Naturans by Spinoza, 'Élan Vital' by
Bergson, Logos by Heraclitus, Nous by Plotinus, Apeiron by Anaximander,
Tai-Ji (Thái Cực) by theYi-Ching (Dịch Kinh), Tagatha or Butatathata
(Zhen Ru, Chân Như) by Buddhists, The Tao by Taoists, the Over Soul, the
Cosmic Mind, the World Stuff, the Neutral Stuff, the Self, the Ultimate
Reality, the True Self, the Supra-Essence, the All- Pervasive, the
Mysterium tremendum and fascinosum, the Summum Bonum, the Coincidentia
Oppositorum, the Godhead by Western philosophers and mystics, God,
Brahman, Atman, Osiris, Ammon-Ra, Ahura-Mazda, Jehovah, Zeus,
Jupiter,Allah, etc. As Pitirim A. Sorokin pointed out, these names and
the visible symbols of the mainly invisible Ultimate Reality or of the
Supreme Value are but a mere"finger pointing at it", in no way identical
with it. Nor can any of these names or symbols claim monopolistic
privilege of being the true name or symbol of the true Reality-Value.
They are not God's own names but our human terms superimposed upon the
Ultimate Reality, each term coined in accordance with the linguistic,
social, cultural and personal properties of a respective social group or
person.
Two aspects of
the world
The monistic theory sustains that the
world is a whole which has two aspects:
The Eternal aspect (Sub specie
aeternitatis). This aspect shows the One, the Essence, the Unchanginess,
the Eternal, the Immortal.
The Temporal aspect (Sub specie
temporis). This aspect shows the Multiple, the Differentiated, the
Phenomenal, the Ever-changing, the Temporal, the Transient and the
Mortal.
As the One is above all the opposites, all
the polar diversities, it is the Absolute, the Imperishable, the
Immortal, the Eternal.
As for the myriad external forms of this
One, they are only transitory modes of this Principle, subject to the
rhythmical law of appearance and disappearance, of birth and death.
Oriental philosophers assert that everything that has names, forms,
colors is transitory and perishable.
The following diagram best illustrates
these two aspects, or realms, or kingdoms:
The Temporal Realm and
The Eternal Realm
The Inner Circle or Circle #1 stands for
The One, the Ineffable, the Eternal, the Immortal (The Kingdom of God;
God; Logos; the Apeiron, the Essence of the World, etc.)
The Outer or the Circle #2 represents the
Multiple, the Mortal and the Phenomenal Realm.
If one can reach the Circle #1, one is
then saved, or attain one's Atonement (At-one-ment), or Nirvana.
The Circle #2 is limited on one side by
the Spirit, and on the other side by the Matter. There is a double
movement in this circle. If we go out, it is called Extroversion, or
Fall, or materialization; the result of it is Death. If we go in, it is
called Conversion, Introversion, Ascent, Spiritualisation, Regeneration
or Resurrection. The result of it is Life, or Immortal life.
The first kingdom, being the kernel
of everything, is unchangeable, but moves and steers everything in the
phenomenal realm.
The second kingdom is the kingdom
of the phenomenal world, conditioned by space and time, characterized by
incessant changes, by a perpetual flux and reflux, by Evolution (egress
from the Principle) and by Involution (Regress to the Principle). The
Evolution or the Extroversion process departs from Spirit to Matter,
while the Involution or Introversion process begins from Matter to end
in Spirit and in the Principle. In other words, we can trace the
movement of Spirit, from Being to Matter and from Matter to Being. The
former is called Incarnation, Fall, Humanization, Materialization, while
the latter can be termed as ascent, spiritualisation, divinization. In
between the two opposite movements are located death and resurrection or
regeneration.
To use the words of the Revelation, we can
say that this world changes from Alpha to Omega by cyclical
transformations. Thus all the phenomenal changes are intended to realize
Perfection. This inevitable movement of the world toward Perfection is
termed by some philosophers, such as Samuel Alexander, as the
process-God or Deity. Actually, God does not possess the quality of
Deity but is the universe as tending to that quality. Only in this sense
of attaining towards Deity can there be an infinite actual God. Mystics
and seers of all religions conceive nature under a double aspect: God,
Substance, Natura naturans - Nature begetting -, Essence, Noumenon, on
one hand, and Natura naturata - Nature begotten - the materials and
contents of nature, phenomena, incidents, myriad external forms, on the
other hand.
The division of the universe into essence
and incidents, essence and phenomena helps us to confirm that the active
and vital process, that the Essence is God, while the passive product of
this process, the whole external world, is only transient manifestations
of God.
Substance and modes; the eternal order and
the temporal order; active nature and passive nature; God and the world;
all these are coincident and synonymous dichotomies. The Noumenon is
one, while the phenomena are multiple.
Immanence of
God
This dichotomy of God as Essence and the
world as manifestations help us conceive God rather as Being, but not as
a Being; impersonal rather than personal; immanent rather than
transcendent. It is worthy to note that, according to the main tradition
of Christian thought, God is also immanent. Augustine held that the
light of God's presence in the human mind enables it to recognize
eternal truth. Aquinas, while rejecting the Augustine theory of
illumination, affirmed God's omnipresence unambiguously, "God is in all
things, not, indeed, as part of their essence, or as a quality, but in a
manner that an efficient cause is present to that on which it acts.
Hence, God is in all things, and intimately" (Summa Theologiae I.a,
8,1). Similarly, the mystics affirm that the transcendent God is present
(even when unrecognized) at the "ground" or "apex" of the soul
.
Saint John of the Cross sustains that God
is present is substance in all soul, be they the greatest sinners
.
Spinoza identified God's substance either
partly or wholly with the world. A modern theologian, Paul Tillich,
while speaking of God "existentially" as the transcendent Object of our
"Ultimate Concern", also held that we could not know God without
"participating" in him
.
Seers and mystics of all time, realizing
that God is pervasive, and omnipresent, stress upon universal love,
universal respect, universal cooperation. Their vision of God's
immanence in man and things is now shared and corroborated by the
Liberal Protestant's viewpoint. The later proclaim that there is no
radical discontinuity, but rather basic continuity or even unity of God
with the world; the nature and daily life, as such, are full of
miracles; that man is dignified, good, sacred, and infinitely valuable.
John Dillinberger and Claude Welch wrote in Protestant Christianity:
"One major tenet of the liberal view of God, perhaps the most important,
has already been suggested: the immanence of God. The Romantics stress
on the inner divine spirit; Schleiermacher's conception of the identity
of the working of God with the laws of nature; Hegel's philosophy of
history and nature as the manifestation of the life of the universal
Spirit; the theory of evolution - all these served to focus attention on
the presence and working of God within the world rather than upon
it. This was not a novel idea; early Christian thought had strongly
emphasized the universal presence of the divine Word in the world
process, and the doctrine of God's omnipresence had been consistently
affirmed by Christian interpreters. But the older conception had almost
uniformly taken for granted a radical distinction between the infinite,
perfect and immutable God and the finite and corruptible world. This
distinction was now being severely modified. The new interpretations
began not with radical discontinuity, but with the assumption of a basic
continuity, or even unity, of God with the world. Liberalism was more
conscious of the nearness and "availability" of God than of the
transcendence and holiness of God. This did not mean that God and the
world are identical, but it did mean that God is somehow, in varying
degree, present everywhere in creation, as well as active upon it. "The
meaning of the doctrine of immanence can be seen most clearly in the
understanding of the way in which God works in the world. God is not one
who existing wholly apart from the world, acts only occasionally or
interrupts the natural order in effecting his will. His providence is
the guidance of the whole process by his presence within all the
processes of nature. "If God appears periodically, he disappears
periodically. If he comes upon the scene at special crises, he is absent
from the scene in the intervals. Whether is all-God or occasional God
the nobler theory? Positively, the idea of an immanent God, which is the
God of evolution, is infinitely grander than the occasional worker who
is the God of an old theology". The notion of a God who must break into
the world process in order to act is not only discredited by science,
but it is a less worthy conception than one which sees the whole natural
order as the working of God.
It is worthy to note that since the
adoption of evolutionary categories in religious thinking, there was an
increased emphasis on the "immanence" of God, that is, on the working of
God within natural processes rather than by miraculous
interruptions of the natural order. As one writer put it in a very
influential book, LUX MUNDI, published in England, in 1889:
"The one absolutely impossible conception
of God in the present day is that which represents him as an
occasional visitor. Science had pushed the Deists' God farther and
farther away, and at the moment when it seemed as if he would be thrust
out altogether, Darwinism appeared and, under the guise of a foe, did
the work of a friend. It has conferred upon philosophy and religion an
inestimable benefit by showing us that we must choose between two
alternatives: Either God is everywhere present in nature, or he is
nowhere. He cannot be here and not there. It seems as if in the
providence of God, the mission of modern science was to bring home to
our un-metaphysical ways of thinking the great truth of the divine
immanence in creation, which is no less essential to the Christian idea
of God than to a philosophical view of nature. "
For Plotinus, and his disciples as well as
for the adepts of the Kabbalah, God is the immanent cause and the
essential origin of all that constitute beings and things. All are in
Him, all emanate from him and return to Him. He is everywhere and
nowhere. He is everywhere, because all beings are in Him and by Him. He
is nowhere, because He is not contained in any particular being, not in
the sum of beings. He exists in fact above being that implies only one
of his manifestations. He is above intelligence which though emanating
from Him, cannot catch Him. Though people call Him the One or the First,
it would be more adequate to give him no name, because there is none
that can express his essence. He is the Ineffable and the Unknown.
Impersonality
of God
We see that mystics and philosophers never
identify God with the world, but clearly specify that God is the essence
of the world, while the later is His manifestations. The monists and
emanationists sustain that God being infinite, cannot be limited to a
Person; being all-pervasive, cannot be enthroned in some Paradise; being
perfect, cannot be separated from all other things. If we can find
something different from God, He will be then imperfect, because He will
lack "this something" different from Him.
In fact, for many monists, the sole
reality is the impersonal Absolute. Personal concepts of the Absolute
belong to the sphere of illusion (Maya). They are forms under which the
One appears to tutored minds. A personal God is but an aspect, an
appearance of the Absolute. Cicero told us that "the gods are not
everlasting but are born and perish at long intervals of time, and that
they are worlds, countless in numbers".
Divine Nature
of Man
The emanation theory sustains that as God
is the inner being of everything, He must be the Kernel of everything,
and especially of every human being.
Every human being has then a divine
nature, and is "consubstantial" with God, even though he ignores it. The
main function of every religion is to show man his ultimate and sublime
identity.
Corollaries of
the theory of God's immanence
Monists and emanationists draw from the
theory of God's immanence many corollaries.
1). As we see, monists can call the
Principle God, but they stress upon an impersonal God rather than an
anthropomorphic God.
While common people and religionists
conceive God as a suffering, a changing, a jealous and vengeful Deity
who has face and arms, back and feet, who repents from his acts, gets
easily into tantrums, but can be appeased by the smoke of holocausts
(Gen. 8, 20-21. Job 40,9. Ps. 17,36. Ps. 88, 14. Ex. 3,6. 33,13. 33,23.
Luke 1,75), who can bargain with Abraham (Gen. 18, 22-33), wrestle with
Jacob (Gen. 33, 25-33), talk face to face with Jacob and Moses (Gen. 33,
25-33. Ex. 33, 11), emanationists conceived God as omnipotent,
omnipresent, ineffable.
While religionists try to limit God to an
individualistic or personal deity, a supra-King upstairs, majestic in
his throne, surrounded by a host of angels and saints, emanationists
always point out that God must be all and in-all, all pervasive and
immanent. They consider as contradictory when one speaks of an unlimited
and infinite God and at the same time limits him spatially and
conceptually.
2). The theory of immanence entails that
all beings participate to the divine nature. If God is the ground of all
that there are, then it ill behooves man to speak slightly of the world
of created things. In the emanationists context, God did not create
the world out of nothing, but from himself. If God created the world
out of his substance, it would not be hard to infer that nature is
sacred, being the outer garment of the Over-Soul. Things in the
universe, being part of the Whole, operate then in a pre-established
harmonious fashion to the welfare and to the conservation of the Whole.
There is harmony not only between musical notes, but also between
environment and living things, between men and men, and between
celestial spheres. This harmony, according to contexts, is termed as
accord, cooperation, synergy or symbiosis. . .
3). Similarly, God is also immanent in
every man. All emanationists and monists, from East to West, from
ancient to modern time, are united in the central belief that the inner,
or real self of man, is divine. Each has his spark of divinity. thus
they dissented from the common Christian view that man is a creature of
God, created in his image, but not sharing his divine nature. It is then
logical to say that man is in fact consubstantial with God, is an
incarnated Logos, even though he ignores it. Paul call this thesis The
Mystery of the Gospel that he aimed to convey to the world. This great
mystery can be defined in three words: Christ in You (Ro. 8, 7-11),
Christ to be understood as the eternal and all pervasive Logos, but not
as the historical Jesus, even though he was one of its spectacular
incarnations.
Exactly, because of this Christ's seed,
Paul could sustain that we can be developed up to the perfection to
reach effectively the stature of Christ, "in this way, we are all to
come to unity in our faith and in our knowledge of the Son of God until
we become the perfect Man, fully mature with the fullness of Christ
himself" (Ep. 4, 13).
4). Based on the belief of the divine
nature of man, monists and emanationists profess the unity of all human
beings, universal brotherhood and universal respect and love. Being
divine by nature, man is sacred and dignified. His depravity is apparent
and due only to personal ignorance and to misleading influences of
societies. In every man, there are two personalities: Personality No 1,
or Natural man, or Essential Man, or Ideal man; Personality No 2, or
Cultural Man, molded by creeds and institutions of his social
environment, or Existential Man, or Actual Man. Personality No 2, by
trials and errors, is always tending to Personality No 1. As Personality
No 1, Man is born free; as Personality No 2, Man is everywhere in
chains!
The Gospels stress that the Kingdom of God
is at hand: If understood as spiritual realization, or as God's
realization, the Kingdom of God should be found within us. If understood
as happy and peaceful coexistence, it should be found in universal love
and universal cooperation, in scientific and wise management and
exploitation of the physical and natural environment and resources. . .
The doctrines of the Fall and of an
inherited guilt for original sin, were rejected in favor of an
appreciation of the natural goodness of man. It is worthy to note that
even after the eating of the famous 'apple" by Adams and Eve, man did
not fall, but rather did ascent to a divine status as solemnly stated by
God himself in Genesis: "And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is
become as one of us, to know good and evil. . . " (Gen. 3, 22).
As Dante rather casually reminds his
readers in the Purgatorio, that man is God's man; -homo Dei- may
be literally read in his face: it was generally agreed that the eyes
make two Os, the eyebrows combined with the nose spell out the M, and
since H is an aspirate, this gives us man-HOMO. Then the ear can be seen
as a D, the nostrils and the mouth spell out respectively, an E and an
I: DEI.
5). Religion, must also be re-defined:
Instead of being a servile adulation, and cult, a bargain for a heavenly
passport, it is rather the immediate apprehension of the Infinite in the
finite, of the unity in the diversity:
"The contemplation of the pious is the
immediate consciousness of the universal existence of all finite things,
in and through the Infinite, and of all temporal things in and through
the Eternal. Religion is to seek this and find it in all that lives and
moves, in all growth and change, in all doing and suffering. It is to
have life and to know life in immediate feeling, only as such an
existence in the Infinite and Eternal. Where this is found, religion is
satisfied, where it hides itself, there is for her unrest and anguish,
extremity and death. Wherefore it is a life in the infinite nature of
the Whole, in the One and in the All, in God, having and possessing all
things in God, and God in all. In itself it is an affection, a
revelation of the Infinite in the finite, God being seen in it and it in
God. "
We can also define religion as a means of
ultimate transformation. "Religion is a set of symbols, words, acts, and
social groupings which has this thrust toward ultimate,
unconditioned transformation of self and/or the world. It does not aim
for mere reforms, though these may be part of the path, but for a total,
exhaustive change which leaves not the slightest margin for more.
Religion is the means of movement between the two poles, the conditioned
and profane, and the ultimate or sacred, or unconditioned. It is the
individual's attempt to create in and around himself the sacred. "
We can add here M. F. Ashley Montagu's
definition of religion. He wrote, "I like to think of religion as man's
attempt to penetrate the mystery of life and man's own relatedness to
all things, to the world stuff which unites all things in the community
and commonality of being. The religious attitude is that in which the
person, with reverence, respect and humility, accepting the
fundamental unity of all things, asks question of the world in which
he lives which are calculated to show how they came to exhibit their
infinitely interesting present differences. . . it is the recognition of
his own ignorance, and the combination of what used to be called "being
in tune with the infinite".
According to emanationists or monists,
true religion should be aimed to the divinization of man. The
final human status referred to in all mystical or alchemical literature
is the glorious metamorphosis of man into God, may it be called
Atonement (At-one-ment = to be one with God), union with God, Nirvana,
Moksa, Liberation, Return to the Origin). This refrain is repeated by
Jesus in his famous prayer to God, prior to his arrest: "That they all
may be One as thou Father art in me, and I in Thee, that they also be
One in us. . . (John 17, 21).
Chinese people honored their great mystics
and saints by calling them Zi (TỬ) ; the man who has realized (Liao,
LIỄU) the One (Yi, NHẤT). The letter Zi (TỬ) is composed of two letters:
Liao, LIỄU= having realized, and Yi, NHẤT = The One). Among these few
Elected, some are very popular: Lao-Zi (Lão Tử), Confucius (Kong-Zi,
Khổng Tử), Zhuang-Zi (Trang Tử).
So man can become God, so man can sit on
the throne of God. This seemingly blasphemous assertion is, by far, not
a satanic cry of rebellion against God, but is the solemn declaration of
God, in Genesis, and of Christ in Revelation about human right: ". . .
and the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know
good and evil" (Gen. 3, 22). "To him, that overcometh, will I grant to
sit with me in my throne even as I also overcome and am set down with my
Father in his throne. (Revelation 3, 21)
Similarly, the world, according to Paul,
is so created that it tends also to make out of us, Sons of God. "For I
reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be
compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest
expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the Sons of
God. . . " (Ro 8, 18-19).
6). The doctrine of immanence involved the
breaching of the traditional distinction between natural and
supernatural. And this meant a profound change in the attitude toward
miracles. Since the divine is present in all nature, there are no
miracles in the sense of divine intrusions into natural order. In
another sense, everything can be said to be a miracle. . .
.
The silent movements of myriad stars, the
blossoming of flowers, the migrations of birds, the birth of a baby, the
composition of the air, are greater miracles than a summoning to a
paralytic to walk. Knowledge is power. Man, now endowed with scientific
and technical power, is performing daily miracles: Telephone,
television, aircraft, submarines, organ transplants are out of reach of
the understanding and imagination of our ancestors. Miraculous healing
can be performed by proper concentration and canalization of magnetic
and electromagnetic forces in men - individuals or groups - or in some
sites of nature.
7). The theory of immanence equates God's
will with the eternal laws that govern all movements and all changes in
all planes of the world. To abide by natural laws is then to abide by
God's will. While natural laws are eternal and immutable,
conventional and human laws are characterized as being created by
men, institutions, councils or churches, as dependent on space and time;
having a beginning and an end, limited to some geographic area or to
some cultural groups. Eternal laws or natural laws emancipate men;
human laws enslave man.
8). The problem of evil is solved by
emanationists in a way very different from the common view. First, they
acknowledge that good and evil come from the same source: The Principle.
This view is shared by the Old Testament: "Good or evil, life or death,
poverty and wealth, all comes from the Lord" (Ec. 11, 14).
Secondly, things and events, per se, are
neutral. They are considered as good or bad by affected agents. The
action of an object may vary to the point of contradiction with the
varieties of the object on which it acts. "Sea water is the purest and
most disgusting; it is drinkable and wholesome for fish, undrinkable and
noxious for men. "
Besides, many so-called evils are due only
to our ignorance, our maladjustment to situations, our lack of
cooperation, our malice or egoism. Therefore, these evils can be
overcome by science, technology, cooperation. This ancient view of the
Yi Jing (Dịch Kinh) is now shared by scientists. The anthropologist M.
F. Asley Montagu asserts: "The ground for my belief in the reality
and the unity of the cosmos are scientific and they are simple. As a
scientist who has been especially interested in the origin and
development of human nature I have been concerned with the study of
living things from the simplest to the most complex. The conclusion to
which I have been led as a consequence is that the cosmos which, in
microcosm one sees in the living organism, is a harmonic one, and all
the evidence, so far as I am able to read such of it as is available,
indicates that the macrocosmos is a harmonic one too. This belief is not
an act of faith, but a reasoned conclusion from the evidence. I see that
even the particles that constitute the nucleus of the atom function in
harmonic relation to each other. I see that single celled organisms are
mutually attracted to each other. I see that the cells which comprise
the multicellular organism are in continuous cooperation with each
other. And I see that all living things are preserved by cooperation
and destroyed by disoperation. Through the whole realm of animated
nature life exhibits increasingly more complex and higher levels of
integration at the cooperative level, culminating in man -
unquestionably, in some of his present cultural forms, the most
destructive creature of the face of the earth, the creature that
possesses the highest capacities for cooperation! Original sin, the
innate depravity of humanity and brattishness of human nature, and all
similar doctrines are nothing but unhappy guesses calculated to explain
the disordered of evil conduct of some human beings.
I now understand as a scientist, and can
explain to others, the causes of human disoperative behavior - and it
has nothing to do with "original sin" or innate depravity. On the other
hand, it has everything to do with the fact that human beings are not
innately disoperative but that they are caused - some of them - to
behave disoperatively by other human beings. . . Meanwhile, I make the
point that man does not stand alone against the cosmos, but rather that
the cosmos is an environmental necessity of man without which he could
not for a moment exist, and that he is, in fact, a product of the
cosmos.
Before using the tenets of various creeds
and philosophical schools of East and West to uphold the Monistic
Theory, let us have again a global view of the Theory with some more
salient characteristics.
First of all, prior to the existence of
the world, the Essence is the Absolute One. It was then called the Void,
the Ein-Sof, Sunyata, Bhutatatatha, Wu Ji (Vô Cực), or symbolized by the
1, or by the metaphysical Zero: 0.
At the beginning of the world, the
Absolute one begets the "Polarized One", containing in itself all the
potential opposites: Yin and Yang, Spirit and Matter. It was then called
Tai Ji (Thái Cực), Logos, Kether etc. and symbolized by various devices
such as:
1) A Circle with a Point in the Center.
The Point stands for the Logos; The Circle stands for the World.
2) The Tai Ji symbol: Encompassing Yin and
Yang.
The Tai Ji Symbol
3) A Rebis figure (Re = Res = Thing. Bis =
Dual)
The Re-Bis
4) An Androgyne figure (Andro = Male; Gyne
= Female; both constitute an hermaphrodite figure).
The Androgyne
5) By the number 5. (5 being composed of
2, an even number representing the Yin, and of 3, an odd number,
representing the Yang).
6) By the number 15 [15 being composed of
6 = Yin, and 9 = Yang. The 6 and the 9 are used in the Yi Jing (Dịch
Kinh) to represent the Earth and Heaven, the broken line (Yin) and the
unbroken line (Yang) ].
The Absolute One begets the world by
Emanation and Division. Emanation means irradiation, or emission of its
own light or substance. Division is self-explaining: 1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8,
1/16, 1/32, 1/64, 1/128, 1/n, 1/ The emanation or division cannot be
indefinite, cannot be without end. At some stage of the process, there
is a turning point, a changing of direction, a process of regress or
absorption...Therefore, after the emanation period, succeeds the
absorption or reintegration period. The whole process of emission and
absorption is called: The Cyclical Change by the Yi Jing; the Samsara by
Hindus and Buddhists; The Ouroboros by Western esoteric schools.
If we represent the beginning of this
process by Alpha, and the end of the process by Omega, we can easily
realize that ω = α. The whole process is
divine, because we read in the Revelation; "I am the Alpha and Omega,
the beginning and the ending, said the Lord, which is, and which was,
and which is to come, the Almighty." (Re 1:8)
The philosophy of emanation merges into
religion and mysticism if we change the term Essence into God, Tao,
Sunyata, or Bhutatatatha.
The emanation theory is linked with these
theories: Pantheism, if it means that God is present in
everything, but not everything is God; God's immanence in the world;
Metempsychosis; Reminiscence of Plato; the final
At-One-ment: Union with God, Nirvana.
The idea of the world first emanating from
the One, and subsequently reabsorbed by it, can be pictured by a cycle
of change:
The Cycle of Change
This simple schema not only sums up the
monistic theory by showing the world originating from the Principle (The
Alpha), and ending in the Principle (The Omega) through a process of
cyclical change (evolution-involution; egress- regress; flux-reflux;
extroversion-introversion; expire-inspire; day of Brahma- night of
Brahma; divergence-convergence; emanation-resorption; dispersion-
reintegration etc. .), but it can also give a better view on human
nature and destiny, as well as on cosmogony. It is worthy to note that
many scientists begin to accept this cyclical theory of the universe.
New York Time, science essayist Malcolm W.
Brown wrote: "Two rival theories about the ultimate fate of the universe
are running neck and neck just now. The excitement of the race has
spurred astronomers, mathematicians, particle physicists, chemists and
theorists to search their specialties for clues that might contribute
something to the outcome. The question is whether the universe is "open"
and will continue for ever its present apparent expansion, or whether it
is "closed", destined one day to stop expanding and fall back on
itself, to be then reborn. If the universe is "open" and ever expanding,
then, of course, the energy needed to sustain life would eventually
become so dispersed as to be unusable, and everything would die".
"Some scientists", Brown says, "develop
personal preferences for one kind of Gotterdammerung or another. There
are those who would prefer an open, one-shot universe, considering it to
be consistent with the Biblical Scripture. Some would prefer a closed,
oscillating universe esthetically akin to the Hindu wheel of death and
rebirth. " (February 10, 1981)
"These scientists, writes the New Yorker,
"are coming around to the view that the universe has a heart beat. The
cosmos expands and contracts much as a heart does, bringing to life a
succession of universes with each lub-dub. "The magazine comments: We
congratulate science on finally beginning to discover its true identity,
as an agency for corroborating ancient wisdom. Long before the Christian
era, and even before Homer, the people of India had arrived at (such a)
cosmogony. " (July 17. 1965)
One of the scientist interviewed, Jeremiah
Ostriker, who recently won the American Astronomical Society's Warner
Prize, stated: "There are a lot of similarities between the mystic view
of the world, and of Einstein's. I don't know whether it's coincidental
that currently the best cosmology is the "big bang" cosmology and that
the best potential rival is a cyclic one, which is more like the
Einstein's view. I am intrigued, I suspect that I could learn a lot from
thinking and talking about it." Dr. Wheeler added, "One has to be very
humble in the face of people who have dealt with these eternal issues
over so many generations." The other Princeton scientists interviewed
agreed in principle with Dr. Wheeler's views. Several years later, the
New York Times quotes one of them, Dr. Robert H. Dicke, as suggesting "a
model of successive universes reincarnating themselves in changing forms
"almost suggestive of Hindu beliefs." (March 12, 1978).
It is immensely interesting that the black
holes of spaces, "originally thought to be most 'passive' objects in the
universe, now appear to be the most active. "At an international
symposium at Cornell University, Dr. Dennis Sciame of Oxford, made the
foregoing statement based on five years of analyzing their
characteristics. He described this new concept as a "conceptual
revolution", to which theorists "are still trying to adjust". Sciame and
other scientists at the meeting considered the possibility that the
black hole in its final stages radiates out again into space and starts
a new cycle going. (New York Times October 12, 1980)
Astronomer Ernest J. Opik states in his
book, The Oscillating Universe, "The whole cosmos is performing a giant
oscillation. At present, it expands, shoots out of the chaos of the
primeval focal point, and while in flight, sheltering the wondrous
metamorphoses of life. After many thousands of millions of years,
expansion will cease, and the world will collapse into its former focus,
the primeval atom, where materiality will melt and disappear, only to
rebound and precipitate itself into new expansion, with new
metamorphoses and dreams. . ."
The monistic theory is well described by
Blavatsky in Isis Unveiled. "The esoteric doctrine teaches, like
Buddhism and Brahmanism, and even the Kabala, that the one infinite and
unknown Essence, or God, exists from all eternity, and in regular and
harmonious successions is either passive or active. In the poetical
phraseology of Manu (The ancient Hindu lawgiver), these conditions are
called the "day" and the "night" of Brahma. Brahma is either "awake" or
"asleep".
Upon inaugurating an active period, an
expansion of the Divine Essence, from within outwardly, occurs in
obedience to eternal and immutable law, and the phenomenal or visible
universe is the ultimate result of the long chain of cosmic forces thus
progressively set in motion. In like manner, when the passive condition
is resumed, a contraction of the Divine Essence takes place, and the
previous work of creation is gradually and progressively undone. The
visible universe becomes disintegrated, its material dispersed, and
"darkness", solitary and alone, broods once more over the face of the
"deep".
To use a metaphor, which will convey the
idea still more clearly, an outbreathing of the "unknown essence"
produces the world and an inhalation causes it to disappear. This
process has been going from all eternity, and our present universe is
but one of an infinite series which has no beginning and will have no
end.
Robert S. Ellwood, Jr., Religious and Spiritual Groups in Modern
America, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1973, p.
7.
Stewart G. Cole, Ed., This Is My
Faith, Harper and Brothers, New York, 1956, pp. 179-180.
H. P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, II. pp. 264-265.
TOC |
Preface | Chapters:
1 2
3 4
5 6
7 8
9
10 11 12
13 14
15 16
17 18
19
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