Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 23:56:56 +0930
Subject: Re: Dan Quayle - galactic adventurer.


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FORWARDED BY LUKE - CONTENTS BY EDWARD
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Greetings all!  

It is fitting that I make John Foster's acquaintance via Plato, for I am the
neoPlatonist surrealist Gnostic par excellence!  


 ---- Luke Pellen wrote:
> John Foster wrote:
> 
> > Plato states in Timaeus that the universe is a body without organs since it
> > does not need organs to expell its' wastes. It recycles these wastes, and
> > since there is nothing outside the universe no organs of perception are
> > needed. It is the orginal BWO.

You are paraphrasing _Timaeus_ 32d-34c, which ends with the statement that this
universe is "a single and solitary universe, whose very excellence enables it
to
keep its own company without requiring anything else.  For its knowledge of and
friendship with itself is enough.  All this, then, explains why this world
which
[the craftsman] begat for himself is a blessed god" (tr. Zeyl, 1997).  

In classical thinking, perfection was viewed as self-sufficiency.  Not only
self-sufficiency of body, but also of mind. In the realm of geometry, the
circle
was thought to be self-sufficient because it requires a single line and a
single
curvature.  To be divine, a being needed to be independent of any external
power,
to be complete in itself.  Although this universe was created, it was made by
the
demiurge perfectly self-sufficient, because the demiurge, or craftsman, "wanted
everything to become as much like himself as was possible" (29e).  

Nowhere does Plato state that "there is nothing outside the universe."  Quite
the
contrary, there is the demiurge, the realm of ideal forms, and, if we are to
follow Plotinus' later interpretation, a supreme One existing above even the
realm
of forms (although there is no direct evidence for this in the text).  Plato
does
say, at 33c, that this universe-god had no need of eyes, because there was
nothing
VISIBLE outside it.  The intelligible realm, or the realm of forms, is not
visual,
for vision implies perception, which implies generation or coming-to-be, and
hence
lack of perfection.  The model used by the demiurge still exists outside the
universe, for it is the universe's immaterial, intellectual couterpart.  

Now Luke goes on to ask:

> What does it mean to "be" an organism in a void? an organism made of sentient
> components? It is not that organs which are designed to detect external stimuli
> are not needed in such an organism, it is that the concept has absolutely no
> meaning. If we decide to attribute any form of consciousness or instinct to
> such a being, does that pose a threat to the concept of human free-will? 

To the ancient Gnostics, who knew the _Timaeus_ well, the orderly motion of the
stars and planets, and the change of seasons -- the whole "cosmic cycle" --
served
as evidence of the demiurge's intent to enslave the human spirit in an eternal
realm of generation and corruption.  In neoPlatonism it is understood that all
souls in this world possess free will, but the One from which all existence
proceeds does not, for it has no other choice than to produce and be what it
is.
Human beings, as the ethical teaching goes, are free to govern this realm
rightly
or wrongly, that is, to live a life ruled by reason, or a life enslaved to the
corrupting power of matter, generation, and decay.

In late antiquity we find Christiam monks, the so-called desert fathers, living
radically ascetic lives of fasting and material self-denial.  Their intention
was
to return their bodies to their original, pre-Fall, state; that is, to exist as
Adam did before he ate the apple, having no need to expel waste, for his body
took
in and used only what it needed.  Such was their belief.

That is all for now.  I hope I have given someone, somewhere, food for thought.

Edward










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