Roots and Branches

Next, let's turn to the question: What is consciousness and what is perception? This question sounds simple, but certainly is not easy to answer. It has been my experience that in the case of complex problems, it often helps to graph the situation, initially focusing on the basic components of the problem. The following figure is supposedly based on Simon Magus' teachings who in turn is likely to have fallen back to Platonic ideas. However, by whom this representation actually comes is unimportant for everything else to be discussed here. So let's take a look at the figure below which I'd like to call "The Circle of Being".                                                            The Circle of Being There are three key points: The outer circle (more precisely, its circumference) represents the material world in which we live. ...

Ägyptische Mythologie Bereits in der ägyptischen Mythologie gibt es Benu, meist dargestellt in Form eines menschengroßen Reihers, mit einem gold-roten Gefieder und zwei langen Federn vom Hinterhaupt aus. Es wird vermutet, dass es sich bei dem Vogel um eine bereits ausgestorbene Reiherart aus den Arabischen Emiraten handelt (Ardea bennuides). Außerdem wurde der Benu dargestellt als Reiher mit unterschiedlichen Kronen, in Menschen- oder Mumiengestalt mit Reiher- oder Falkenkopf. In der klassisch antiken Kunst wird er in Ägypten mit einem Strahlennimbus dargestellt.  Am meisten ist wohl im Totenbuch von ihm die Rede. Im Mythos über den Benu wird erzählt, dass er das erste Wesen nach der Schöpfung sei, das sich auf dem aus der Flut neu aufgetauchten Land niederlässt. Als Gottheit wurde er häufig als „großer Benu“, „göttlicher Benu“ oder als „prächtiger Benu“ bezeichnet. Vor allem mit dem Sonnengott Re steht er in Verbindung oder wird mit ihm gleichgesetzt.  Ebenso hat Benu auch...

In contrast to the philosophers that were before Plato (Pre-Platonists), Plato does not think in absolute but in relative units. For him, there are not the absolute opposites such as warm – cold, or wet – dry or big – small, etc., between which there is literally nothing, but for him every element of such a pair of opposites is able to bring about the other. It is not about absoluteness and BEING, but about relativity and BECOMING. It is about more wet or more dry, warmer or colder, etc. What is wet can always become less wet, i.e. more dry, and finally produce dry. Life can become death and death can become life. If something becomes dry, it must have been wet before. If something dies ( becomes dead) it must have been alive before. When something becomes alive, it must have been dead before, etc. In all these cases, it is not a question of substance arising and passing away, but of a change in the properties or the form of the substance, and this also applies to the substance which...

Let's come back to the topic of the Soul Plato sees the soul as something existing detached from the body. For him, the soul belongs to the ideal pure world to which ultimately our mind belongs, because through it we can recognize the ideal world. But because the soul incarnates (actually has to incarnate) in a body over and over again having to live again and again in the real (i.e., second-class) world, she becomes contaminated and defiled; but she is immortal; she is indestructible. Her true home is the ideal and perfect world, the world of BEING and perfection to which she returns time and again; but the real world, which is the world of temporality and the world of BECOMING destroys that perfection. In his work Phaidon (also Phaedo) Plato presents his ideas of the soul (Phaidon is one of Plato's works written in dialogue form, in which he describes, among others, the last meeting of Socrates with his friends). Actually, in this work he describes the last hours of his...

Plato's doctrine was almost diametrically opposed to this view, even if at a first glance it appears to be only slightly different from it. Plato took the view that the ideal world is  not identical with the real world. Rather, the real world is merely an incomplete, erroneous copy of the ideal world; all really existing objects, whether we perceive them or not, are incomplete copies of the ideal objects. This ideal world, the "world of ideas", is divine in nature, and mathematics is the "ultimate ideal", the eternal essence of reality. Hidden behind the physical world lies the true world of ideas, of fundamental truths and of mathematical beauty. Plato says that normally we are content to live in the world of imperfect copies, and usually do not even attempt to discern the "true world;" we actually do not want to see what may be called the "behind-the-scenes." We would rather be content with the illusion that the world we perceive with ou...

Aristotle has further developed his concept described in part 3 of this essay; however, I do not want to go into more details here. I'd rather describe Plato's idea of the soul now. Plato, by the way, was Aristotle's teacher and mentor, and he was also a friend and disciple of Socrates who in 399 BC was killed by the hemlock (more precisely, he was sentenced to take the hemlock). Plato taught that the soul was something beyond the material world and had nothing to do with sensing or emotions. Rather, the real soul is pure intellect or pure reason in an ideal world. Our human souls are incomplete corrupted copies, he taught, of this one ideal soul. The soul as the pure intellect, as pure ratio: that may sound a bit astonishing for isn't Plato usually associated with an idealistic philosophy and often also with mysticism but not necessarily with terms such as "the power of reason"? The latter may make one think rather of modern scientific rationalism and mater...

So what is the soul actually? Mysticism has had a very interesting answer for millennia. All souls are parts or mirror images of a single indivisible, all-embracing (world) soul that has always been and always will be. This definition of a world soul is not directly identical to the idea of "Anima Mundi" or "Psyche Tou Panthos", even though both the Latin and the Greek term literally mean nothing other than the World Soul. With the idea of "Anima Mundi" the notion is related that the universe, i.e. the macrocosm, is a structured, living, and animated organism – analogous to man who is the microcosm. I will come back to this later. Science and philosophy have always struggled with the concept of the soul. Let's start – almost obligatory – with the ancient Greeks. In fact, notions of an immortal and perhaps over-individual soul that "enters" the body at birth to leave it at the onset of death are almost as old as humanity. Aristotle belie...