Friday, September 30th, 1983

CLASSES at Wisdom's Goldenrod, Hector, NY

with Anthony Damiani (AD)

September 30 & October 7, 1983

PLOTINUS: NATURE

with Appendix: Classnotes AB 1983 0930 and 1007.

TOPIC: Plotinus

SUBJECT: Nature

SUBSUBJECTS: Twelfth House Levels, Demiurge, Matter, Five Great Elements, World-Idea, Providence vs. Necessity (Fate)

CONTENTS:

Intellectual-Principle is source of World-Idea

Universal Soul grasps entire World-Idea, imposes it on five Mahabhutas

Five Mahabhutas as directionalized forces

Two ethers, higher and lower

Tentative illumination

Star souls included within World-Idea, elaborate a portion of it

Individual souls can only work with formed matter

World-Idea must eventually fulfill itself; course of events partially indeterminate due to necessity

Providence as totality of reason-principles constituting World-Idea

Necessity as energic tendencies left behind in Life of Jupiter

Three fates, three gunas

World-Idea is a living whole, a multiplicity of reason forms interacting with each other; Arjuna's vision

Each level of manifestation a combination of form and matter

Appendix: AB class notes

BOOKS READ FROM OR REFERENCED:

• Plotinus, The Enneads (MacKenna translation, 4th ed.)

PLOTINUS QUOTES READ OR REFERENCED: III.2.2+. Plotinus astrology quotes listed at the beginning of AB class notes: II.1.5, II.1.7, II.2.1, 2, II.3.5, 9, II.3.13, II.3.15, II.3.18, II.9.8, 18, III.1.5, III.1.8-10, III.2.3, III.2.14, III.3.6, III.4.6, III.7.11, IV.3.7, IV.3.8, IV.3.12-13, IV.4.7, 8, IV.4.16, IV.4.22, IV.4.24, IV.4.27, IV.4.30, IV.4.31-6, IV.4.39, IV.8.2, V.1.9, V.8.3, VI.7.7. Other Plotinus quotes listed in AB class notes: III.2.1, III.2.2, III.5, III.2.16

DIAGRAM embedded in this transcript:

• FIGURE 1983 0930 & 1007-1. Five Great Elements/Twelfth House Levels.

RETYPED AND REFORMATTED by IT 2021

NOTES:

• RETYPED PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT (hence V10). From AD Supplementary Material, pp. 1221-1223. THERE ARE NO AUDIO CASSETTE TAPES EXTANT.

• The original partial specified only the days, no year. Correct year determined by matching contents in transcript with AB Class Notes, AD Events Master, and AD Blue Book.

• Diagram in the partial transcript is by AS, along with some editing. Original transcript typed by JF.

• AB Classnotes have been appended because they contain information that the partial transcript does not have and thus help round out the class. Retyped from Classnotes AB 1983 0831 to 1983 1028.PDF. All spelling, capitalization, and punctuation corrected, abbreviations spelled out in AB Classnotes.

• All spelling and capitalization errors corrected, most numbers and all astrological glyphs spelled out in partial transcript.

1983 09/30 & 10/07 at Wisdom's Goldenrod

Plotinus: Nature

[AD Supp, pp. 1221-1223 Begins]

Fri. Sept 30 + Oct 7

III.2.2 +

The Intellectual-Principle or Divine Mind is the Void, source of the World Idea or Reason Form flowing from it. This Universal Reason is the Logos Principle, which the Universal Soul contains and harmonizes with Matter, and is the ordered plan which is going to be elaborated by Cosmic Souls. Matter for Plotinus is not any kind of material stuff, but in its primal formlessness is the 5 (7) Great Elements which are the Life of Father Jupiter -- the Demiurge. These are pure forces or energy -- and Pater Ether is the ground or unity of the other four or five which are differentiations out of it. (Samkhya speaks of the primal Prakriti and the subtle Tanmatras.) The forces which are centered in the atom are perhaps a manifestation of these five great force fields: electromagnetic energy of Fire; gravitation of Earth; cohesion in the (atom's) nucleus of Water; and tendency to radiate or split of Air. This is an approximation of what we are trying to envisage as the 5 Great Elements -- directionalized forces such as expansion, repulsion and so on, which have no beginning and no end. We have a description here of the 5 Elements which in their totality are the True Ether, which is the Jupiter in Pisces, as opposed to the lower ether which constitutes the Dragon. In the Dragon, the five senses are themselves the differentiations of the imagination or manas analogously to the differentiations of the 5 Great Elements from Pater Ether.

[FIGURE 1983 0930 & 1007-1. Five Great Elements/Twelfth House Levels. F E A W = Fire Earth Air Water. Computer generated by NT from hand-drawn diagram by AS in AD Supp, p. 1221.]

The totality of the Great Elements, with the traces of Reason activity left behind in them, is the ground for the "tentative illumination" by the Demiurge. Plato describes the three principles -- the Ideas, Universal Soul or Demiurge, and receptacle or Matter as the priors to manifestation: the Soul ordering the Matter according to the Ideas. The illumination is tentative because the incessant indeterminate energy of the receptacle can only accommodate the imposition of Reason instant-by-instant.

This combination of the World Idea and Matter is harmonized by Soul. Each Cosmic Soul will have its locus within this tentative illumination and will grasp and interpret the World Idea for itself. Each individual soul will in turn grasp the World Idea for itself also, and receive a certain basis of Matter. But the individual souls can work only with the formed matter, and not the primary or purely indeterminate receptacle.

The meeting of the two factors -- Reason Intelligence and substrate energy -- constitute the ground plan which the Cosmic and individual Souls will elaborate, and the peculiar continuity which each factor provides is the basis for the distinct agency of Providence and Necessity.

From the imperceptible realm of the inter-galactic dust, to the basic atomic particles, to helium atoms in the Sun, to the 105 atomic elements fused by the Solar energy, to the compound molecules and living organisms produced on Earth, all is under the pervading order of the ruling Reason-Principles. Providence is the totality of the Reason-Principles that constitute the World Idea or Logos. The World Idea must order the disordered motion or forces of the receptacle Elements which in themselves are recalcitrant to the Imposition, and have their own energic tendencies. Necessity refers to these energic tendencies of the receptacle, the brute existence of the memories or traces of life left behind in the Great Elements. The sheer facticity of existence is Necessity or Fate. The Three Fates which govern the unification, action, and stubbornness of existence are equivalent to the three gunas or sattva, activity, and heaviness which constitute Prakriti. (The seven possible combinations of these three primal forces give us the characteristics of the (7) Great Elements…)

The World Idea considered by itself is a living whole -- outflow of both Divine Mind and Universal Soul. It is a multiplicity of Reason Forms which are interactive with each other, and not a homogenous unity. In its manifestation it is always operating with complementary principles. Just as there is no day without day/night, the World Idea manifests itself and its various parts through activity and stillness, unity and multiplicity and so on. Each level of manifestation from the unmanifest Ether downward is a combination of the Reason Forms and receptacle; each level of formed-matter being a substrate for the further imposition of Form.

[AD Supp, pp. 1221-1223 Ends]