Participation in Soul

by Anthony J. Damiani

Paper V09P

3-LETTER CODE: ASN

TOPIC: Astronoesis

SUBJECT: Soul

SUBSUBJECTS: Participation, Omnipresence, Soul as Double Knower

ORIGINAL LOCATION & FILE NAME (of PDF used for typing): ASN MASTER SOUL 21-40.PDF (pp. 22-23; unused paragraphs)

CONTENTS:

Two types of reasoning

Soul's paradoxical nature

We have to become the soul

Two ways of knowing; for the Sage, these are unified

Soul's direct knowledge

BOOKS QUOTED FROM OR REFERENCED:

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

• Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

PLOTINUS QUOTES REFERENCED: III.9.6

AD HANDWRITING: Typewrite typed

COMPLETENESS: Fragments

PUBLISHABILITY: Yes

VERSION OF PAPER IN ASTRONOESIS: Some of p. 22 paragraph has some version/similar ideas in published Astronoesis.

TYPED and FORMATTED by JF 2023, REFORMATTED/CORRECTED by IT, MW 2025

NOTES:

• RETYPED AD PAPER (V09P).

• This paper/fragment was under consideration for publication in From the Heart, 2022.

PARTICIPATION IN SOUL

[File ASN MASTER SOUL 21-40.PDF (pp. 22-23) Begins]

[p. S22]

This brings us to an understanding of the Soul--which is not the logic of mathematics. Discursive reasoning, dealing with becoming and based on appearance, tends to analyze the problems of omnipresence through the categories of the appearance or corporeality, but we must rise to the use of true reason or dialectic to understand the nature of Soul. This is what Plotinus calls the essential reason, based on the essence itself. Keeping our reasoning fixed upon the essential nature--mind--and making this the object (subject) of our contemplation, the truth of that mind begins to well up in us and guide our understanding. It is closer to the paradoxical logic of Reality, used for example by Lao Tzu: "How still is the Tao. Yet, how active, producing all things." The Soul, too, is the still principle of the cosmos, and yet is active. The Soul or mind remains intact even when it is participated. This is another example of the logic of the soul. Indeed, it is because it remains intact that it can be participated.

Participation in Soul is a knowing of soul in its essence. If the participation in Soul altered the soul, then it would not be possible to participate in it. If knowing alters what you want to know, you cannot know it as it is, you would never attain the reality that you seek. Soul must remain itself, entire, and the consequence is that participation in real being is entire.

[p. S23] [Note: Suggestion to use this paragraph in From the Heart.]

We have to become the soul. This participation in the ground awareness of our being, is the obverse side of the principle of Omnipresence. Soul is omnipresent without losing its unity, and participation in the essence of Soul does not draw soul out from its essential stillness. In consequence, we can distinguish two ways to know. At the highest level there is mind knowing itself, intrinsic self-constituted self-cognition. This consubstantiality of Nous (present in the ground of the soul) and the Soul is Insight. This first way is true participation, an inner knowing by its being--intrinsic to the essence of Soul. The second kind of knowing, the lower, is not a participation directly in the Source, but a manifestation of content. Now we have the operation of understanding, of mind producing thoughts. This is inauthentic knowing. For the Sage, these two kinds of knowing are not two; the mind can think its thoughts and cognize its own essence. There are not two minds, and thought contents are not known as something other than the mind.

We therefore need not remain content with an agnostic position, an image of reality, for Soul knows reality directly. Because its essence is Authentic Being, and "Being is present to beings," Soul has direct in-seeing into reality. This does not mean it becomes the I.P. [Intellectual-Principle], but remaining Soul, it knows that it has the nature of a knowing reality, and knows its essence and Nous to be non-different. "Of what is there we have knowledge..., the divine attributes of Beauty, Wisdom and Reality are present directly, and not in copy, but in the mode of Soul."

(Quote from III.9.6)

[File ASN MASTER SOUL 21-40.PDF (pp. 22-23) Ends]