Damiani

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In this three-part series of classes, Anthony Damiani provides an original interpretation and critique of selected paragraphs on the universe as an eternal idea found in Paul Brunton’s chapter "The Birth of the Universe" from The Wisdom of the Overself. Because these classes were conducted as a preparation for the group's upcoming meeting with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Damiani is also interested in understanding the four Buddhist philosophical schools (Vaibhashika, Sautrantika, Madhyamaka, and Yogacara) by identifying where PB has restated their doctrines in this chapter.

Damiani begins by distinguishing two meanings for the “World-Mind.” It can refer to either (a) the duality in unity of the Intellectual-Principle and the eternal Ideas, or (b) soul as an intellectual being that is the principle of manifestation for a particular solar system. The latter could be referred to as a solar logos, or Ishvara, and there are a plurality of them.

Each solar logos has its being (its prajna consciousness) in the Intellectual-Principle and manifests something of itself, its life, in the cosmos. The life of the solar logos, identified as the taijasa consciousness of the sun (subtle or dream-level) is the medium in which manifestation occurs. Although the self of a solar logos is not the same as the Intellectual-Principle, each solar logos is guided by the eternal Ideas in the Nous, which help it to unfold and manifest something of its interior life. This is how Damiani understands PB’s line “In the same way the World-Mind manifests something of its own self in the cosmos. And its own self, as will be shown later, being uniquely eternal and undying, it is inevitable that the world-ideas which have arisen within it are eternal and undying too.”

Using the astrological symbolism developed in earlier classes, the eternal Ideas of the Intellectual-Principle are symbolized by the twelve houses of the metaphysical chart. Every solar logos uses these Ideas as paradigms for its manifestation of a universe. But since each solar logos is an intellectual being, there is no hiatus, or division, for it between its real being (its station in the Nous), its interior life, and its body.

Damiani next criticizes (“on bended knees”) PB’s presentation of the reason why causality is not an ultimate metaphysical truth. PB argues that causality is only a temporary truth because the chain of causes for any effect stretch back infinitely and so “no real first cause and no real final effect” can be found. Damiani argues instead that the better explanation is that the solar logos holds the World-Idea as a single idea in an “all-timed fixity,” which means all possibilities are simultaneously actualized. There is no distinction for it between a universe that is latent and one that is manifest.

Since everything is actual for it, there is no sequence of events or causal connections between events. Causality, space, and time arise only when an individual knower or subject is inserted into the World-Idea. Once this happens, it’s possible to identify the causes that bring about an event for that individual. Thus for individual experience to arise, the solar logos must organize the faculty of perception for that individual and transmit the World-Idea to it bit by bit. That is what PB describes in the subsequent sections of chapter three on the karmic impressions and the birth of individuals.

Damiani also criticizes the Madhyamaka school, which he thinks moves too quickly to emptiness as the ultimate truth of the world. Damiani thinks one must always include the dualistic point of view because “philosophy is the nondual point of view and the dual point of view.” Alternatively, the Divided Line of Plato is divided only for us, creatures with limited knowledge: “There is no such break in the knowledge itself. There isn't a separation between the object as it sensibly exists and the turiya consciousness. There is no division; I mean you don't find that division in the actual knowledge."