Damiani

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In this second series, Anthony Damiani continues to present, develop, and explain some papers that later composed part of the chapter on the One and the “interlude” on Number in his posthumously published book Astronoesis. It begins with two papers, one on the Divine Numbers 1–6 and the other on the One as conceived by Plotinus. Both are discussed in the class on March 18, along with a draft of what became the “Invocatory Prelude,” which introduces Astronoesis.

Damiani refers to the paper on the Divine Numbers as an outline, or a table of contents, for the chapter on the One. He says it keeps him focused on the level of the One so his discourse doesn’t slip or deviate into a discussion of Being. What follows is a remarkable revisioning of Number that sees each Divine Number as a way of viewing the One itself—that is, each of the Divine Numbers is conceived of as an aspect of the One. For example, the number 1 is identified with the unique integrity and self-sufficingness of the One; the number 2 with the double act of the One, the indeterminate Dyad that is exhibited as infinity and bound, active and passive perfection; and the number 3 with the One as the source of all (the Triad), which prefigures in an unmanifest and undifferenced way all of the principles that will “later” unfold from it.

The paper on the One is a draft of the section of chapter 1 of Astronoesis called “The One: Exposition.” It starts by emphasizing the One as absolutely positivity. The attempt to spell out the One’s transcendence of every limitation should not result in our conceiving of it as a blank homogeneity—rather it is unlimited fullness. Damiani suggests two ways we can try to conceive of the One positively: as a superknowledge or Pure Intelligence that paradigmatically includes the unity of every principle such as Number, Being, Life, Intellect; or as unlimited Power that is in identity with the One, being an indivisible aspect of it.

When discussing this paper in class, Damiani observes that each of these aspects of the One “is the One in its totality and therefore all these aspects are indistinguishable one from another, which leaves you with nothing but the Infinite.” But you can’t begin by trying to conceive the Infinite: “If you say ‘the Infinite,’ you will see that unconsciously you have a presupposition. You're thinking of Infinite Being, Infinite Life, or Infinite Intellect; you're always unconsciously thinking of it in that way. You cannot totally encompass Infinite.” So it’s better to be aware of the way our thinking works and start with, for example, determinate Being and then cancel out what makes it determinate. Then you’re left with Infinite Being. Do this with each aspect.

The March 25 class continues where the discussion of the paper left off in the March 18 class. Once the various aspects of the One have been articulated, then either we see how each aspect fuses and interpenetrates with all the others or we take each aspect as the entirety of the One and see how each must merge with the others. Then we forget the reasoning that took us this far and “seek to plunge beyond our own rationality: that is, by a leap of the creative imagination, through inspiration from the life of the knowing principle, we are then to immerse ourselves intently and silently in this notion of an infinite life that is eternally and intrinsically complete and perfect.”

Next the paper discusses the Power of the One and its dyadic nature, which manifests as the double act and the coincidence of unlimited function and infinite substance. Damiani emphasizes that talk about the possibilities in the One is misleading since everything is transcendentally actual in the One.

Only after we have arrived at the conception of the perfection of the One, with everything actual within it, can we ask how lesser realities are related to it. Are they parts of it? Transformations of it? Illusory modifications of it? These questions are addressed in both the March 25th class and the last two classes in this series on April 1 and April 8.

Damiani offers two analogies that might help explain how the One gives rise to a many. In the first, consider a lump of gold that has the power to transform itself into a variety of trinkets or shapes. Each form is gold; there is only a nominal distinction between the gold and the forms it takes. Damiani thinks this analogy, which is used to illustrate the Vedantic notion of vivarta (where Maya is said to be an illusory modification of Brahman) is not appropriate to describe how lesser realities are related to the One, for it would make the Intellectual-Principle an illusory modification of the One. Moreover, it would have the false consequence that the ego was either the One (for what makes it different than the One is illusory) or nonexistent (there is only the One). Rather, the vivarta theory applies only at the level of the One itself: the unities said to be paradigmatically included in the One are only illusorily different than the One. There is only the One.

For a better analogy for how the lesser realities are related to the One, consider the light radiated from an object heated to a high temperature (a star, for example). The light is dependent on yet distinct from the radiant body. Moreover “the precise amount of light emitted at each frequency can be analyzed, and it will depend only on the nature of the glowing body,” and so an analysis of its spectrum tells us something about the nature of the glowing body. This analogy illustrates the Plotinian concept of emanation. The Intellectual-Principle, Soul, Nature, and Body reveal something of the undifferenced complexity of the One. They are neither illusory nor are they independent realities. Understanding emanation properly leads us to the true meaning of nonduality: “Mind expresses itself. And included in that expression is the fact that the Mind is distinguishing itself from its expressions. That's included in the expression. So you have at the same time both the nondual and the dual. The nondual is not going to exclude the dual point of view. But it maintains it and you have to maintain it. No matter how uncomfortable you get, you got to be like, you know, a tightrope walker but you got to maintain that.”