The briefest ever history of metaphysics, mysticism, monotheism, and manifestation - Part 2

In Part 1 I laid out my approach to truth, as compared with the smart, sparky opposition offered by my wife.  Briefly, I think truth is unified, and so I pursue the deep connections between all that is.  And I see profound unity in many important concepts and forces that we perceive to infuse meaning and purpose into our human existence.  I’m going to tell you about a few of them.  Here is the briefest ever history of metaphysics, mysticism, monotheism, and manifestation.

The ancient Hebrews didn’t speak so metaphysically, but they gave us a strong sense of the importance of NARRATIVE.  Our STORIES are important.  They also said there is only one God, but it’s hard to know exactly how they thought about and experienced it, because this allegiance can feel tribal, even genocidal at times, which means God is not universal, and that seems contradictory to us now.

A bit later the ancient Greeks gave us true metaphysics.  They pondered the nature of reality, and noted interesting relationships between visions of the ABSTRACT and what can manifest in reality.  Pythagoras noticed that mathematics provides a distilled and essential ARCHETYPE of relationships we can observe in the real world - numerical and geometric calculations can stay abstract, or they can describe aspects of what we actually observe in the concrete world.  When I teach my kids math I marvel at this ability of the human intellect to grasp and manipulate principles and patterns of the abstract world and draw inspiration from this.

Plato took Pythagoras’ delight in mathematical patterns and speculated there is an entire realm of forms that humans can only glimpse through their concrete manifestations.  This realm contains IDEALized, abstract concepts like beauty, circularity, justice, etc., qualities that can only be asymptotically approached in the real world, but that must “exist” in some way.  He said that the goal of human existence is to approach this realm of pure forms in all we do, even though we will never attain it.  I’m not sure if he thought this was literally true or not, but often I feel that he did.

Later, a Hellenistic philosopher named Plotinus adopted elements of Plato’s view and created a philosophical school that has come to be called Neoplatonism.  He took the realm of forms and called it “The One”.  It is immaterial and impossible to describe, but from where all EMANATES. To many this feels like God, but Plotinus didn’t call it that, but many people see him as an unmistakable mystic.

Plato and Plotinus were highly influential to a very famous philosopher and Christian church father named Saint Augustine.  He died 400 years after the Crucifixion of Jesus, and this demonstrates that Christian theology was worked out over many years, even centuries.  Augustine combined Platonist and Neoplatonist ideas with early Church teachings to deepen concepts about Christian THEOLOGY, affirming that there are two different worlds, one concrete, and one immaterial and ideal.  Christian theology teaches that we can have a PERSONAL relationship with this immaterial realm, and many of us feel that we do.

See you tomorrow for the THRILLING conclusion!