Philosophy Now Forum

Then our student realized something that made him shudder. He saw how reason is abused and perhaps there is no way for society as a whole for preventing it. He returned to his books searching for what Nietzsche wrote on the Overman:

"I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?

All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment...

Behold, I teach you the overman. The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go.

If the Overman rules the earth and is the meaning of the earth, The earth will be its God and what supports its transitory needs and desires will be its gods. What can oppose the charisma and the will of the balanced Man?

Must reason serve the earth only? The Bible offers the alternative:

Luke 4:

5 And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, 6 and said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. 7 If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” 8 And Jesus answered him, “It is written,

“‘You shall worship the Lord your God,
and him only shall you serve.’”

Now he understood the value of Perennial Philosophy inviting a human being to transcend the value of self serving opinions arising from the the sensory experiences (qualia) below the sun and inwardly turn with his whole self towards the conscious spiritual light (metanoia). This requires the higher intellectual function of noesis which the world rejects in favor of dualistic dianoia or discursive thought which has become the norm for our world.

Is the meaning and purpose of our species to serve the conditioned animal transient necessity of the earth or does it have the potential to serve the universal necessity of our Source? The value of Perennial philosophy became clear: "The science of the Absolute and the relative." It requires deductive thinking beginning with assuming an ineffable source (ONE) and seeing how it devolves logically into every-thing.

Obviously, only a small minority have the will and the need to become an individual in a world which rejects it. He felt he must find some who "understand" rather than those dualistically reacting to the world maintaining the war of opinions. He can learn from them.

"The science of the Absolute and the relative."

Our student finally experienced his ignorance. He had always tried to find meaning through duality but now came to see that meaning needed a third force. The Absolute or ONE is beyond the limitations of time and space while the "relative" or every-thing functions within creation and the limits of time and space.

Christianity begins at the ONE but the necessity of creation produces the Father/Son/Holy Spirit. God then is simultaneously no/thing and every-thing. The cycle of existence includes birth/life/and death. Even stars are born/live/and die. Only the scale of time differs. Time for a star appears much slower than time for a man.

These three forces are also in the Hindu religion. "The trimurti collapses the three gods into a single form with three faces. Each god is in charge of one aspect of creation, with Brahma as creator, Vishnu as preserver, and Shiva as destroyer.

Creation begins with involution. The whole begins to devolve into its parts manifesting as levels of reality within the span of creation. Evolution or the return flow of forces begins when involution completes and the parts seek the whole.

But what is humanities place within this great cycle? Is the purpose of the universe to serve Man or is the purpose of our existence to serve the necessities of our universe? Once our student could answer this question he knew it would reveal human "purpose."

It finally became clear to our student at Christmas. He realized what he needed requires an attitude essential for discovery of the truth at the core of perennialism. Normally his intellect was governed by the duality of right and wrong and decisions were made by judgement.

Then it became clear that all in Plato's cave have a piece of the truth. In order to move along the inner path leading to truth our young student must transcend the science of duality and explore the path of idiotism. "The science of idiotism asserts that if I am an idiot and you are an idiot, it is senseless for one idiot to call another idiot, an idiot. This attitude is essential for leaving the cave in the effort to experience the core truths of the perennial tradition which attracted him. Now he had to find others willing to explore the science of idiotism