Logos & Dharma - Platonic Buddhism

The response from the darling of Pagan Revivalism was, once again, not to engage with any of the arguments I made. Instead he posted a series of memes (the epitome of Pagan virtue 😆) and followed up with a smugly-written, and entirely irrelevant post in which I supposedly claim that one needs proficiency in Greek philosophy to understand German Heathenry. I never made such a claim. If Greek philosophical Pagans cannot understand German Heathenry, why do German Heathens claim to understand Greek philosophy, paganism, and its related history? Judging by the Substack posts of Imperium Press, they are *very* concerned with commenting on Hellenic affairs, despite being Germanic heathens. By his fanboy's own logic, Imperium Press must be a very unreliable source on Hellenic Pagan matters. 🫠 In any case, I believe this public exchange showed those who needed to see it the ingenuineness of Pagan Revivalism. If you are a Heathen fed up with the darkness of the modern world, hateful groups like this will not provide relief nor transcendence of it. They will only deepen your suffering. There are better paths for Heathens, Germanic or otherwise. Last Comment: If imperium Press responds cordially to my substack post as I was cordial towards him I will be happy to continue the conversation. I won't be respnding to inflammatory posts anymore.

Regarding the AI-Writing slander: After the message about “Pagan Revivalism” was forwarded to me, I ran my text through Substack’s Pangram AI detector, and indeed, to my surprise, it showed that 80% of my article was written by AI. I checked the same text with other AI-detection tools, such as Grammarly, and it showed 20% possible AI usage. Now, I wonder which “AI-Detector” is right. 😂 Regardless, since the topic came up, I have no problem saying I use AI tools to refine the editing of my published texts, but I never use them to create the actual, original content I write. I do this because some of the free content I write is lengthy, and since I gain no income from it, I don't have the luxury of hiring a human editor to support my work. It is no secret that supposed “AI Detectors” misflag content in which soulful intention and creative writing were involved, especially in academic-style essays (like the ones I am usually engaging in) and other works with repetitive and rigid patterns. For example, the Bible scores almost 100% as work written by AI in most AI “detectors,” as well as many pre-LLM academic articles. I am also affiliated with academia, and I will be publishing research articles in peer-reviewed journals in the near future. As such, I often upload essays I write to the academic system, which runs a scrutinous examination of whether the content is original, non-plagiarized, and not AI-slop. But of course my essays may not be “pure” enough for some puritanical pagan bloggers. For better or worse, whether one thinks my writing is good or not, there is no one on the planet writing what I write and how I write it, and no LLM can replicate this. AI-slop that lacks soul can be detected by the naked eye by a mile away; no need for AI “detectors”. Taking a step back, one may realize that such types of online echo-sphere debates are nonsense and lead nowhere. I did not write my response to Imperium Press to win any debate, as if “Platonism” is inherently antithetical to “Folkism” and vice versa. Nor to prove to anyone that Platonism is in fact “authentic paganism”, whatever that means. I wrote it to deconstruct the artificiality of the debate “Platonism vs Folkism” itself and ultimately to engage *creatively* and in *cordial dialogue* with those who have a different position than mine in the emergent process of European Pagan Revivalism, which, at the end of the day, is not a vital destiny owned by a single person or "gatekeeping" group. But perhaps I ask too much of people who are addicted to conflict.

So https://t.me/Pagan_Revivalism … recoiled into memetic slander instead of engaging with the actual arguments in my Substack essay, “Who Kills Socrates Today?”, negating my essay as being AI-generated because Pangram told him so. That is despite my careful respect for Imerium Press's thesis and my effort not to mischaracterize the author’s intellectual and personal positioning, while actively inviting a constructive, creative dialogue. At least the author of Pagan revivalism had the minimal courtesy to link to my article. This reaction says a lot about the unfortunate mentality of many puritan pagan folkists. The main emotional drive of their revivalism is angry reactionism, with no positive creative outlook in sight. Before I respond to the subject of AI use in the post, I want to point out that if I wanted to strawman, mischaracterize, or slander Imperium Press's position as this poster does to my position, it would be very easy to do so. In the article by Imperium Press that I responded to, the author makes the following eye-catching fallacies that are extremely obvious for one who has actually read the primary sources that the Imperium Press author cites, namely; 1- Misattributing the prayer of Hecuba to a wrong Euripidean play (it is part of the Trojan Women, not Hecuba) and then grossly misrepresenting the actual sequence of events of that play in which the prayer is stated. 2-This also ties in with invoking an Euripidean play to support the thesis that the city-state of Athens justly condemned Socrates…while Euripides’ plays indicate the exact opposite. It is widely known that his plays were, in fact, very critical of Athens “supposed pious pagan order", earning him the nickname “Philosopher of the Stage”, a direction that eventually forced Euripides to leave Athens to avoid the same fate as Socrates. 3-He misattributes the third man argument in the dialogue Parmenides to young Socrates…while, in fact, as is evident to whoever has read the dialogue, it is senior Parmenides who actually states it.  And then, based on this misattribution of the actual content of the dialogue, proceeds to claim that Plato and the latter Platonic tradition do not have an answer to the third man problem. 4- He cited a 2009 survey claiming that it is a survey that showcases “Platonism’s” lack of intellectual capital in modern academia, whereas the “Platonism” in question in the survey itself relates to an ontological view on abstract objects…that Plato and the vast majority of Platonists of antiquity never taught. But generally, to reduce Platonic intellectual inheritance in academia to a single category of any survey is a blatant rhetorical fallacy to begin with.   5-Although not exactly a direct mistake in misquoting primary sources, it is "fishy" that the author of IP does not even mention *once* the freaking long history of the ungodly use of the charge of impiety in the city-state of Athens. One cannot engage with Socrates' trial with intellectual honesty without even addressing this. Regardless of one's stance on this discussion, these mistakes on points 1-4 are objectively wrong because they misrepresent the actual content of the sources being referenced. Especially for points 1-3, one may rightfully wonder whether the author of Imperium Press read the sources he himself cited. And this leads to a critical realization: Much of Imperium Press’ argumentized power against the Socratic and Platonic teachings rests on the reader’s ignorance of the primary sources-and their historical context- that he himself cites to argue against Platonism.    Is this where the supposed victory of Imperium Press in debates relies? On how ignorant of ancient texts and the history of antiquity their followers are? If I were to adopt the same contrarian attitude that the “Pagan Revivalism” poster does, I would not have begun this public intercourse with the attribution of respect towards IP’s position, but I would have begun by claiming that the author of IP does not read the primary sources that he invokes in their public polemics against Platonism. Worse, I could claim that IP knows quite well the sources he cites but consciously presents them in a way that promotes his narrative/propaganda, wagering on the ignorance of a mostly young audience that never reads primary sources on their own. However, this is not constructive in any way, and in reality it would have been dishonest, since I do not know and cannot know whether those claims would have been true. After all, we humans make mistakes. Nonetheless, I felt that it was important to address this gap in mentality between myself and the poster of the page “Pagan Revivalism”.

Recently I was excited in the debates between the Folkish & Platonic sides returning. An up & coming platonic buddhist, one Logos&Dharma wrote a substack (here) which wanted to take on Imperium Press critique on Plato, the origional IP article you can find here. It would have been nice to see hardcore written critiques engaging IP's points. Unfortunately, very much like a scooby-doo-mystery, when you click the 'Scan for AI text' feature on substack, it reveals who was really behind the mask the whole time, AI-Aristocles. I am very curious on which model he utilized for the article, because it would be fun to train one on IP & the AI-Aristocles model to duke it out. Imagine the absolute state of the Platonic side right now. Multiple lost debates, culminating in having a machine lawyer your case, doesn't look good. It's a cybernetic argument; living litigation over a metallic LLM endoskeleton for sure. Personally I'm not totally against AI tools, as I have stated before, but this isn't a good look if true.

So…they recoil into memetic slander instead of engaging with the actual arguments in my Substack essay, “Who Kills Socrates Today?”. That is despite my careful respect for Imerium Press's thesis and my effort not to mischaracterize the author’s intellectual and personal positioning, while actively inviting a constructive, creative dialogue. At least the author of Pagan revivalism had the minimal courtesy to link to my article. This reaction says a lot about the unfortunate mentality of many puritan pagan folkists. The main emotional drive of their revivalism is angry reactionism, with no positive creative outlook in sight. Before I respond to the subject of AI use in the post, I want to point out that if I wanted to strawman, mischaracterize, or slander Imperium Press's position as this poster does to my position, it would be very easy to do so. In the article by Imperium Press that I responded to, the author makes the following eye-catching fallacies that are extremely obvious for one who has actually read the primary sources that the Imperium Press author cites, namely; 1- Misattributing the prayer of Hecuba to a wrong Euripidean play (it is part of the Trojan Women, not Hecuba) and then grossly misrepresenting the actual sequence of events of that play in which the prayer is stated. 2-This also ties in with invoking an Euripidean play to support the thesis that the city-state of Athens justly condemned Socrates…while Euripides’ plays indicate the exact opposite. It is widely known that his plays were, in fact, very critical of Athens “supposed pious pagan order", earning him the nickname “Philosopher of the Stage”, a direction that eventually forced Euripides to leave Athens to avoid the same fate as Socrates. 3-He misattributes the third man argument in the dialogue Parmenides to young Socrates…while, in fact, as is evident to whoever has read the dialogue, it is senior Parmenides who actually states it.  And then, based on this misattribution of the actual content of the dialogue, proceeds to claim that Plato and the latter Platonic tradition do not have an answer to the third man problem. 4- He cited a 2009 survey claiming that it is a survey that showcases “Platonism’s” lack of intellectual capital in modern academia, whereas the “Platonism” in question in the survey itself relates to an ontological view on abstract objects…that Plato and the vast majority of Platonists of antiquity never taught. But generally, to reduce Platonic intellectual inheritance in academia to a single category of any survey is a blatant rhetorical fallacy to begin with.   5-Although not exactly a direct mistake in misquoting primary sources, it is "fishy" that the author of IP does not even mention *once* the freaking long history of the ungodly use of the charge of impiety in the city-state of Athens. One cannot engage with Socrates' trial with intellectual honesty without even addressing this. Regardless of one's stance on this discussion, these mistakes on points 1-4 are objectively wrong because they misrepresent the actual content of the sources being referenced. Especially for points 1-3, one may rightfully wonder whether the author of Imperium Press read the sources he himself cited. And this leads to a critical realization: Much of Imperium Press’ argumentized power against the Socratic and Platonic teachings rests on the reader’s ignorance of the primary sources-and their historical context- that he himself cites to argue against Platonism.    Is this where the supposed victory of Imperium Press in debates relies? On how ignorant of ancient texts and the history of antiquity their followers are? If I were to adopt the same contrarian attitude that the “Pagan Revivalism” poster does, I would not have begun this public intercourse with the attribution of respect towards IP’s position, but I would have begun by claiming that the author of IP does not read the primary sources that he invokes in their public polemics against Platonism. Worse, I could claim that IP knows quite well the sources he cites but consciously presents them in a way that promotes his narrative/propaganda, wagering on the ignorance of a mostly young audience that never reads primary sources on their own. However, this is not constructive in any way, and in reality it would have been dishonest, since I do not know and cannot know whether those claims would have been true. After all, we humans make mistakes. Nonetheless, I felt that it was important to address this gap in mentality between myself and the poster of the page “Pagan Revivalism”.

This is an open response to Imperium Press critique of Socratic and Platonic teachings, presented in their article "Was Plato Really Gay?" The author argues that Socrates was justly condemned as "impious," the ancient Greek equivalent of atheism, and that Platonism diverges from what constitutes “authentic Greek paganism.” Despite the essay's ludicrous title, it deserves to be taken seriously. Philosophy can indeed be hollowed out into a substitute for religion, and certain Platonic circles, by reducing Platonism to abstract metaphysics, do exactly that. Nonetheless, the critique rests on a historical misapprehension of both the trial of Socrates and the historical conditions surrounding it, and in multiple places caricatures the immense vastness of the Platonic tradition. A pagan revivalism built from a deliberately narrowed corpus, purged of everything that doesn't fit a puritanical standard of purity, is not a return to ancestral vitality; it is a smaller and more brittle thing than the traditions it claims to restore. The readiness of Platonism and the Greco-Roman mystery cults to draw on Chaldaean, Orphic, Pythagorean, Persian, and Egyptian material alike suggests the ancestral mind was far less concerned with such purity than its modern defenders are on its behalf. So the question I want this reply ultimately to leave standing is not whether Socrates and Plato can pass some test of pagan validity. It is whether what remains, once every wider current of the totality of European heritage, has been pruned away in the name of purity, still carries enough life to answer the civilizational decay and collective nihilism of the postmodern West, or whether it has, in the act of purifying itself, cut away the very roots it needed to grow. https://substack.com/home/post/p-214288855

As our minds wander into the bardos (passages of conscious experience) of appearances within our embodied-ego world-creating interface, it is easy to lose ourselves in these wanderings and mistake what appears in the mind for "objective truth, “an objective universe,” or “a self.” In such instances, periods, and even whole lifetimes for some, time seems an eternally recurring loop, comprised largely of suffering and an ocean of tears. There is, of course, no objective time "out there." Our own fixated minds *are* the recurring loops — the miraculous power of innate awareness contracting itself as delusion. It is a great blessing to carry "mementos" in our travels within and as time: a form of practice to remind us, or rather to help us recollect amid fragmented perception, that we are the creators of these loops, and prior to time, unbounded and whole. That practice can take as many shapes and flavors as there are sentient beings: a prayer, a mantra, a simple phrase of recollection, a breathing technique, a visual, a bodily gesture, the opening of the gaze, and so on. The form of the means is of secondary importance. What matters is that through this means, through this point of reference of practice, we return to open clarity. This is true sanity: the flash of awareness that turns its light upon itself, the "aha" we feel when we remember something completely self-evident. These "aha" moments of existential remembrance are breaths of pure freedom. They open a space in which what would otherwise appear as cyclical, inevitable fate can be changed. We are the loop, and we are the beginning and the end of the loop. Yet we are not and never were the loop. Let us heed, then, the old Orphic commandment which is likewise taught in the ancient Nordic myths: avoid the river of Lethe, and drink instead from the wellspring of Memory. The Mind is the Buddha. The Buddha is the Mind. Behold how I conceal and reveal Myself as the miraculous power of innate Awareness.

Dzogchen, Christianity, and the non-dual Circle of Orthodoxy and Heresy. Undoubtedly, one must become a heretic even to entertain the comparison I am proposing in this article. This is why the essay opens by denouncing naive forms of perennialism in which “all doctrines point toward the same truth.” The word doctrine traces to the Greek verb dokeō, meaning to think, to hold as opinion, or to seem. This is the root of doxa (opinion) and dogma (that which seems true, hence a fixed tenet). A doctrine, therefore, is how reality appears, and in some cases a choice of how an apprehender wishes for reality to appear, to a given mind or tradition, a rendering of the "terrain of the Real" rather than the terrain itself. In other words, doctrines are maps of meaning and world-creation for the human mind. A map may represent the "real place" accurately, or it may misrepresent it entirely. As such, not all doctrines carry equal value, nor do they necessarily point to the same location. Some, in time, require revision, as new information arrives from direct exploration of the "real place" itself. This is where my proposal begins. To explore the "real place" directly is, in my view, equivalent to the direct perception of non-dual, pure, empty, and total consciousness, or simply put, consciousness as such. The essay compares the phenomenology of liberation and awakening consciousness across Dzogchen and the Nicene Creed, not their doctrinal or ontological claims. A consciousness-based phenomenological comparison between Buddhism, non-dual traditions generally, and Christianity might update their doctrinal maps, drawing new information from the direct crossings made by each tradition's explorers. Yet, in the case of this comparison, it is the hyper-religious, hyper-doctrinal view of the Great Perfection that can encompass the Christian view as such and not the other way around. One of my aims as a philosopher is to be so radical a heretic that the circle closes, until heresy becomes indistinguishable from super-orthodoxy. Jesus himself was an ultimate heretic, yet he declared with sovereign authority: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill." Siddharta Gautama too was branded by many as belonging to the same company of radical heretics, yet he reassured them that he did not invent a teaching from his individual fantasy, but stumbled upon a great discovery already waiting for him to arrive since beginningless times. As it is written by the Nagara Sutta  (SN 12:65), the Buddha taught: “It’s just as if a man, traveling along a wilderness track, were to see an ancient path, an ancient road, traveled by people of former times. He would follow it. Following it, he would see an ancient city, an ancient capital inhabited by people of former times, complete with parks, groves, & ponds, walled, delightful. He would go to address the king or the king’s minister, saying, ‘Sire, you should know that while traveling along a wilderness track I saw an ancient path… I followed it… I saw an ancient city, an ancient capital… complete with parks, groves, & ponds, walled, delightful. Sire, rebuild that city!’ Yes, Buddha, we shall build that wondrous City anew. https://substack.com/home/post/p-194062534

A Platonic-Buddhist Epode on Behalf of the Soul of Europe and the World Strophe O Dharmakāya, unborn Peace, Amitābha, whose rays increase, Thou Vindonnus, Apollo wise, Who dwells beyond all birth and blights. O Source of Suns, pure Nous and Fire, From Whom all forms and dreams respire, Thy pulse is Time, Thy breath the stars, Thy wisdom weaves the world’s avatars. Thou Art the Root no root contains, The Law that thunders through the planes. In Thee the Aeons rise and sleep, And Gods their solemn presence keep. All things arise and pass and turn, Yet in the Source forever yearn. Through One, as One, in One they shine, In Earth and Wind, in Water and Fire. Antistrophe O Sambhogakāya, Voice of Bliss, Avalokita's sacred kiss, O Donar, thunder-lord of rain, Whose mighty strikes release our pain. Lokéśvara of gentle gaze, Whose presence breaks samsāric maze, And Tara, Dolma crowned with stars, Who breaks the fetters of our scars. Thy triple dance, thy solar vow, Is written on the ether now. From Union’s Womb thy forms expand, As stars pour forth from spirit’s hand. With hearts aligned to Rigpa’s aim We name the Light beyond all name. From True Light shines the Truth-born Ray, The Bodhi-path, the boundless Way. Doxologikon O Radiance born of Radiance pure, O Light through Light that shall endure, Glory to the Power whose mighty gleam Outshines the suns of every realm. Praise to the Depth that depth denies, The Formless Form that fills the skies, The One whose Mind is void and whole, The Axis Mundi of the Soul. Through Thee, as Thee, the All returns, The wheel dissolves, the wisdom burns. Each breath, each earth, each star, each tree In awe, they cry: “No Self but Thee.” Epode-Chorus O Trinity of Light, give ear, From Europe’s heart, attend our fear. Behold our wound, our bloodied cry, And dream with us beneath the sky. Feel now our heart of crimson grief, The soul’s eclipse, the spirit’s brief. Yet in our blood, thy spark remains, Blood of the Spirit—ancient veins. O cast with us the rites of wrath Tantric and pure, of our soul’s path. Through iron hymn and lightning breath, Europa rises, scorning death. Through One, through Love, o Hope divine, Renew the Earth with sacred Sign. Let Soul and Cosmos co-respire, Europa crowned in sapphire fire! Let silence sublime now the watcher crown, Where self is released and form self-liberates. Behold the Sphere no eye can see, the unborn Ground of liberty—A.

On the Tension of the Soul and Anatta Between Platonism and Buddhism The soul in Platonism is a mediating power, not a "puppeteer" substance-entity. It exists relatively, as the emanative unity—at once indivisible and divisible—of Nous and the One within Time. In union with the "One"—a deictic term for Hellenic philosophy to point to the "Not Two", the Non-Dual— the soul's self-identity is transcended. Master Proclus, following the hierophant Iamblichus, describes this median mode of existence by attributing to the soul opposing terms held simultaneously, terms characteristic of the intelligible and sense-perceptible realities that form the upper and lower limits of the soul's existence as a mean between them. The soul is thus indivisible and divisible, eternal and temporal, immortal and mortal, ungenerated (agennētos) and generated (genētos). This simultaneous inherence of contradictory attributes earns soul its designation as a "middle" being, an intermediary dynamic power—simultaneously changeable and unchangeable—between incorporeal intelligible realities and sense-perceptible things. As such, Platonic emantive soul-doctrines stands in no absolute conflict with the emanative Trikāya of Mahāyāna Buddhism and its descriptions on how individuality appears in the temporal realm. Platonism emphasizes ontology; Buddhism emphasizes the phenomenology of mind. The difference generates a productive comparative tension, one I find genuinely exciting. The Platonic doctrines of the soul are incompatible chiefly with Madhyamaka Emptiness-Only (Prāsaṅgika) and other anti-metaphysical Buddhist schools, where dependent origination is radicalized into ontological incoherence and reductionist metaphysical nihilism is reified as dogma. Nonetheless, the Prāsaṅgika approach, in turn, is incompatible with multiple other Buddhist schools as well, including but not limited to the "Buddha-Nature/Tathagathagarbha" sutric litertature, the Other-Emptiness Madyamikas, Yogachara, and Dzogchen, the crown pinnacle of Tibetan Buddhism. Most essentially, I argue, that the metaphysical nihilist branches of Buddhism sit uneasily with pre-Abhidharmic Pāli Buddhism—the canon closest in time, and therefore the most accurate source available to us, of Śākyamuni Buddha's actual teachings. Regardless whether one understands selfhood in terms of soul or in purely reductionist terms, The essential to our immediate felt experience is this: egohood is a living power—a creative, free, relational, conscious force mediating between the unmanifest and the manifest.

I had the pleasure of a two-hour discussion yesterday with a fellow Platonist and community-builder, Eric Claussen, founder of the Platonic Path. We covered a range of topics relevant to Platonic, Buddhist, and Tantric practitioners navigating spiritual self-realization through an age steeped in uncertainty and dissolution, yet pregnant with unprecedented potential for creative reimagining of ourselves and our civilizational paradigm. Among the many topics discussed, I presented briefly the common operative principles of theurgy and tantra, and the opportunity for theurgic practitioners to connect with living lineages of tantric praxis. This opens a path for an authentic revival—rather than a reconstruction—of the ancient Mystery and theurgic lineages of Hellenic and Western origin. We also stressed the importance of forming hubs of spiritual communal life, and I mentioned Politeia Mandala, the emergent community in Greece I founded, built on Platonic and Eastern non-dual philosophical and contemplative principles. Such hubs will serve as vital nodes for the world to come, once the already-rotten foundation of the nihilistic, hylic worldview governing both the secular and religious mind of the modern age finally gives way. In that unraveling of modernity's dead forms, the cutting-edge scientific study of consciousness will play a vital role, particularly where non-dual consciousness is understood as primary to spacetime. Scientist-practitioners, following the example of the Platonic and Far Eastern spiritual masters of old, are ideal to facilitate this shift. To cross the turbulent waves of the sea of Becoming and reach undiscovered shores of Blessedness requires nothing less than a lucid and grounded innate sense of destiny, and a reconnection with the Primordial Religion of the Heart. https://youtu.be/Ce7SEoKYz4k?is=ugxy8rrQzDtlNPKL

If your beliefs point toward the Good, the Just, and the True, why be ashamed, or afraid, to share them in public onymity? If you aspire to bring about a beneficial change in an age steeped in Darkness, what good does it do to remain within an anti-social echo-chamber? If you follow a life of virtue and sanctity, guided by principles of timeless wisdom, why not present yourself as a real persona, instead of standing behind an online mask, so that others may draw inspiration from it? The following essay raises these questions, which have arisen in me more than once in the past. Although issues of online security and avoiding the “evil eye” of the regime’s Political Correctness remain unresolved, the author provides a mirror to all of us who claim to want to build a better future for our communities. The author speaks mainly to the Pagan community, yet I believe it holds equally for the rest of the counter-culture spiritual movements of our time. https://open.substack.com/pub/platonicpath/p/which-way-pagan-anon?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1rg85c

The constructed layers of self, whether physical or abstract, gross or subtle, are not intrinsic to nondual awareness. In this sense, Rigpa has no self. In a second, related sense, it also has no self because it does not conceptually reify itself: it is not some transcended concept or compounded entity left standing once the others fall away. That the mundane self, our ego and sense of personality, is constructed doesn't mean it fails to exist absolutely in a nihilistic sense. It simply isn't the fixed, unchanging entity we habitually assume it to be, nor is it the fundamental dimension of our existence. A related error holds that this constructed self must be eradicated to reach nondual awareness. This error rests on a misunderstanding, and it quietly reinstates the very duality it claims to dissolve, one in which ego-related content is barred from consciousness altogether. It also misses something deeper: the wholeness of experience, paradoxically, holds both nondual and dual experiencing at once. The One, when manifested, is Many. And yet, once this is made explicit, primordial Awareness is the most essential and the only true Self there is. It is who or what is conscious of consciousness, what is aware of awareness itself, non-representationally and unmediated, in any felt experience whatsoever. Prior to any becoming in the world, it is already There. And although the recognition and non-recognition of Rigpa carry distinct epistemic qualities for a subject, how things are perceived and known for him, ontologically there is no distinction whatsoever between Primordial and Total Consciousness and the ephemeral content of its unborn spaciousness. The apprehension in perception of the self-manifest, self-realized Rigpa is what allows us as individuals to be liberated from the delusion of misrecognizing our hypercosmic true essence, instead of misidentifying it as the transient, fictional world and the mundane identities of cyclical suffering, chained between the endless extremes of existence and non-existence within time.

Recognizing the Primordial Dimensions of our Original Face In my experience, practitioners of contemplative-insight traditions not infrequently hold only a vague, obscure understanding of what their practice is meant to reconnect them to. Whether they conceptualize that "something" they wish to realize as Dharmakaya, the Self, the Unconditioned, Union, or by some other name, they often lack the clarity to discern the phenomenological qualities meant to be apprehended as participatory knowledge of their own cognition. The following list of qualitative categories, then, may serve as a useful cognitive map through the felt experience of liberation. Though that experience is unbounded by such conceptualizations, these mental mappings can still help us avoid losing our way in our mind's labyrinth. The unchanging dimensions of Primordial, Pure, and Total Consciousness - rigpa - already completely luminous in the immediacy of the present moment, can be laid out as follows: Being: the obvious, self-evident, and self-manifest fact of awareness being present, or phenomenally existing. Emptiness: an absence of conceptually assigned identity, free of the conceptualizations about itself or the world that reify awareness as subject and phenomena as objects. Spaciousness: the sphere of nondual awareness that encompasses and pervades everything within one's perceptual bubble, internal and external alike, without conceptually constructed boundaries. It is phenomenally infinite, since no edge can be detected in it, no point at which it ceases. Non-dual reflexivity and luminosity: rigpa inherently knows itself to be aware, without relying on mediation by mental representations or by any other person, entity, or factor external to it. This luminosity is not perceptual content that rigpa comes to know; it is what awareness itself is. Atemporality: rigpa is without past or future as ordinarily experienced. Nondual awareness holds no beliefs about the past and makes no predictions about the future; it abides always in the Now. Yet this nowness is not a present moment sandwiched between a past and a future. That way of experiencing time presupposes a subject observing a succession of moments, and no such subject is present in nondual awareness. Bliss: the silent, equanimous contentment of being entirely complete in itself, with no sense of lack or need for anything outside itself, without intention, and thus beyond desire. Singularity or unity: nondual awareness is singular and homogeneous, a unity of all its dimensions rather than something compounded or constructed from them, or from anything else. It is, for this reason, beyond co-dependent origination and conditionality.

Logos is the Sword. Dharma is the Essence.

“But if “you will seek nothing any more,” however will this happen to you? Now it is because you approached the All and did not remain in a part of it, and you did not even say of yourself “I am just so much,” but by rejecting the “so much” you have become all—yet even before this you were all; but because something else came to you after the “all” you became less by the addition: for the addition did not come from being—you will add nothing to that—but from non-being. And when someone has come to be also from non-being, he is not all except when he rejects the non-being.” -Plotinus, Enneads, VI.5

"There is, monks, an unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated. If there were not that unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, there would not be the case that emancipation from the born — become — made — fabricated would be discerned. But precisely because there is an unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, emancipation from the born — become — made — fabricated is discerned." -Siddhartha Gautama, Udāna 8.3, the Tatiyanibbānasutta "The Third Discourse about Nibbāna". "Freed from the classification of form, Vaccha, the Tathagata is deep, boundless, hard to fathom, like the ocean." -Siddhartha Gautama, Majjhima Nikāya 72, Aggi-Vacchagotta Sutta. if we ever see in ourselves a nature of this kind which has nothing of the other things which are attached to us by which we have to experience whatever happens by chance … when we ascend to this and become this alone and let the rest go, what can we say of it except that we are more than free and more than independent? -Plotinus, Plot. 6.8.15.15-17 and 21-24. “The Self exists. There is no other. Spontaneous perfection exists, as the Great Self. Because it is one with the state of Samantabhadra (Primordial Buddhahood), there is no other. In [the misunderstanding of the notion of] no-self, one falls into the error of nihilism.” -The Universal Inclusiveness [of Perfection] - Spyi bcings, Early Dzogchen text.

I had a podcast conversation with a fellow farer of the innermost reaches of the Hidden and the Manifest—the substack content-creator @seeingthroughtheworld. We discussed Neoplatonic theurgy and tantra in relation to the perennial structure of awakening consciousness; the narrow line separating deep non-dual immersion (samadhi states) from psychotic breakdown; the importance of connection to a living lineage; the ideal of the Overman as the eternal process of forging new and vital modes of being-in-the-world; the transformative power of the vibration of ineffable names; and more. May it be of benefit. https://youtu.be/AX02MXRD4fI?is=ZUZPZ5fkErcYroJg

We live inside a dream. But where is the Dreamer? When the curtain of death falls, the theater empties. We look backstage and the borrowed masks fade away. At this moment how immaculate it will be to recognize our true face. We live inside a dream. But who is the Dreamer? Through the darkness of the future past, the magician longs to see — one chance for a sudden flash, between life and death— the light asking the dark an unspoken question, it already answered, long after future, long before past. There is no dream yet there is a Dreamer beyond our dreams. Light of memory shine upon us.

The Overman is not an ideal man with fixed characteristics, but a process that instantiates a new mode of recollecting being. From a Platonist perspective, one could say the Overman is what reveals or embodies a Henad—perfect and complete in its self-ownership and relational Unity. The Overman perpetuates the procession of the One in the grand epic of sentient life in the beginningless vastness of the Cosmos. _________ Much appreciation to the author of the channel https://t.me/SunTastinGood for the articulation of this logos.