Ideas, Forms, and Archetypes: The Eastern Perspective
Ideas, Forms, and Archetypes: The Eastern Perspective
Ancient Wisdom for a Post-Material Paradigm?
This post is a continuation of the first part dedicated to the subject of Forms, Ideas, and Archetypes
Platonist or archetypal conceptions are usually more closely associated with the Western philosophical tradition. Yet there are several analogous cross-cultural ideas and concepts present in Eastern cultures that address similar themes of abstract principles, universal archetypes, and the nature of reality. The primary distinction, however, is that Eastern philosophies matured in a more mystic, spiritual, and religious context, as opposed to the analytic philosophical standpoint of the European continent. The Asian continent was more focused on a holistic perspective of the ultimate nature of all reality rather than the nature of objects constituting that reality. The main difference is that the Eastern mystic, sage, yogi, or rishi apprehended and described the world from a transcendental, first-person experience perspective and relied less on analytical analysis. Nonetheless, the idea of an underlying order of things beyond appearances that guides and shapes the phenomenal world is widely present in Eastern traditions as well.
The Platonic notion of ‘eidos’ or that of the archetype standing for an intelligible but not tangible realm of forms and transcendent first principles that the phenomenal world reflects and only partially images, captures several aspects of Eastern metaphysical theories of reality as well. Also, in its modified Aristotelian terms with immanently real but immaterial forms determining in potency the physical substance, or the Kantian numinous ideas, weren't extraneous to the ancient spiritual intuition of the Asiatic continent. Of course, there are differences and nuances, but not much more pronounced than what we can already find within Western metaphysics itself.
Let us, quickly (and admittedly superficially) fly over some of these conceptions with a bird’s eye view.
In Taoism, the impersonal, formless, and immutable Tao (or Dao) represents the eternal principle underlying all of reality and all things. It is the source of everything and operates everywhere. While not identical with any Western philosophical category, it shares some similarities in that it is a formless but form-giving essence, much like Plato’s Forms. However, it is not a mental world made of perfect ideas and forms but is rather something transcendent and underlying all existence.
In Chinese philosophy, the Yin and Yang universal principle describes the duality, complementarity, balance, or mutuality of all opposite but interconnected things. Typical polarities in Nature are the male-female, light-darkness, or receptive-active dualities. It is a principle of harmonization of all universal processes and also applies to the living realm and human psyche. It is neither an object nor an immaterial entity, such as a Platonic Form or archetype, but it is an inherent principle in the cosmos that gives rise to the multiplicity and diversity of interacting things and processes.
In Buddhism, the concept of Śūnyatā, usually translated as ‘emptiness’ or ‘vacuity,’ can have different meanings, but in most schools, it represents an ultimate undifferentiated reality out of which all differentiations arise. Of particular interest are the Mādhyamaka teachings of the Indian Buddhist philosopher Nāgārjuna, which consider all things and phenomena (dhammas) as ‘empty’ in the sense that they lack inherent true existence. All things arise due to a relational interconnectedness with other objects, with each thing having no identity or essence by itself other than its relative (constantly changing) status to other objects. Something reverberating the Saussurian linguistic contextuality, as if language seemingly reflects this deeper truth of things. This philosophical position might find points of convergence with Kant's noumenon vs. phenomenon distinction. The difference, however, is that in Kant there is no such relativity, and that for Nāgārjuna, the ‘emptiness’ of things is knowable, in contrast to Kant's unknowable ‘thing-in-itself.’ Moreover, not only sensorial perceptions but also mental events and ideas are ‘empty phenomena.’ Nevertheless, the common thread is that there is an ultimate truth beyond phenomenal appearances.
On the other side, and more central for our considerations, is the Hindu spirituality and philosophy that posits the existence of the all-pervading, transcendent, and supreme reality, the ‘Brahman,’ whose essence is labeled as ‘Satcitananda’: Existence, consciousness, and bliss. Brahman is the ultimate undifferentiated, formless, and unchanging infinite reality that stands behind and supports all manifestation. Its essential nature is that of unity in diversity and multiplicity, yet it remains the ‘One without a second,’ as Advaita Vedanta describes it. It is more than a Platonic realm, since it transcends also any mental world. It is a universal consciousness that has analogies but also differences with the World Soul of German idealism. As the Upanishads and later the Advaita Vedanta emphasize, our individual personal self, the Atman, is the very same impersonal Brahman containing all selves, expressed by the famous statement: "Tat Tvam Asi," meaning "Thou art that." It is transcendent, formless, and without attributes or qualities (‘nirguna Brahman’), but all the universe is ultimately It, manifesting itself immanently with infinite forms, attributes, and qualities (‘saguna Brahman’.) But our ordinary experience of the world is deemed an illusion of separation and duality; it is the cosmic illusion of ‘Maya.’ However, those who have attained liberation (‘mukti’) can transcend this illusion and realize that Maya itself is yet another appearance of the very same Brahman.
The illusion in which the ordinary human, that is, the ‘non-liberated’ human, lives is compared within the Advaita Vedanta tradition to the metaphor of the illusion of the snake and the rope. If we mistake a rope for a poisonous snake, we unnecessarily live in fear. Only when we ‘awaken’ and realize that there is no snake, to begin with, and recognize the rope for what it really is, our life is no longer conditioned by fear and anxiety. The rope symbolizes the ultimate reality, Brahman. The snake symbolizes our superficial and false perceptions of the world, that is, Maya. We are caught in the play of phenomenal appearances and aren't able to recognize their true nature. We mistake the illusory world for the true reality. The same happens in the world of names and forms (nama and rupa). This also is an illusion that vanishes when one realizes the true nature of reality.
For the Vedic rishi, this was not just a metaphysical speculation or mere poetic imagination but a lived experience. It was a result of spiritual practice, such as yoga, and mystical asceticism, achieved by detaching from our superficial sensory perception, exploring reality through meditation, contemplation, and self-realization, and reaching higher states of consciousness and cognition.
There are, again, similarities and differences between this Vedic ontology and the various forms of Western archetypal Platonism or Kantian transcendental idealism. What is common is their transcendent and metaphysical nature. There is a reality beyond appearances, beyond the physical and material world.
Moreover, it is difficult not to draw parallels with the Neoplatonists' metaphysics, first and foremost of Plotinus, according to whom, detaching from our sensory perceptions, we can get into contact with supra-sensible realms. Then we realize the three ‘Hypostasis’—that is, the three fundamental substances which underlie the whole of Reality: the One (the Good, God, that which is beyond being itself), the rational intellect (the ‘nous,’ the mind, the intellect, the being), and the irrational soul (endowed with desire, entangled in matter, having sensations, etc.)
Analogies can also be drawn with a Spinozian pantheism that saw the identity between God and Nature as the manifestation of the many ‘modes of substance,’ or Schopenhauer’s ‘World as Will,’ and Schelling’s or Hegel’s ‘World soul.’ A duality that is well represented in the Vedic vision, especially in its later incarnation in Advaita Vedanta and Samkhya philosophical schools, which distinguish between the static and active aspects of Brahman, namely in ‘Purusha’ and ‘Prakriti,’ respectively. Purusha is the soul part, while Prakriti is Nature or Maya, the aforementioned cosmic illusion. Purusha is the static expression, stable, unmoving, unchanging, and eternal soul of the infinite Brahman, the One Spirit that supports the universe. Prakriti is the play of Nature, the active aspect of Brahman, that realizes and self-experiences itself in becoming with its powers, its will in action, and its expressions of force and form in a spatial and temporal manifestation.
This Purusha vs. Prakriti duality might resemble Spinoza's God and Nature identity, the Cartesian mind-body dualism, the Platonic and Aristotelian twofold metaphysical distinction between form and matter, or even the twofold Kantian a priori vs. a posteriori categories. But it goes way beyond a simple dualistic cosmology. The universe is much more than just the Soul and Nature.
For example, a distinct East-West divergence can be found in the archetypal cosmological symbolism of the Hindu pantheon. Each deity stands for some particular quality or universal property. Of course, in Platonism, the archetypes are typically impersonal and lack the personal characteristics associated with gods or deities. Yet, these distinctions are mostly contextual and almost arbitrary. Qualitatively speaking, there isn’t much of a difference between these Hindu ‘Gods,’ and the supernatural beings of Abrahmitic religions that are called ‘angels.’
The main difference, however, where the Vedic tradition diverges from Western thought, is that it didn't stop at a coarse-grained matter-soul duality but introduces several ‘planes of consciousness’ or ‘planes of existence’ in-between. The Vedic and Vedantic arrangement took as its basis the three principles of our ordinary experience: matter, life, and mind, each with its universal and individual aspect. The physical universe as the ‘physical plane of matter,’ and the physical body, or ‘sheet’ of any living organism (‘annamaya-kosha,’ the ‘food-sheet’) as its individuation. A cosmic life-plane and an individual life force inherent in every living body (‘pranamaya-kosha,’ the ‘life-sheet’). The cosmic mind and our individual mind (‘manomaya-kosha,’ the ‘mind-sheet’). The fourth plane is the superconscious principle of knowledge (‘vijnana,’ the free or spiritual intelligence or what Aurobindo called the ‘supermind’). Finally, the fifth and highest level or principle is Satcitananda, Brahman itself in its triune aspects of existence, consciousness, and bliss. If that weren’t the case, the soul could never ascend to its Source. It needs to pass through the intermediate levels of consciousness by a gradual ascension, or by what we would call nowadays an evolutionary process.
This numbering of planes must not be taken literally, it comes from an arbitrary mental demarcation line over a continuum of states of consciousness, serving as a framework for our intellect that operates on the mental plane and can’t, even not in principle, capture the nature of these superconscious planes. The essential point to keep in mind is that we can understand this spiritual cosmology only if we expand our metaphysical worldview from a simple two-modal Cartesian matter-soul duality or Platonic matter-form metaphysics to a multi-modal spiritual cosmology with several levels of consciousness and planes of diverse subtleness of non-physical substance that separate the divinity from gross matter, which is ultimately still the same divinity forgetful of itself. The precise categorizations aren’t necessary for this understanding.
This was, obviously only a very superficial sketch of the approach of Eastern philosophies to reality, mind, consciousness, and phenomena. However, taken together, these worldviews express the same human desire to question if and how our mind is deceived by the appearances that I outlined with Western philosophies in the previous post. If we look honestly inside and become aware of how we perceive and conceive the world we can’t escape the conclusion that it hasn’t much to do with reality as it is but is a projection, a shadow, a mask of it. All cultures throughout time realized that there is something that transcends appearances.
A scientific-minded realism would like us to believe that these ideas are merely cultural products, not first-person perspectives that could tell us something about reality. But there are too many things that are so universal, throughout all cultures and all times, that make this opinion hardly tenable. To ponder on these questions, and eventually embrace one or the other path to reality according to one’s own intellectual interests and spiritual inclinations, is not just an abstract philosophical exercise but, to the contrary, can open our mind towards dimensions that we not only ignore but even refused to acknowledge. Because, the contemporary materialism that so deeply influences our culture and, thereby, our perception and conception of the world, life, and ourselves, has its roots in the opposite physicalists and strictly rationalistic mindset. If we learn only to dissect, rationalize, and reduce reality to interacting particles, we naturally will see only that kind of reality, while intuition, imagination, and deeper spiritual insight will remain undeveloped and atrophied faculties of consciousness. While, exercising our intuition and developing a ‘ cognitive muscle that sees beyond,’ may help us to open our awareness to dimensions of reality that can lead us to a post-material future.