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The Way and the One
Apr. 29th, 2024 03:40 pm
Born Before Heaven and Earth
Laozi said,
There is something, an undifferentiated whole, that was born before Heaven and Earth. It has only abstract images, no concrete form. It is deep, dark, silent, undefined; we do not hear its voice. Assigning a name to it, I call it the Way.
The foregoing is from an ancient Chinese scripture called the Wenzi, or Understanding the Mysteries. Wenzi, "Master Wen," was reputed to have been a student of the more famous Laozi, the author of the Tao Te Ching. These days, Modern Scholars have discovered that neither of these men existed, and could not have authored the texts attributed to them. Those of us who are not cursed with the intelligence of Modern Scholars are dumb enough to know that existence isn't limited to physical incarnation, nor authorship to an individual committing his thoughts to writing. That's beside the point, however.
Dionysius the Areopagite is another great sage whose existence has been rejected by Modern Scholars; indeed, one could say that Modernity itself begins in the rejection of Dionysius. Here is what he says about God, in his Mystical Theology:
We maintain that it is neither soul nor intellect; nor has it imagination, opinion reason or understanding; nor can it be expressed or conceived, since it is neither number nor order; nor greatness nor smallness; nor equality nor inequality; nor similarity nor dissimilarity; neither is it standing, nor moving, nor at rest; neither has it power nor is power, nor is light; neither does it live nor is it life; neither is it essence, nor eternity nor time; nor is it subject to intelligible contact; nor is it science nor truth, nor kingship nor wisdom; neither one nor oneness, nor godhead nor goodness; nor is it spirit according to our understanding, nor filiation, nor paternity; nor anything else known to us or to any other beings of the things that are or the things that are not; neither does anything that is know it as it is; nor does it know existing things according to existing knowledge; neither can the reason attain to it, nor name it, nor know it; neither is it darkness nor light, nor the false nor the true; nor can any affirmation or negation be applied to it, for although we may affirm or deny the things below it, we can neither affirm nor deny it, inasmuch as the all-perfect and unique Cause of all things transcends all affirmation, and the simple pre-eminence of Its absolute nature is outside of every negation- free from every limitation and beyond them all.
Dionysius elsewhere calls it the Divine Darkness, and he tells us:
By the unceasing and absolute renunciation of yourself and of all things you may be borne on high, through pure and entire self-abnegation, into the superessential Radiance of the Divine Darkness.
And Wenzi says,
It is so ungraspable and undefinable that it cannot be imagined; yet while it is undefinable and ungraspable, its function is unlimited. Profound and mysterious, it responds to evolution without form; successful and effective, it does not act in vain. It rolls up and rolls out with firmness and flexibility; it contracts and expands wityh darkness and light.
Wenzi and his master Laozi call it the Way; Dionysius and his predecessors call it God. Proclus and Plotinus will call it the One. Did Plato call it the One or God? Argue amongst yourselves. It's clear to me that these two great and nonexistent masters were discussing the same thing in very nearly the same words, but the name they give it differs. The name matters: Approaching it as One, approaching it as the Way, approaching it as God, and you will follow a different path to it. But I believe that when you arrive at it, or as close as you can get to It, all names will have long since fallen away.
