From Being to beings

From the void to the universe, from God to humanity

The road up and the road down are one and the same. Heraclitus Gorgias says:
There is no BEING! Even if one existed, it would not be knowable! Even if it existed and were knowable, knowledge of it would still not be communicable!

We say:
there is BEING!
it is knowable (sensitively)
it is not communicable!

If intuition were not enough for us, we would simply need to draw from the sum of knowledge accumulated by the various spiritualities and philosophies over time, to give a coherent and plausible meaning to our world and understand its fundamental unity.

Indeed, beyond the everyday experience that leads us to continually distinguish and oppose things among themselves — things to the self, self and others, self and the world and so on — philosophical reflection, like mystical experience, invites us on the contrary to think of the divine and its creation as a perfect unity, an all-encompassing and wonderful Whole, whose essence or substance contains everything that the mind can imagine of the absolute, of love and of beauty.

Contemporary science has succeeded in making the link between the immaterial and matter, between the timeless and temporality, between intangible energy and mass. If it has not yet succeeded in defining the intimate nature of matter and its fundamental unity, it is nonetheless tenaciously seeking to gather under a single formula and a single denomination the various weak and strong forces governing and constituting the world.

Dualism or monism

Arriving at this point in our reflection, we find ourselves before a kind of apparent dualism:

• On one side we have BEING — that is to say the immaterial principle at the origin of all things,
• and on the other beings — that is to say the material form of things, the world as it appears to us.

Which leads us to ask whether beings are outside of BEING? Or, if one prefers: whether God is exterior to his creation, as some readers of sacred books suggest.

Our position is as follows:

If by exterior one means a geographical, spatial or temporal position, then a BEING or GOD — as one wishes — independent of its creation, would not be absolute but limited by it.

If by exterior one means that BEING is at the same time a different form of matter and the material form of matter (in the image of elementary particles capable of being waves or corpuscles), then we are in the position of most theologians and philosophers who have had to reflect on the question.

We therefore say:

There is BEING
There are beings

BEING pre-exists beings, but is NOTHING without beings. BEING therefore pre-exists existence, but its pre-existence is not an existence — for BEING does not exist in the sense we mean (to exist is to be born, grow, die, to be included in space-time).

BEING is.
It is the immaterial matter from which material matter constitutes itself.

We are therefore in a dualo-monist system, in a sense — a system that would encompass both points of view on the matter.

BEING and beings only acquire their meaning through each other, for BEING without beings remains immersed in nothingness, and beings without BEING cannot escape the absurd.

It is therefore the complete form that constitutes what we call the divine — and it is by achieving the fusion of beings into BEING, or more precisely by becoming the pure emanation of BEING, that humanity manages to incarnate the DIVINE. This feat is concretised in the mind and generates a new state of consciousness that we call awakening, beatitude, nirvana, ecstasy...

The necessity of dualising

There is in humanity an ontological dualism (sensibility, mind); there is above all a moral dualism (conflict between the real and the ideal, egoism and love. G. Thibon) Although we sense the inexactitude there may be in separating things from one another — in fractioning instants in an indivisible, homogeneous time flowing in duration — we must, in order to explain and advance humanity, judge, categorise, divide and discriminate between things.

This punctual discrimination seems to belong only to humanity.

It requires an analytical mastery of concepts such as time, length, surface, good and evil and so on, and has only one purpose: to understand and advance humanity and its species until they attain their unity.

This unity is concretised in consciousness.

In this chapter, we will study consciousness through the terms of Being and beings.

It will therefore be necessary for us to fraction what is in principle a global and homogeneous mechanism — that of the mind — in order to study one fictitious part of it: "consciousness". We will also need to divide the absolute unity of things — that is to say Being — into two opposing concepts: BEING and beings (the absolute and humanity, substance and its attributes, God and the world).

What do we mean by consciousness?

We say that it is the intuition (more or less complete, more or less clear) that the mind has of its states and its acts.

Being conscious encompasses several mental states.

Generally these states are described as "psychological phenomena" that the conscious person can express (I am conscious of being at this moment in the library and of observing through the window the comings and goings of the garden; I can describe these observations and explain them to my neighbour).

We see that under this definition, we can encompass dreams, memories, mental projections toward the future (anticipation) as well as all the sensations we feel in our body of which we are conscious — insofar as these phenomena are conscientised and can be expressed.

Conversely, would be considered unconscious those cerebral activities that we do not perceive, feel or remember — such as the psychic, biological and organic activities of our body which cross our mind but of which we have no consciousness.

Let us recapitulate

Would be conscious in the ordinary sense of the term:
every being receptive to its external and internal environment (I see, I feel, I hear what surrounds me);
every being receptive to its states of memory and projection (I remember or imagine this or that thing, this or that sensation);
every being judging, analysing, comparing, reflecting, representing and so on;
every being capable of expressing what it feels (pain, pleasure, suffering, well-being, serenity, worry and so on).

Being conscious is therefore, in the broad sense of the term: being sensitive to the entirety of the phenomena that constitute our mental life in the waking state (Grand Dictionary of Philosophy) as well as to dreaming states.

Within this global principle of "being conscious", contemporary thought traditionally distinguishes two great types of consciousness:

• Intentional consciousness
• Phenomenal consciousness

Intentional consciousness refers to a reality other than itself: I see, hear, imagine, think, analyse this or that thing in an intellectually representative way — that is to say without emotion, without sensation, as a computer would perform a calculation, a camera would record images.

Phenomenal consciousness (which some today call "qualia") would correspond to the intimate, felt consciousness of things through our affects, our sensations, our emotions.

Let us take an example.

I observe and smell a rose.

From one angle, my consciousness allows me to describe it and describe its fragrance through words and sentences. This act of consciousness unfolds coldly, pragmatically, analytically;
to this form of consciousness is added another — more intimate, more personal — that which the experience of seeing and smelling the rose procures for me, recalls in me.

I am conscious that this flower transforms my state, that its fragrance awakens in me sensations that can be expressed but will remain forever in a dimension that explanation cannot transmit — since it is I who experiences the sensations.
Even if the two forms of consciousness generated by the rose overlap and seem to unfold at the same time, they belong to two radically distinct psychic mechanisms. A little like the epiglottis prevents the fusion of nourishment and respiration, between the trachea and the oesophagus.

Another example

I walk through a wood. My intentional consciousness analyses everything I see, feel and hear — the path on which I walk, the smell of the various tree species, their colours, the surrounding sounds. At the same time, all the elements surrounding me produce sensations and feelings in me and affect my state of mind.

In ordinary life, these two forms of consciousness are intimately linked and form one and the same state — what I will call "normal" consciousness, or common consciousness.
When we observe our own movements of consciousness, we have the impression of a perfect fusion between reflective or intentional consciousness and sensitive phenomenal consciousness.
We have the impression that the two states of consciousness merge to offer a general state in which we simultaneously feel our body, the smells, the sounds, and reflect on a very precise subject.

While I write these lines, I observe someone crossing the room, I hear a pen fall, I smell the perfume of a woman sitting next to me, I feel happy to exist and to work, all while continuing to be concentrated on the lines I have just written.

According to me, the two states of consciousness — sensitive (perceived in the flesh) and intellectual (relating to knowledge, understanding) — influence each other mutually, but cannot absolutely fuse.

The impossible fusion

It would seem that the physical reality of the process of conscientisation is not as described above.
It seems to me (though this requires scientific experimentation) that it is impossible to feel and to analyse at the same time.
The opposite impression is simply due to the fact that the two states succeed each other with rapidity in our mind — a little like 2 telephone conversations can travel at the same time through a single wire, provided a decoder at the other end distinguishes the two conversations.

The ecstatic experience seems to confirm the impossible fusion of the two states. Indeed, beatitude is an absolute feeling. The mind is entirely occupied in enjoying this state of felicity. It can make no projects, no analysis, carry no judgement, make no distinction between the things surrounding it — or at least, these do not rise to consciousness. In the "psychic enjoyment" of ecstasy, nothing can intercalate itself in the mind except this bliss.
Conversely, during an extreme concentration of the mind on an intellectual page, emotions, affects and even bodily sensations seem to leave the mind as concentration advances — until disappearing altogether.

It is therefore not at this level that I would distinguish 2 fundamental states of consciousness, but between this normal state which includes phenomenal consciousness and intentional consciousness, and the ecstatic state of consciousness which is no longer anything but phenomenal — and whose phenomena are limited to a single subliminal, permanent and constant affect that we can qualify as happiness, joy, felicity, contemplation, sovereign good, ataraxia — in short, a state that no word can truly describe completely, but which has nothing to do with the small happinesses, small joys, small suspensions of judgement, small contemplations that we can sometimes feel in ordinary life.

The consciousness of beings

The consciousness of beings therefore encompasses intentional consciousness and phenomenal consciousness. It is this consciousness that puts humanity in contact with what constitutes its reality (whether perceived, imagined, desired, experienced or remembered) — permanently bathed in temporality, the finite, materiality. The sensations connected to it are variable and fluctuating, and form what we might call "the various states of soul" that succeed each other permanently within us.

Facing this consciousness that we might qualify as "normal" or common, we place "ecstatic consciousness".
This is no longer intentional but passive, or "welcoming". It is indifferent to external variations — though in contact with the external world, it no longer projects itself toward it; it welcomes it passively and inwardly.
This state of consciousness is stable in its variable states. This internal stability means it undergoes no external influence.

In this state of consciousness, temporal notions are extinguished, judgements are extinguished, fluctuations of feelings and sensations no longer exist.

A single state of soul subsists: felicity, supreme happiness. As in this state it is at maximum, it loves all things with the same intensity.

Devoid of intention to construct and act intentionally, this consciousness is phenomenal like normal subjective consciousness insofar as it procures a feeling, a sensation — but it is an invariable, stable sensation of perfect and constant felicity.

Qualia and quale

We might use two terms found in contemporary philosophy: qualia in the plural and quale in the singular.
Qualia are properties of sensory experience by which it feels like something to perceive this or that (colour, sound and so on). They are subjective effects felt and subjectively associated with mental states.
Perceptual experiences
Bodily sensations (colour, touch, pleasure and so on)
Passion and emotion.

Normal consciousness would therefore be permanently traversed by different and variable qualia, forming a sensitive whole — the temporal feeling of existing.

Ecstatic consciousness, for its part, would bathe in a kind of quale in the singular — a timeless feeling of fullness and absolute happiness.

At the technological level we have reached, the qualia of ordinary life, like the quale of ecstasy, are ineffable — they cannot be communicated or apprehended except through direct experience. They are felt directly by consciousness.

However, while almost everyone can imagine ordinary sensory experiences — especially regarding qualia around which the majority of humanity can gather (everyone knows what someone might feel if they trap a finger in a door or fall in love) — the experience of ecstatic quale, by its rarity, its absolute and unimaginable character, obviously engenders much scepticism.
But it is not, for example, because it is difficult to imagine the sensations of weightlessness that such sensations do not exist.
Let us summarise.
By BEING we mean the creative principle at the origin of everything. Its nature is absolute Love.
By beings we mean the incarnated individual.
In the beatific state, it is Being that conscientises itself — or rather, it is Being that self-feels itself; which is why the being in this state takes the name of Being or Being-beings.
In the normal state, it is the individual who is conscious of things.

Being is the activator of both forms of consciousness. It is the love-energy that irrigates the neurons. In the second case, it activates the cerebral zones responsible for all the stereotypes that constitute the particular and normal individual (memories, projections, judgement, character, attributes and so on).

Text written in 2000

PLOTINUS, The One is therefore none of beings and it is prior to all beings. — What is it then? — It is the power of everything; if it is not, nothing exists — neither beings, nor intelligence, nor the first life, nor any other. It is above life and is the cause of life; the activity of life, which is all being, is not first; it flows from the One as from a source. Imagine a source that has no origin.