Post by johnbc on Dec 14, 2020 18:07:27 GMT
In all great spiritual traditions, without exception, there is some ternary division of the strata of reality, such as Deus, Homo, Natura in Christianity or Heaven-Earth-Man (Tien-Ti-Jen) in Taoism.
This division of the whole corresponds, for the countless parts, secondary aspects and plans, as many subdivisions, also ternary, that echo and reverberate to each other according to an infinity of scales and points of view. The Christian Trinity — Father, Son and Holy Spirit — corresponds, in the microcosm of the human constitution, to the ternary body, soul, spirit. The soul, in turn, is vegetative, appetitive, intellectual.
In the Chinese tradition, the ternary division of the world imitates another higher ternary: that of the supreme metaphysical principles Yang, Yin and Tao, which can be translated, without greater esoteric pedantry, by Form, Matter and Proportion, as long as it is understood that a translation is not an explanation. The three principles, since they govern the totality of being, are manifested in each of the small facts that in an inexhaustible multitude make up the succession of cosmic life, which is why the ternary step is the progress of all actions and mutations. The I Ching, “Book of Mutations”, presents a miniature model of all possible mutations: from ternary to ternary, adding them two by two, the sacred book of the Tchou dynasty closes the cycle when it reaches number 64: the following cycles repeat the scheme.
Inverting only the order of succession to Heaven-Man-Earth, the Chinese triad corresponds exactly to the Greek ternary Logos-Ethos-Physis, where Logos is the sphere of metaphysical principles, Ethos the human world of indecision and relative freedom, Physis a repetitive order of the sensitive nature. Plato, in defining man as an intermediary between the beast and the god, was strictly Chinese in doing this. It is not surprising, therefore, that Aristotle, when describing the order of discursive thought, found that he walks in a ternary step, of two propositions taking a third one and so on, and that the complete combinatory summed up, in the end, 64 possible ternaries without repetition: syllogistics is the “Book of Changes” of reasoning. And, in fact, why should the sphere of human reason function differently from the supreme reason that orders the real as a whole? "Logic, says Schuon, is an ontology of the microcosm of human reason".
To the Hindu triad, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, which roughly expresses the ideas of creation, conservation and transformation respectively, correspond to as many ternaries in the cosmic and human sphere, for example that of the movements of the cosmos, Tamas, Rajas and Sattwa (fall, expansion, ascension), or that of the states of consciousness — waking, dreaming and deep sleep —, through which man recedes from the sensitive manifestation to the metaphysical principle of all things. The ternary step between the world and the origin is marked by the monosyllable Aum, whose letters correspond, in order, to the three states mentioned.
The faithful Muslim, when praying, goes through these same stages, symbolized in the three positions of the liturgical prayer — standing, sitting and prostrate — that personify man before the world, man before himself and man annulled before divine infinity. Here, too, three letters indicate the path: A, D and M, which make up the word Adam (Arabic in general suppresses intermediate vowels in writing), that is, Adam, the primordial man, model of the species. The spelling of the letters allows you to view the three positions of the prayer:
The three stages are equivalent, mutatis mutandis, to the three time bands: temporality, or succession without return, perpetuity or eviternity, cyclical time, which elapses but returns, returning in the end intact the possibilities that were in the beginning; and eternity — as Boethius defined it, “full and simultaneous possession of all its moments”, tota simul et perfecta possessio. The notion of the triple time is found, perfectly equal, in all spiritual traditions, and also in the structure of ancient languages. In Arabic, there is a verbal tense for actions conceived as ended (in any chronological time), one for actions in fieri, another for actions conceived regardless of termination or continuation. They correspond, structurally, to time, to perennial continuity, to eternity. The same is seen in Greek or Hebrew.
The ternary of the worlds, in short, seems to apprehend, if not an ontological law, a truth imbricated in the very constitution of being, at least a “constant of the human spirit”, a universal tendency of man to face being as if it were so constituted. For this very reason, what surprises on it is not the ubiquity of its presence in the great religious traditions, but its absence in some of the small ones. Certain tribal cultures seem to be completely unaware of it, or to have a hazy and distant idea of it, the residue of an old forgotten doctrine. Mircea Eliade noticed in tribes in Africa and Polynesia the weakening of the sense of metaphysical eternity, parallel to a hypertrophic proliferation of cosmic deities or divinized natural forces — a swelling of perpetuity, which swallowed or covered up the sense of eternity.
This division of the whole corresponds, for the countless parts, secondary aspects and plans, as many subdivisions, also ternary, that echo and reverberate to each other according to an infinity of scales and points of view. The Christian Trinity — Father, Son and Holy Spirit — corresponds, in the microcosm of the human constitution, to the ternary body, soul, spirit. The soul, in turn, is vegetative, appetitive, intellectual.
In the Chinese tradition, the ternary division of the world imitates another higher ternary: that of the supreme metaphysical principles Yang, Yin and Tao, which can be translated, without greater esoteric pedantry, by Form, Matter and Proportion, as long as it is understood that a translation is not an explanation. The three principles, since they govern the totality of being, are manifested in each of the small facts that in an inexhaustible multitude make up the succession of cosmic life, which is why the ternary step is the progress of all actions and mutations. The I Ching, “Book of Mutations”, presents a miniature model of all possible mutations: from ternary to ternary, adding them two by two, the sacred book of the Tchou dynasty closes the cycle when it reaches number 64: the following cycles repeat the scheme.
Inverting only the order of succession to Heaven-Man-Earth, the Chinese triad corresponds exactly to the Greek ternary Logos-Ethos-Physis, where Logos is the sphere of metaphysical principles, Ethos the human world of indecision and relative freedom, Physis a repetitive order of the sensitive nature. Plato, in defining man as an intermediary between the beast and the god, was strictly Chinese in doing this. It is not surprising, therefore, that Aristotle, when describing the order of discursive thought, found that he walks in a ternary step, of two propositions taking a third one and so on, and that the complete combinatory summed up, in the end, 64 possible ternaries without repetition: syllogistics is the “Book of Changes” of reasoning. And, in fact, why should the sphere of human reason function differently from the supreme reason that orders the real as a whole? "Logic, says Schuon, is an ontology of the microcosm of human reason".
To the Hindu triad, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, which roughly expresses the ideas of creation, conservation and transformation respectively, correspond to as many ternaries in the cosmic and human sphere, for example that of the movements of the cosmos, Tamas, Rajas and Sattwa (fall, expansion, ascension), or that of the states of consciousness — waking, dreaming and deep sleep —, through which man recedes from the sensitive manifestation to the metaphysical principle of all things. The ternary step between the world and the origin is marked by the monosyllable Aum, whose letters correspond, in order, to the three states mentioned.
The faithful Muslim, when praying, goes through these same stages, symbolized in the three positions of the liturgical prayer — standing, sitting and prostrate — that personify man before the world, man before himself and man annulled before divine infinity. Here, too, three letters indicate the path: A, D and M, which make up the word Adam (Arabic in general suppresses intermediate vowels in writing), that is, Adam, the primordial man, model of the species. The spelling of the letters allows you to view the three positions of the prayer:
The three stages are equivalent, mutatis mutandis, to the three time bands: temporality, or succession without return, perpetuity or eviternity, cyclical time, which elapses but returns, returning in the end intact the possibilities that were in the beginning; and eternity — as Boethius defined it, “full and simultaneous possession of all its moments”, tota simul et perfecta possessio. The notion of the triple time is found, perfectly equal, in all spiritual traditions, and also in the structure of ancient languages. In Arabic, there is a verbal tense for actions conceived as ended (in any chronological time), one for actions in fieri, another for actions conceived regardless of termination or continuation. They correspond, structurally, to time, to perennial continuity, to eternity. The same is seen in Greek or Hebrew.
The ternary of the worlds, in short, seems to apprehend, if not an ontological law, a truth imbricated in the very constitution of being, at least a “constant of the human spirit”, a universal tendency of man to face being as if it were so constituted. For this very reason, what surprises on it is not the ubiquity of its presence in the great religious traditions, but its absence in some of the small ones. Certain tribal cultures seem to be completely unaware of it, or to have a hazy and distant idea of it, the residue of an old forgotten doctrine. Mircea Eliade noticed in tribes in Africa and Polynesia the weakening of the sense of metaphysical eternity, parallel to a hypertrophic proliferation of cosmic deities or divinized natural forces — a swelling of perpetuity, which swallowed or covered up the sense of eternity.