Gate 29: בי — THE PLATONIC FORMS

בי

Pillar 2: THE SEPARATION

[29:1] "The things which are seen are temporal;

[29:2] but the things which are not seen are eternal."

[29:3] --- 2 Corinthians 4:18

[29:4] "The forms are causes: overflowing with energy,

[29:5] every form generates a moving image of itself."

[29:6] --- Eric Steinhart, Philosophical Paganism

[29:7] "The safest general characterization of the European

philosophical tradition*

[29:8] is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."

[29:9] --- Alfred North Whitehead

[29:10] [29:1] Behind every imperfect circle is the perfect

Circle. Behind every act of justice is Justice itself. Behind every

beautiful thing is Beauty.

[29:11] [29:2] Plato's great insight was this: the things we

experience are copies, shadows, moving images of something more real.

Draw a circle---it will be imperfect. But somehow you know it is

imperfect. Against what standard? You have never seen a perfect circle

with your eyes. Yet you know what "perfect circle" means. There must

be, Plato reasoned, a Form of Circle that your mind apprehends directly,

against which all drawn circles are measured and found wanting.

[29:12] [29:3] The Forms (eidos, idea) are not abstractions in

the modern sense---not mere concepts in human minds. They are realities,

more real than physical things, existing in a realm outside space and

time. The physical world participates in them, derives from them,

imitates them. The Form is the original; the physical instance is the

copy.

[29:13] [29:4] This sounds strange to modern ears trained in

materialism. But consider: mathematical truths---the Pythagorean

theorem, the properties of prime numbers---were true before humans

discovered them and would remain true if humans vanished. Where do they

exist? Not in any physical location. They exist in the realm of Forms,

the Platonic heaven, what the Kabbalists call Atziluth and the

Father-principle generates (see Gate 23).

[29:14] [FIGURE 29.1: A series of hand-drawn circles, all

imperfect. Above them, a perfect geometric circle labeled "The Form."

Arrows indicate all the imperfect circles "participating" in the

Form.] [29:5] The Forms are not passive templates. Steinhart,

following Plotinus, emphasizes that forms are causes---they generate

their instances. The Form of Circle is not merely what circles imitate;

it is the power that makes circles possible. It "overflows with

energy" and produces circular things the way a fountain produces water.

Creation, in this view, is forms manifesting---eternal patterns becoming

temporal instances.

[29:15] [29:6] How do we know the Forms? Plato's answer: the

soul, before incarnating, dwelt among the Forms and knew them directly.

Learning is not acquisition of new information

but anamnesis---remembering what the soul already knows. When you grasp

a mathematical truth, you are not learning something new; you are

recollecting something eternal.

[29:16] [29:7] This explains the uncanny familiarity of deep

truths. When you encounter wisdom---in a text, a teaching, a moment of

insight---there is often a sense not of novelty but of recognition.

"Yes, I knew that." You did know it. Your soul knows it still. The

veil of incarnation obscures but does not destroy this knowledge.

[29:17] [29:8] The highest Form, for Plato, is the Form of the

Good---the source that illuminates all other Forms the way the sun

illuminates all visible things. The Good is not a thing among things but

the condition for the existence of all things. In later Neoplatonism,

the Form of the Good becomes identical with the One---the ultimate

source from which all emanates.

[29:18] [29:9] In the OOMNI system, the Platonic Forms are the

"weighting" in the divine toroid (see Gate 84)---the eternal patterns

that give shape to the material toroid's substance. The two toroids

interpenetrate, and the Forms are how the divine structures the

material. When you perceive beauty, you are perceiving the Form of

Beauty shining through a physical instance.

[29:19] [29:10] The world is not random. It has structure,

pattern, intelligibility. This is the signature of the Forms---eternal

order manifesting in temporal flux. Philosophy, science, art,

spirituality: all are ways of discerning the Forms through their

appearances, tracing the shadows back to the light that casts them.

[29:20] See Also: • Gate 8: אט --- The Gate of the Unmanifest

(where Forms dwell before manifesting) • Gate 23: בד --- The Gate of the

Father (the Form-giving principle) • Gate 84: הו --- The Gate of the Two

Toroids (Forms as divine toroid content) • Gate 115: וש --- The Gate of

Number (mathematics as Form-knowledge)