Wilber's Non-Dual Reading of Plato
Wilber's Non-Dual Reading of Plato
Wilber's View
Wilber's Plato is not the standard textbook Plato — a rationalist metaphysician of abstract Forms — but a contemplative mystic whose deepest teaching was never written down. He leans on Plato's own Seventh Epistle, where Plato says his central "mystical" knowledge cannot be put into words and that no treatise on it exists or ever will. From this, Wilber argues that the Western tradition's self-image as "a series of footnotes to Plato" is telling: the footnotes are necessarily partial, because the one book they're footnoting was deliberately never written.
He extends the same reading to Parmenides, via a striking comparison to the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna: Parmenides' famous arguments that motion and change are illusory look, on a literal reading, simply confused — but read as contemplative "pointing-out instructions" for recognizing awareness prior to motion and rest (as in Dzogchen or Vedanta), rather than as literal claims about physics, they take on a different and more coherent meaning. Wilber's ultimate case is that Plato, properly read, unites both Ascent and Descent — the world of appearance isn't dismissed as mere illusory shadow, but embraced as "a visible, sensible God," even while the causal One beyond it is affirmed as more fundamental. That makes Plato, for Wilber, an early exemplar of non-dualism, not simply a philosopher of transcendence.
In Sex, Ecology, Spirituality
"It is not something that can be put into words… No treatise by me concerning it exists or ever will exist." (Plato, Seventh Epistle)
But this much at any rate I can affirm about any present or future writers who pretend to knowledge of the matters with which I concern myself [mystical knowledge of the One]; in my judgement it is impossible that they should have any understanding of the subject. It is not something that can be put into words like other branches of learning; only after long partnership in a common life [contemplative community] devoted to this very thing does truth flash upon the soul, like a flame kindled by a leaping spark. No treatise by me concerning it exists or ever will exist.
— Plato, Seventh Epistle, quoted in Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, "The Way Up Is the Way Down"
"So much of our Western tradition is supposed to be a series of footnotes to Plato… the crucial book… was never written."
IT HAS ALWAYS struck me as odd that so much of our Western tradition is supposed to be a series of footnotes to Plato, and yet the crucial book to which we are all footnotes… was never written. "No treatise by me concerning it exists or ever will exist."
— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, "The Way Up Is the Way Down"
"Zeno (and Parmenides) might have been attempting… a direct pointing to reality freed of all differentiating conceptualizations." (footnote)
Reading the remaining fragments of Parmenides, one gets the strongest impression that he had directly glimpsed the causal, formless "One," against which all manifest objects are fleeting and ultimately unreal shadows… If we take his assertion that motion does not exist as being literally true, then Parmenides has to be seen as being rather confused. But if these statements were in fact part of the "pointing out instructions" for recognizing primordial awareness (free of differentiating conceptualization), then they take on rather profound meaning. From Dzogchen Buddhism to Vedanta Hinduism, for example, we often find statements such as "that which moves is not Real."
— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, "The Way Up Is the Way Down" (footnote)
"The entire manifest world—this world—Plato calls a 'visible, sensible God.'"
The manifest realm, far from being a world of shadows in the Cave, is now seen as the realm and very embodiment of the Radiance of Spirit itself, suffused with Goodness and with Love… The entire manifest world—this world—Plato calls a "visible, sensible God."
— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, "The Way Up Is the Way Down"
See Also
- ascent-and-descent — the general framework this reading of Plato is an instance of
