Parmenides:
1.Thinking and the thought that it is are the same; for you will not find thought apart from what is, in relation to which it is uttered. (B 8.34-36)
2. For thought and being are the same. (B 3)
3. It is necessary to speak and to think what is; for being is, but nothing is not. (B 6.1-2)
4. Helplessness guides the wandering thought in their breasts; they are carried along deaf and blind alike, dazed, beasts without judgment, convinced that to be and not to be are the same and not the same, and that the road of all things is a backward-turning one. (B 6.5-9)
When I began the previous post I was wishing to address the ideas presented in these phrases, particularly the second one: “for thought and being are the same”.
I’d like to address these sentences because what I’ve been finding in authors like Foucault and other modern writers is that they don’t seem to make a clear distinction between being and thought. Of course I have hardly read them enough and I intend to do so but for now I still intend to pursue the question.
My perception is that many of these modern authors speak about the human being in general terms and don’t distinguish between areas that to me seem essential in order to really understand what is happening.
If we take a look at these sentences they seem to make no sense to our modern eyes and the ontological aspect of Parmenides was soon discarded, so it reads in the article but if we look at them with the ideas present in the Fourth Way System related to the higher emotional and intellectual center then the images presented here can be better grasped. “for thought and being are the same” could be understood from different angles if we related them to Fourth Way ideas.
We could think of it as “thought” in the higher intellectual center in which an individual can understand the laws of the universe or in the higher emotional centre in which the individual can see the truth about his own self. The question here would be, are these “understandings” or “perceptions”? Are they “thoughts” or something beyond “thoughts” that Parmenides and other such authors have called thoughts for lack of a word that better explains the phenomenon of knowing without thinking? Of being without explanations? Of being and acting from one’s being without an action that needed to account for it?
The idea is of course beautifully synthesized in the I AM of some spiritual traditions for in that I AM the totality of BEING is being expressed but what I am after is in beginning to tackle the problems of modern philosophy, psychology and sociology in terms of trying to understand why the separation into multiple sciences in which even the human being has disappeared, cannot possibly lead out of the present chaos. We must bring back the understanding of BEING if we are to recover the dignity of the human being for the idea of thought as the raison d'etre of the human being has also given the foundation for an elite of intellectuals in power that does not help the human cause and on the contrary, is the new justification for innumerable "classes" and separations.
If we go back to the beginning and consider only the idea of being and thought we can much better understand a text like Parmenides if we can use Gurdjieff’s System. Parmenides’ fourth sentence could well adjust to the idea of the formatory apparatus in which only a small portion of the mind is active. Without a “being” to guide them, individuals are helpless: Helplessness guides the wandering thought in their breasts; they are carried along deaf and blind alike, dazed, beasts without judgment, convinced that to be and not to be are the same and not the same, and that the road of all things is a backward-turning one.
What’s interesting about this sentence is that the relation between being and thought is clearly pictured: when the thoughts are wondering in a being who does not know whether he is or is not, helplessness guides him into a road where all things are a backward-turning one.
It is also a great definition for the state of depression. It is people who are not confident enough in themselves, who’s “being” has been so infringed upon that “are carried along deaf and blind alike, dazed, beasts without judgment”, without “being” or “aim”.
The strange phenomenon that we are witnessing today is that “depression” seems not to be something that happens to people suddenly but the state in which people are “growing up” as if the semi-destruction of the family that has come about with the economic system produces individuals perfectly adapted to the role of submission in the social order because their sense of “being” is already much weakened in childhood.
I am trying to understand phenomenon such as great masses of people trying to escape to cults rather than confronting the misgivings of society itself. People have certainly lost hope in the status quo itself, but then when they join the cult, it is clear that they are already so terribly vulnerable that instead of fighting the systematic dismantling of their inner and outer structure, they blindly and willingly submit to the cult’s status quo which is as economically submitting as regular society’s and much more individually castrating than regular society’s.
There are many areas that are not clear in this exploration, I will continue to work on it until I reach a place where even a young person can understand what is being said.
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