A Brief Metaphysical Examination Of The Pleroma

On the evening of July 4th 2011, I awoke into what I can only call a world of complete sacrality.  While I only spent what felt like several minutes there, time itself seemed quite nebulous. It wasn’t a matter of concern.  Only when death is a part of the equation does time actually matter. For awhile after this event, I was in a state of almost constant joy where even the thought of death no longer assailed me.  While in this divine world, there was a knowing that the ground I stood upon was in fact the real world.  Everything that I was in the physical domain was a contrived view of what was real, a tangential development that was a dream of my completed self or Seraph.   But the idea of the physical world being a dream is really quite weak, I use it only as an allusion.

To seek a reason for the emergence of the physical domain is impossible.  I say that because like everything else it is not what it appears to be.  Gaudapada and Parmenides taught the same teaching, which is summed up perfectly in something Angelus Silesius once wrote,

“The (physical) world is a beautiful little nothing.”

For Gaudapada this was Ajativada, which expressed quite well that nothing “real” has ever simply emerged or come to be.  That which ”is” or “is real” has always existed from beginningless time and has forever been immortal.  Therefore anything that is unrealized or not immortal is unreal.  The implication of this is frankly astounding.  Ultimately it means that our human identity in its most unrealized and base state is unreal entirely.  The true journey of the individual is not only his or her journey home, but also (and synonymously) a journey to the discovery of ones own immortal self or Seraph.  To make a long story short, the physical world is not ”real” in the truest sense.  It is purely a derivative in the same way the purely physical being is a derivative of its Seraph.  Parmenides himself writes:

“How could what is perish? How could it have come to be? For if it came into being, it is not; nor is it if ever it is going to be. Thus coming into being is extinguished, and destruction unknown.”

A few moments in this divine world radically altered me leaving me with a memory that sometimes works as a doorway through which I can partially access that place again.  Ever since I “returned” to the physical domain, to this strange dream of my Seraph, my mind has been preoccupied with this celestial world and immortal world of which our physical domain is a symbol.  For the sake of this article, I will call this divine world the Pleroma a word that essentially means “completeness” or ”fullness of divine being.”  I am not a gnostic, nor do I subscribe to the classical or neo-gnostic view of existence that is so popular today in the various new age spiritualities.  It would be fair to say that I am very much opposed to these ideas because they do not acknowledge the divinity, beauty, and meaning of the physical world.

Carl Jung experienced a NDE after suffering a heart attack. His NDE more than any other I have read describes this “fullness of being.”  From “Memories, Dreams, Reflections” Jung writes:

After a long internal dialogue I understand that this divine world is in fact “complete” in every sense of the word.  It has no need of expansion or progression because it is already perfected.  It has no need of growth or “learning lessons” because it is already all-knowing.  The “Gods” and Heroes still abide there as they have for all time.  The real tragedy is that we have forgotten how to find the Pleroma, we seek it outwardly when it exists not only within, but here and now.  I am doing my best to present this not as a worthless platitude, but as something so simple that it flies right by most of us.

At this point I am forced to walk a very thin line that can easily be confusing.  In that Pleroma, the individual is part and parcel of God.  More than that, there is no clear division between the individual, God, Pleroma, and other Individuals–everything contains everything else within itself.  While these are all united in a world of pure spontaneity, these seeming divisions (God, Individuals, Pleroma) clearly exist and it is through these divisions that God is able to reflect upon himself through his individualities, which are equally eternal and acausal attributes.  This is what makes the Pleroma a strange affair entirely.   We have no reference to it in the physical domain but language, which in and of itself contains errors and variables.

There was no stronger expounder of Vedanta than Ramanuja.  Instead of collapsing human individuality and the uniqueness of these eternal attributes of God (Seraphs) back into an impersonal static God, they were upheld eternally and made co-heirs with God.   So while there is indeed the neoplatonic One, a multiplicity still exists that allows a diversity of being even when the physical world has passed out of our sphere of perception through death.  Because the fundamental equation of the Pleroma is 0=0, divine attributes can clearly exist without taking away from the infinity and divinity of that Pleroma.  This diversity of beings living within the Pleroma are in a perfected state that has no extension in time or space.  Again, 0=0.   The division between God and Man is pertinent only in the physical world when we exist in a state of separation from our most divine attribute, the deepest nature of yourself upon which a physical disguise has been laid. 

None of this negates the importance of the physical world.  We are presently in the Pleroma, have always been in the Pleroma, and can never leave the Pleroma–it is endless.