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Emanationism - the origin of existence
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Emanationism
Emanationism is Platonic monism, and a component in the cosmology or
cosmogony of certain religious or philosophical systems that argue that
a sentient, self-aware Supreme Being is an impossibility, that the
totality of both the empirical and ontological cosmos is the result of
The One whose nature and attribute are will(ing) which is objectively
directed and results in lower and lower spiritual modalities of being,
and lastly matter (the physical universe) which is the result of this
outward flow of the Absolute.
Key principles
That complex things are created in nature is not in question either by
Creationists (Abrahamic religions, etc.), Emanationists, or nihilists
and atheists. Rather, the two principles that are in question are the
locus for creation and whether a sentient, self-aware Absolute (‘God’)
is a necessity for creation. Emanationists such as Pythagoras, Plotinus,
Gotama, and others argued that complex patterns in nature were a natural
consequence of procession from the One (Hen, Absolute).
According to Emanationism, the Absolute, its nature and its activity
must be inseparably one thing only, namely will, such that the nature
and activity of the Absolute is both one and the same (again, will) and
by its very nature is also its activity ‘to will’ and wills things to be
or occur, thereby maintaining the center of the logical system of
Emanationism. In addition, agnosis, or the lack of Subjective gnosis, is
a primordial privation which must be corrected before a metaphysical "Oneing"
(Plotinus) can occur. Through this process, the transcendent yet
immanent will of individuals is made self-reflexive by recollecting back
further and further. Eventually it will reach that nature, the Noetic
(and real) self, which is antecedent to the phenomenal, corporeal self.
The ontologically trascendent yet immanent Self is seen as being one's
unactualized nature, and this nature will remain unactualized until
contemplation is brought to fruition, thereby bringing into actuality
what had been merely potential.
According to this paradigm, creation proceeds as an effulgence from the
First Principle (the Absolute or Godhead). The Supreme Light or
Consciousness descends through a series of stages, gradations, worlds or
hypostases, becoming progressively more material and embodied. In time
it will turn around to return to the One (epistrophe), retracing its
steps through spiritual knowledge and contemplation.
Origins
The primary classical exponent of Emanationism was Plotinus, wherein his
work, the Enneads, all things phenomenal and otherwise were an emanation
from the One (Hen). In Ennead 5.1.6, Emanationism is compared to a
diffusion from the One, of which there are three primary hypostases, the
One (hen), the Intellect/will (nous), and the Soul (psyche tou pantos).
For Plotinus, emanation, or the "soul's descent", is a result of the
Indefinite Dyad, or tolma, the primordial agnosis inherent to and within
the Absolute, the Godhead.
Plotinus (a key expositor of Emanationism) in particular argued that
there is no knowledge or sentience in the Absolute, and that all things
noetic and corporeal were as well a logos or proportional phenomena of
the emanation of and by the One. In Plotinian Emanationism, there are
lesser and lesser potencies of will as procession occurs beginning from
the One, through the noetic, or the soul, finally ending in base matter,
which is generally seen as utter privation.
Relationship to other belief systems
Emanationism is opposed to both Creationism (wherein the universe is
created by a sentient God who knowingly creates it) and nihilism (which
posits no underlying subjective and/or ontological nature behind
phenomena). Creation itself is merely a logos (Republic 509d-511) of the
Absolute which "pours forth" as lesser and lesser potencies of the One,
proceeding from the One, to the Nous, then to the Soul, and lastly as
utter privation, matter (hyle), or, as Plotinus called matter, "an image
of an image" (cf. Plato's Allegory of the cave). Emanationists see this
paradigm for the cosmos as the model that most logically corrects the
supposed inconsistencies, paradoxes and philosophical incongruities that
are found in Creationism and nihilism. Though both Plotinus and Plato as
well as Neoplatonist like Iamblichus spoke of the demiurge of the one or
absolute monad amalgamating or crafting physical reality out of chaos.
The demiurge is depicted as the agent of the one or monad.
Similar belief systems
Other models of Emanationism than that found in Neoplatonism are that of
Advaita Vedanta and presecular Buddhism, both of which posit agnosis/nescience
as the principle whereby emanation (proodos) occurs, by means of
contemplative and assimilative techniques, the Soul is able to
assimilate (epistrophe) itself in union with the One, its nature.
Specifically that Gotama the Buddha said, in his 'Contingent Manifestion'
(paticca-samuppada) philosophical model for the cosmos, that avijja (agnosis,
nescience) was the 1st principle of 'becoming' (bhava), in a 12fold
chain culminating lasting in death and reincarnation; i.e. that agnosis
(avijja) of the will (citta) as pertains its unrealized natural Divinity
was the uncaused cause of all becoming.
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