Wilber on Stages of Spiritual Experience

[Balder]

 

Wilber's Transpersonal Spectrum

 

“[T]he psychic state is a type of nature mysticism (where individuals report a phenomenological experience of being one with the entire natural-sensory world; e.g., Thoreau, Whitman). It is called ‘psychic’, not because paranormal events occur — although evidence suggests that they sometimes do — but because it seems to be increasingly understood that what appeared to be a merely physical world is actually a psychophysical world, with conscious, psychic, or noetic capacities being an intrinsic part of the universe, and this seems to result in a phenomenological experience of oneness with the natural world [Fox, 1990]). The subtle state is a type of deity mysticism (where individuals report an experience of being one with the source or ground of the sensory-natural world; e.g. St. Teresa of Avila, Hildegard of Bingen). The causal state is a type of formless mysticism (where individuals experience cessation, or immersion in unmanifest, formless consciousness; e.g., Pseudo-Dionysus, The Cloud of

Unknowing, Patanjali; see Forman, 1990). And the nondual is a type of integral

mysticism (which is experienced as the union of the manifest and the unmanifest,

or the union of Form and Emptiness; e.g., Lady Tsogyal, Sri Ramana Maharshi,

Hui Neng, [e.g., Forman, 1998b]).”

 

PSYCHIC (Now Illumined Mind)

 

Transition to the psychic level marks a transition to the first truly transpersonal orientation.  Beyond the domains of matter, life, and mind, the psychic level is the domain of the soul.  A person at the psychic level does not dissociate from matter, life, and mind, but rather transcends and includes them in an embrace of truly cosmic consciousness – a conscious identification with nature as the perfect expression of Spirit.

 

At this stage, you actually transcend your individual self – you begin to realize witnessing consciousness.  “The observer in you, the Witness in you, transcends the isolated person in you and opens instead – from within or from behind, as Emerson said – onto a vast expanse of awareness no longer obsessed with the individual bodymind, no longer a respecter or abuser of persons, no longer fascinated by the passing joys and the set-apart sorrows of the lonely self, but standing still in silence as an opening or clearing through which light shines, not from the world but into it… That which observes or witnesses the self, the person, is precisely to that degree free of the self, the person, and through that opening comes pouring the light and power of a Self, a Soul, that, as Emerson puts it, ‘would make our knees to bend.’”

 

Those persons through whom the soul shines are not therefore weak characters, timid personalities, meek presences.  They are personal plus, not personal minus.  “Precisely because they are no longer exclusively identified with the individual personality, and yet because they still preserve the personality, then through that personality flows the force and fire of the soul.  They may be soft-spoken and often remain in silence, but it is a thunderous silence that veritably drowns out the egos chattering loudly around them.  Or they may be animated and very outgoing, but their dynamism is magnetic, and people are drawn somehow to the presence, fascinated.”

 

At the new, deeper within of the psychic level, we come also to a new, wider beyond, a beyond that “is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them, and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and being also proceed.”  At the psychic level, the level of the Soul (or Over-Soul, as Emerson puts it), we move beyond the worldcentric orientation of the previous level to a conscious union with all of manifestation – not just with humans, but with all nature, with the cosmos, with all creatures great and small.  This is the first dawning of transpersonal, cosmic consciousness, and the domain of nature mysticism.  Individuality does not disappear, but is negated and preserved in a deeper and wider (transpersonal) ground, a ground which includes all of nature.

 

Importantly, this is not a regressive elevation of pre-human nature, but an expansive perspective or consciousness which embraces nature and culture, recognizing them equally as expressions of a transcendent Spirit.  In other words, this is not a regression to Fulcrum-2 (biocentric immersion and nondifferentiation), but the emergence of Fulcrum-7, the first of the transpersonal bands.  At this level, worldcentric conception (rationality and vision-logic) gives way to worldcentric experience, a direct experience of Self and World conjoined in Spirit.  The universal or global ideals of integral thinking or vision-logic comes to fruition in the experience of a truly universal Self, common to all, shining through all.

 

An example of a psychic-level experience, from One Taste:

"The hike through the mountain with my fiancé was everything I wanted. Madly in love, slightly crazed, we both were babbling fools. More like children, but it didn’t matter. For an hour John had dutifully carried the picnic basket on his back, kidding all the time that it was only fitting that he should carry the food of the CEO of Digital Data Corporation, and I said, No, it’s only fitting for a love slave, and that would be you. And I wasn’t even finished with the sentence when suddenly I disappeared, and there was only the vista in front of me, and John, and this body... but no me, or no I, or... well_, I’m not sure.  I was one with all of this scenery, one with the mountain, one with the sky, it was exhila­rating, a little scary, but mostly completely peaceful, like coming home. I’ve never really told anyone about it, because on Monday I was back at the office, running Digital, and who would have believed me anyway?

It never happened again. I sometimes read about things like this, one­ness and whatnot, cosmic consciousness, but none of the words sound right for what happened to me. I hear that some people can stay in this state constantly, but I don’t see how, I really doubt it. You’d lose all sense of orientation, I think. Anyway, it came and went. The more I think about it, the more I think it might have been something like a small seizure. It didn’t seem like it at the time, but now it does. After all, what else could it be, seriously?" (pp. 146-147).

 

SUBTLE (Now Intuitive Mind)

 

As the process of interiorization continues, the soul and God enter an even deeper interior marriage, which discloses at its summit a divine union of Soul and Spirit.  This union is recognized as being prior to any of its manifestations as matter or life or mind, a union that outshines any expression of nature.  Nature/culture mysticism of the psychic level gives way to deity mysticism at the subtle level.  The God within “announces itself in terms undreamt of in gross manifestation, with a Light that blinds the sun and a Song that thunders nature and culture into stunned and awestruck silence.”

The Spirit that was intuited at the psychic level comes forward at the subtle level, including and outshining all previous stages.  In other words, “as your identity begins to transcend the isolated and individual bodymind, you start to intuit that there is a Ground of Being or genuine Divinity, beyond ego, and beyond appeals to mythic god figures or ratio­nalistic scientism or existential bravery. This Deity form can actually be intuited. The more you develop beyond the isolated and existential bodymind, the more you develop toward Spirit, which, at the subtle level, is often experienced as Deity Form or archetypal Self. By that I mean, for example, very concrete experiences of profound Light, a Being of Light, or just of extreme clarity and brilliance of awareness.

“The point is that you are seeing something beyond nature, beyond the existential, beyond the psychic, beyond even cosmic identity. You are starting to see the hidden or esoteric dimension, the dimension outside the ordinary cosmos, the dimension that transcends nature. You see the Light, and sometimes this Light literally shines like the light of a thou­sand suns. It overwhelms you, empowers you, energizes you, remakes you, drenches you. This is what scholars have called the “numinous” nature of subtle spirit. Numinous and luminous. This is, I believe, why saints are universally depicted with halos of light around their heads. That is actually what they see. Divine Light. My favorite reading from

Dante:

Fixing my gaze upon the Eternal Light

I saw within its depths,

Bound up with love together in one volume,

The scattered leaves of all the universe.

Within the luminous profound subsistence

Of that Exalted Light saw I three circles

Of three colors yet of one dimension

And by the second seemed the first reflected

As rainbow is by rainbow, and the third

Seemed fire that equally from both is breathed.

That is not mere poetry. That is an almost mathematical description of one type of experience of the subtle level. Anyway, you can also expe­rience this level as a discovery of your own higher self, your soul, the Holy Spirit. “He who knows himself knows God,” said Saint Clement” (from an interview in Quest, pp. 43-45).

Wilber points to Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle as an exemplary text of subtle-level mysticism, in which soul and God are joined in a divine marriage and union.  Teresa describes a spiritual journey from what she calls the 5^th mansion, where the soul is temporarily absorbed in God and all sensory experience and understanding cease, through the 6^th mansion, where the soul becomes absorbed in God for longer periods of time (days instead of minutes), to the 7^th mansion, which is where spiritual marriage occurs – “the union of the whole soul with God.”

 

An example of a subtle-level experience, from One Taste:

"It was just the other day, I can still remember it as if it’s happening right now, vivid, electric, weird. I was sitting alone, at home, and it’s around midnight maybe. I have the distinct feeling that somebody or something is in the house—you know that feeling? Well at first it really scared me, I was really scared. I finally got up the nerve to go through the house, checked it really well. I sit back down and it happens.

This really intense fireball, I don’t what else to call it, simply material­ized right there in front of me, right there in the living room. I know this sounds crazy, but this has never happened to me before, I don’t see things, you know? But it wasn’t just an electrical thing. I know this sounds crazy, but it was alive. Well, I’ll just say it: it was Love. It was a living fire of Love and Light. I know this as sure as I’m sitting here. It sort of moved in front of me to on top of my head, then back in front of me, then on top of my head. When it sits on top of my head my whole spine begins to vibrate, and shooting currents run up it, right to the top. Pretty crazy, huh? And then as soon as I knew that this was Love, it just disappeared, just like that. It just went away, but it scared the daylights out of me. But then it didn’t, I mean it didn’t scare me. It made me feel completely safe, I’ve never really felt like that.

I’ve heard about, you know, that light at the end of the tunnel? Except I wasn’t dead. But I know what I know, and I know that Love is some­where out there. My entire body feels different somehow. My spine hurts, like somebody plugged it into the wall socket, I don’t know ex­actly. But the truth is out there. I know that. Oh, and I know I’ve started praying, just to say thanks" (pp.147-148).

 

CAUSAL (Now Overmind)

 

In the subtle level, the Soul and God unite; in the causal level, the Soul and God are both transcended in the prior identity of the Godhead, or pure formless awareness, pure consciousness-as-such, the pure Self as pure Spirit (Atman = Brahman).  No longer the Supreme Union of God and Soul, but the “Supreme Identity” of Godhead.

 

Pure formless Spirit is seen to be the Goal, Summit, and Source of all manifestation.  This is the causal, pure Godhead, formless awareness that is without self, without other, without God, as described by Meister Eckhart.

 

According to Eckhart, the individual at this level experiences a breakthrough in which individual and divine will are left behind, and s/he discovers that s/he and God are one – unborn, undying. 

 

The causal is sometimes described as the Abyss, emptiness, nothingness (ayin).  Eckhart advises not to flinch from the emptiness, because it is in this experience that one’s identity with God is discovered.  This emptiness is not exactly an experience, but a direct apprehension – utterly free of duality, of subject and object, of thought, of time.

 

In this state of formless and silent awareness, one does not see the Godhead for one is the Godhead.  One realizes at this stage that the Self is not the body, not the mind, not thought; it is not feelings, sensations, or perceptions; it is radically free of all objects, subjects, and dualities; it cannot be seen, known, or thought.  It is the unseen Witness of all arising, including the arising of Soul and God.

 

As Ramana Maharshi says, “In that state, there is Being alone.  There is no you, no I, nor he; no present, nor past, nor future.  It is beyond time and space, beyond expression.  It is ever there.”

 

An example of causal-level experience, from One Taste:

 

"Nature retreats before its God, Light finds it own Abode. That’s all I keep thinking as I enter into this extraordinary vastness. I am going in and up, in and up, in and up, and I have ceased to have any bodily feelings at all. In fact, I don’t even know where my body is, or if I even have one. I know only shimmering sheaths of luminous bliss, each giving way to the next, each softer and yet stronger, brighter and yet fainter, more intense yet harder to see.

 

Above all, I am Full. I am full to infinity, in this ocean of light. I am full to infinity, in this ocean of bliss. I am full to infinity, in this ocean of love. I cannot conceive of wanting something, desiring something, grasping after anything. I can contain no more than is already here, full to infinity. I am beyond myself, beyond this world, beyond pain and suffering and self and same, and I know this is the home of God, and I know that I am in God’s Presence. I am one with Presence, it is obvious. I am one with God, it is certain. I am one with Spirit, it is given. I shall never want again, for Grace abounds, here in the luminous mist of infinity.

 

Around the edges of this love-bliss there are tender tears, the faint reminders that I have so wanted this, so longed for this, so desperately yearned for this—to be saturated to the ends of the universe, to be full and free and final. All the years, all the lifetimes, searching for only this, searching and suffering and screaming for only this. And so the tender tears stand at the edge of my infinity, reminding me.

 

Out of this Light and Love, all things issue forth, of this I am now certain, for this I have seen with the eye of my own true soul. Into this Light and Love, all things will return, of this I am now certain, for this I have seen with the eye of my own true soul. And I have returned with a message: Peace be unto you, my human brothers and sisters; and peace be unto you, my animal brothers and sisters; and peace be unto you, my inanimate brothers and sisters—for all is well, and all is well, and all manner of things shall be well. We are all of the same Light and Love, of this I am now certain, for this I have seen with the eye of my own true soul" (pp. 148-149).

 

NONDUAL

 

When one breaks through the causal absorption in pure unmanifest and unborn Spirit, the entire manifest world arises again, but this time, as a perfect expression of Spirit, and as Spirit.  The Formless and the entire world of Manifest Form – pure Emptiness and whole Kosmos – are seen to be not-two (nondual).  The Witness is seen to be everything that is witnessed – there is no division at all.

 

Wilber uses the following words of Ramana Maharshi to illustrate the viewpoint of ultimate nondual realization:

 

The world is illusory;

Brahman alone is Real;

Brahman is the world.

 

“The first two lines represent pure causal-level awareness, or unmanifest absorption in pure or formless Spirit; line three represents the ultimate or nondual completion (the union of the Formless with the entire world of Form).  The Godhead completely transcends all worlds and thus completely includes all worlds.  It is the final within, leading to a final beyond – a beyond that, confined to absolutely nothing, embraces absolutely everything.”

 

“When all things are nothing but God, there are then no things, and no God, but only this.

 

No objects, no subjects, only this.  No entering this state, no leaving it; it is absolutely and eternally and always already the case; the simple feeling of being, the basic and simple immediacy of any and all states, prior to the four quadrants, prior to the split between inside and outside, prior to seer and seen, prior to the rise of worlds, ever-present as pure Presence, the simple feeling of being:  empty awareness as the opening or clearing in which all worlds arise, ceaselessly:  I-I is the box the universe comes in.

 

Abiding as I-I, the world arises as before, but now there is no one to witness it.  I-I is not “in here” looking “out there”; there is no in here, no out there, only this.  It is the radical end to all egocentrism, all geocentrism, all biocentrism, all sociocentrism, all theocentrism, because it is the radical end of all centrisms, period. It is the final decentering of all manifest realms, in all domains, at all times, in all places.  As Dzogchen Buddhism would put it, because all phenomena are primordially empty, all phenomena, just as they are, are self-liberated as they arise.

 

Zen would put it all much more simply, and point directly to just this.

 

Still pond

A frog jumps in

Plop!”

 

[kelamuni]

[kelamuni]

 

In the above opening tract on Wilber's spectrum of transpersonal consciousness, we find out the following:

 

"As the process of interiorization continues, the soul and God enter an even deeper interior marriage... Wilber points to Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle as an exemplary text of subtle-level mysticism, in which soul and God are joined in a divine marriage and union.... In the subtle level, the Soul and God unite...."

"The subtle state is a type of deity mysticism...."

 

"Pure formless Spirit is seen to be the Goal, Summit, and Source of all manifestation.  This is the causal, pure Godhead, formless awareness... ; in the causal level, the Soul and God are both transcended in the prior identity of the Godhead, or pure formless awareness, pure consciousness-as-such..."

"The causal state is a type of formless mysticism...."

 

In other words, in the subtle state, the structure that is experienced is that of God, while in the causal state, the structure that is experienced is that of formlessness or Godhead.

Let us now turn to the chart given immediately above, which can be found in Excerpt G. Turn your attention to the bottom right where we find the Hindu microcosmic equivalents to the other traditions given. There we also find the terminology that Wilber is using above and the respective structures (here, "bodies" or sharira) that these terms refer to in the Hindu tradition: 'gross,' 'subtle,' and 'causal' (Sanskrit: sthula, sukshma, karana). Beyond these lie the fourth, or turiya, the pure Atman. If we turn our attention to the lower left we have the Western (Christian/Platonic) terminological equivalents: physical body (gross), mind (subtle) soul (causal), spirit (atman/turiya). If we turn to the upper left we find the Hindu macrocosmic equivalents of the bodies* -- the causal body corresponds to brahman with form or saguna brahman (or Ishvara) while the pure atman correspnonds to brahman without form or nirguna brahman. Let us now turn our attention to the Christian mystical equivalents to the Hindu macrocosmic terms in the upper right. There we find that saguna brahman or Ishvara corresponds to God in the Christian mystical tradition and nirguna or formless brahman corresponds to the Godhead (of Eckhart).

Now if we follow the equivalences around the circle this means that the term "God" will correspond to or be equivalent to the term ''causal." But in the above tract, Wilber has stated that the subtle state is concerned with a kind of "deity mysticism," and that its structure is God, while the causal state, concerns itself with the formless Godhead.

These two tracts are thus inconsistent with each other in terms of their terminology. QED 

 

*Huston Smith actually gets the subtle macrocosmic wrong calling it the "devas." It, in fact, should be the Hiranyagarbha, or "golden orb."

 

 

 

 

 

[kelamuni]

This is actually a puzzle. There's a dialectical conundrum behind this.

[Balder]

Interesting, Kela.  I think I recall you discussing an inconsistency like this before, perhaps back on the old forum.  What is behind the discrepancy, do you think?  Following two different accounts (perhaps traditional and Adi Da), without maybe recognizing the "shifting" or redefining of terms between the competing streams?

[Christophe]

Tom: No separation.

 

(Anti) Oedipus.

 

:-/

[Balder]

On a related note to this thread, I've wondered, Tom, if you find any correlations between your reflections on acausal freedom (being-the-cause) and Wilber's central sacred image in his system, The Causal.

[Edward theurj Berge]

But does one have to go through the "stages" of subtle and causal to reach non-dual? Since these "states" aren't stage-like to begin with?

[Balder]

I believe Wilber says that any one of these states can be peak-experienced at any time, but when they are stabilized through deliberate cultivation, they frequently are stabilized in stage-like fashion (one before the other).  I'm not sure that's necessarily the case, however. 

 

theurj said:

But does one have to go through the "stages" of subtle and causal to reach non-dual? Since these "states" aren't stage-like to begin with?

[Christophe]

Tom: Three is the language of temporal development (left brain linear).  Four is the language of nontemporal wholeness (right brain wholistic).

 

But three is also the number of the christian trinity, which is a nontemporal wholeness?

 

A stool with three chair legs is stable, with four legs, it might wobble?

 

The Tetragrammeton is four (Mother, Father, Son, Daughter) but the symbol  implies five, since the return to the systemic starting point produces a minimal differance, the negation of the negation leaves a remainder; thus a whole new sequence is started?

[Edward theurj Berge]

If we're going to start getting all numerological mayhaps we should consult the grandmaster of number on this, Aleister Crowley? The following is from The Book of Thoth and makes good sense:

There are ten numbers in the decimal system; and there is a genuine reason why there should be ten numbers, and only ten, in a numerical system which is not merely mathematical, but philosophical.

One must begin, as a mathematician would, with the idea of Zero, Absolute Zero, which turns out on examination to mean any quantity that one may choose, but not, as the layman may at first suppose, Nothing, in the “absence-of-anything” vulgar sense of the word. The Qabalists expanded this idea of Nothing, and got a second kind of Nothing which they called “Ain Soph”-“Without Limit”. (This idea seems not unlike that of Space.) They then decided that in order to interpret this mere absence of any means of definition, it was necessary to postulate the Ain Soph Aur-“Limitless Light”. By this they seem to have meant very much what the late Victorian men of science meant, or thought that they meant, by the Luminiferous Ether. (The Space-Time Continuum?) All this is evidently without form and void; these are abstract conditions, not positive ideas.

The next step must be the idea of Position. One must formulate this thesis: If there is anything except Nothing, it must exist within this Boundless Light; within this Space; within this inconceivable Nothingness, which cannot exist as Nothing-ness, but has to be conceived of as a Nothingness composed of the annihilation of two imaginary opposites. Thus appears The Point, which has “neither parts nor magnitude, but only position”.

But position does not mean anything at all unless there is something else, some other position with which it can be compared. One has to describe it. The only way to do this is to have another Point, and that means that one must invent the number Two, making possible The Line.

But this Line does not really mean very much, because there is yet no measure of length. The limit of knowledge at this stage is that there are two things, in order to be able to talk about them at all. But one cannot say that they are near each other, or that they are far apart; one can only say that they are distant. In order to discriminate between them at all, there must be a third thing. We must have another point. One must invent The Surface; one must invent The Triangle. In doing this, incidentally, appears the whole of Plane Geometry. One can now say, “A is nearer to B than A is to C”.

But, so far, there is no substance in any of these ideas. In fact there are no ideas at all except the idea of Distance and perhaps the idea of Between-ness, and of Angular Measurement; so that plane Geometry, which now exists in theory, is after all completely inchoate and incoherent. There has been no approach at all to the conception of a really existing thing. No more has been done than to make definitions, all in a purely ideal and imaginary world.

Now then comes The Abyss. One cannot go any further into the ideal. The next step must be the Actual---at least, an approach to the Actual. There are three points, but there is no idea of where any one of them is. A fourth point is essential, and this formulates the idea of matter.

The Point, the Line, the Plane. The fourth point, unless it should happen to lie in the plane, gives The Solid. If one wants to know the position of any point, one must define it by the use of three co-ordinate axes. It is so many feet from the North wall, and so many feet from the East wall, and so many feet from the floor.

Thus there has been developed from Nothingness a Something which can be said to exist. One has arrived at the idea of Matter. But this existence is exceedingly tenuous, for the only property of any given point is its position in relation to certain other points; no change is possible; nothing can happen. One is therefore compelled, in the analysis of known Reality, to postulate a fifth positive idea, which is that of Motion.This implies the idea of Time, for only through Motion, and in Time, can any event happen. Without this change and sequence, nothing can be the object of sense.

There is now possible a concrete idea of the Point; and, at last it is a point which can be self-conscious, because it can have a Past, Present and Future. It is able to define itself in terms of the previous ideas. Here is the number Six, the centre of the system: self-conscious, capable of experience.

At this stage it is convenient to turn away for a moment from the strictly Qabalistic symbolism. The doctrine of the next three numbers (to some minds at least) is not very clearly expressed. One must look to the Vedanta system for a more lucid interpretation of the numbers 7, 8 and 9 although they correspond very closely with the Qabalistic ideas. In the Hindu analysis of existence the Rishis (sages) postulate three qualities: Sat, the Essence of Being itself; Chit, Thought, or Intellection; and Ananda (usually translated Bliss), the pleasure experienced by Being in the course of events. This ecstasy is evidently the exciting cause of the mobility of existence. It explains the assumption of imperfection on the part of Perfection. The Absolute would be Nothing, would remain in the condition of Nothingness; therefore, in order to be conscious of its possibilities and to enjoy them, it must explore these possibilities.

These ideas of Being, Thought and Bliss constitute the minimum possible qualities which a Point must possess if it is to have a real sensible experience of itself. These correspond to the numbers 9, 8 and 7. The first idea of reality, as known by the mind, is therefore to conceive of the Point as built up of these previous nine successive developments from Zero. Here then at last is the number Ten. In other words, to describe Reality in the form of Knowledge, one must postulate these ten successive ideas.

[kelamuni]

I have written extensively on this topic, perhaps the most detailed account being in "A Commentary on Muktananda's Play of Consciousness," which I notice I did not transfer from the Gaia account to ning. Typically, I play with the sliding signifiers and point to the rhetorical gambit of "ratcheting up" one's cosmo-heirarchy in the face of rival onto-cosmologies. Here, I'd like to take a different tack.

I think there might actually be something behind the problem here, though I don't doubt that Adi Da takes some liberties with the terminology of Vedanta-Tantra-Yoga so as to bolster his own system.

One could go back to the Greek and Indian traditions and show how the number three plays such a prominent role. Why this is so is not entirely clear, but it may have something to do with the structure of Indo-European languages: subject, object, and so on. Structuralists may say that it has to do with the binary nature of thought.  I don't know, but I do know that three is very important in both traditions.

 

One of the most basic polarities is that between life and death... which becomes this world and the world hereafter, heaven and earth. But even while in a life on Earth, there are certain liminal situations. The most obvious and common of these is the state of sleep. In sleep we are not dead, but nor are we completely in this world of wakefulness. This is the kind of speculation that we find in the Upanishads. Even earlier though, in the Vedas, we find mention of states of swoon, or trance, in which the "manas" (an early term for soul) exits the body in a kind of premonition of death.

For the Greeks too there are basically two "realms,"  there, the celestial realm, the realm of the gods, which will become Plato's realm of Being, and here, this world or the realm of Becoming. But the Greeks too begin to talk about an intermediate realm, the realm of the in-between. For this realm they used the term "daemonic." In the Symposium, for example, we learn that eros is a daemon. Hermes, the go-between, has daemonic characteristics, too. Entities that are neither purely earthly nor pure spiritual are referred to as daemonic by the Greeks and Romans: nymphs, sylphs, satyrs, fauns, etc. These are also the little people, the fairies, elves, gnomes. One could also refer to the angels of Judeo-Christian myth as daemonic. Later this becomes the "imaginal" realm, and one could probably bring in Sufi cosmology, particularly that of Ibn al Arabi at this point.

The issue at hand though is the Hindu-Vedantic conception and their specific terminology. As noted elsewhere, the term 'causal' in fact derives from the conception of the 'causal body.' It is "causal" because it contains the seeds for one's future incarnations, one's samskaras or vasanas. The equivalent here would be the alayavijnana, the storehouse vijnana. What does it "store?" One's vasanas.

But typically when one thinks of 'causal,' one thinks of the cause of the world. What is the cause of the world? Well in Hinduism typically, it is God, or Ishvara. Shankara vacillates on this point, however. There is problem here which is this: how can the one realm, which is pure spirit, create something that is essentially different from it, viz., matter? The Samkhya solve the problem, as far as they are concerned, by positing a duality between prakirti and purusha. But typically the early Vedantins, who were emanationists, waffled on this one: God is and isn't the cause of the world. Shankara too waffles somewhat. As a theist he is beholden to the doctrine that Parameshvara, the supreme lord (for whom it is not entirely clear whether he is formless or not) creates the world. But as a metaphysician, he is forced to admit that the creation of the world is "in name only." The later Advaitins will modify this teaching and say that the world is a product of avidya or "maya" if you wish. This in effect, restates the Samkhya dualism, but since they are non-dualists they are forced to admit that this maya-created world can't be entirely real. (The late Advaitins will posit a threefold ontology stating that there is 1. reality, or brahman, 2. transcendental illusion, the world and true perceptions of it, and 3. flat out illusions, mirages, dreams, etc.)

There is another sense of the causal that we could bring out as well. And that is the idea that, well, ideas or Forms are the cause of things, in some sense. This is the notion of the formal cause that Aristotle talked about. The Indian tradition did not have a fully developed notion of a formal cause. They had a notion of the material cause (upadana karana), the stuff out of which something is made (the clay), and of the instrumental cause (nimitta karana) which is the instrument (the potter's wheel) and well as the maker (the potter). But there is no clear notion of formal cause. One could however interpret certain Vedanta theories of causation that come after Shankara in terms of a formal cause, the pratibimbavada for example, where creation is likened to a reflection. (See here for example.)

At a less sophisticated level, there was also the tantric conception that there are different ontic levels of the mantra, with each higher degree being the "cause" of the lower degree. In this case we have 1. the physical manifestation of sound, then 2. the subtle version of the sound heard in your head, and 3. the "cause" of these which is something like the idea or "form" of the sound itself.

A good example of the application of this little used Indian conception can be found in the works of Yogananda. He too talks about the physical manifestation of a thing, its subtle or "astral" imprint, and its causal form, which he calls an idea.

Now Huston Smith too, relates the platonic Forms to the third level of being, the causal level. And this would fit with the general Greek conception: Being, Becoming, and the "intermediate" realm of the daemonic. So Yogananda and Smith are in complete agreement with each other as per the Great Chain of Being. But then along comes Franklin Jones and his recasting of the terminology. What is behind it? Mere rhetorical word play? Or something else, something more substantial?

But I digress. This is not the change of tack I was referring to. This is but a mere preamble to set up where I am about to go next. But that will have to wait for another time.