Depth of the Unchanging One

It’s our last full week of NaPoWriMo (National /Global Poetry Writing Month) and the A-Z Challenge. I hope you’re enjoying the A to Z of Depth.

Yesterday we dove into change and transformation, so when I read, “the human mind is capable of fathoming that unchanging one behind the many, and having fathomed it, the mind would understand what makes the center hold . . .” in Does the Center Hold?: An Introduction to Western Philosophy _{(amazon assoc link)} by Donald Palmer this morning, I thought that would be a great depth to explore today.

Does the Center Hold? attributes the idea of the unchanging one to Thales of Miletus (ca. 580 B.C.E.), a pre-Socratic Greek Philosopher who is believed to be the first to use nature to explain the world instead of mythology. He believed that all of nature is based on a single ultimate substance and theorized that the substance is water. Not exactly wrong, but he also believed the planet Earth floated on water.

Parmenides of Elea, also a pre-Socratic 6th Century B.C.E. Greek philosopher, known for his poem, On Nature_(pdf), proposed the idea (said to be one of the most radical in philosophy by Philosophy.Institute) that reality is unchanging and indivisible. He wrote that there is only “Being,” a singular, eternal existence. He believed that “change and motion are impossible because they would imply the existence of something that ‘is not,’ and nothingness, in his view, cannot exist.” He proposed that the information we receive from our senses are fabrications, creating illusions of change. Plato used Parmenides in one of his Dialogues, putting Socrates in argument with Parmenides.

Plato’s Theory of Forms also proposes an idea of the unchanging one, but in his philosophy it is the Form of the Good which is the ultimate source and the highest reality (replace Thales’s natural source, water, with the abstract concept of Good). Plato believed that everything we perceive in the physical world is a copy or shadow of eternal archetypes outside time and space (Depth Psychology‘s precursor, perhaps?). The forms are uncreated, indestructible, unchanging, and eternal. The forms can only be understood by an intellect that has transcended the senses, and according to Plato, understanding the Forms is what leads to enlightenment.

Aristotle also presented an idea of the unchanging one, but he called it the Unmoved mover, or Prime mover. Aristotle’s idea was that for motion to exist in the universe, there has to be an unmoved mover to move other things (a first uncaused cause). He also describes the prime mover as an independent divine eternal unchanging immaterial substance.

These philosophies of the unchanging one made me think of The All in The Kybalion. I chose The Kybalion as my source material for found poetry for Heron Tree this year. I searched for best sellers in 1912 and depth, and found this interesting book that describes itself as “A study of the hermetic philosophy of ancient Egypt and Greece by Three Initiates.”

“Under and back of, the Universe of Time, Space and Change, is ever to be found The Substantial Reality—the Fundamental Truth.”—The Kybalion.

One thing I find very amusing about The Kybalion is it quotes The Kybalion. Above is the epigraph to Chapter IV. THE ALL. These three initiates (identified as one writer, William Walker Atkinson) appear to agree with Parmenides that though we may think the world is constantly changing, these are only appearances or manifestations of an underlying “Substantial Reality.” Atkinson writes that the Hermetic Masters call this underlying power by the Hermetic name “THE ALL.” According to “Hermetic thinkers of all times, as well as of those illumined souls who have reached higher planes of being” the inner nature of THE ALL is unknowable. In the Kybalion, Atkinson presents THE ALL as infinite living mind. He goes on to say The All is spirit, but then explains that spirit is a name man gives to infinite living mind. Gotta love those circular definitions. And he pretty much ends his explanation with THE ALL is something we must acknowledge that we cannot fully understand. Here are some more fun quotes from the Kybalion that are quoted in the Kybalion:

“THE ALL creates in its Infinite Mind countless Universes, which exist for aeons of Time—and yet, to THE ALL, the creation, development, decline and death of a million Universes is as the time of the twinkling of an eye.”—The Kybalion.

“The Infinite Mind of THE ALL is the womb of Universes.”—The Kybalion.

“The Universe is Mental—held in the Mind of THE ALL.”—The Kybalion.

Will this depth study lead to one eternal, unchanging substance? What do you think?

Today’s Poem

Show Time

We hit the stage
hot mics, and bright hot lights
and the drinking people stare
almost a village from stage right

Playing rhythm in his cowboy hat
he is in his youth
all his years of hard living passed
Don’t do anything at all

The beat pounded out in army camouflage
jittery, obsessive, compact and cute
And if you go chasing rabbits And
you know you’re going to fall

Leather chaps fresh off his Harley fronts
a man of a million voices in sweet tenor tones
watches the black and white tiled dance floor for
the men on the chessboard [to]
Get up and tell you where to go

Long hair in all black wailing lead
makes up for his lack of memory
with skilled inspiration for when
your mind is moving low

And I thump the bass
with a woman’s curves
and a permasmile in lace
wanting to stay forever
in your fight
for your right
to party
Go ask Alice
I think she’ll know

This poem was inspired by today’s prompts at NaPoWriMo and Writer’s Digest’s April Poem a Day (PAD) Challenge. And it’s Open Link Night at dVerse Poetry Pub, so link up your poem, and read and support the other dVerse poets.

And don’t forget, Academy of American Poet’s National Poetry Month Celebration, Poetry & the Creative Mind is tonight, April 24 at 7:30 pm Eastern!

Thank you so much for coming by and reading my post. Any thoughts or questions about the unchanging one? Come back tomorrow for more depth exploration and poetry.