Orders of Knowledge

What a penetrating vision into philosophy this eminent man had! He is the most distinguished of all philosophers and was highly versed in wisdom. We testify that he is one of the heroes in this field and an outstanding champion dedicated unto it. He had a profound knowledge of such sciences as were current amongst men as well as of those which were veiled from their minds. Methinks he drank one draught when the Most Great Ocean overflowed with gleaming and life-giving waters.

(Baha’u’llah, Tablets of Baha’u’llah:146)

            These words, written by Baha’u’llah about Socrates, indicate not only the eminence in the field of philosophy achieved by Socrates, but also, for our purposes, indicates that the knowledge of creation is as vast as creation, and most of this knowledge is hidden from us.  I mean that the part of the quote that I bold-faced states that there were sciences in Socrates time which were hidden, but that Socrates penetrated to them, or was informed of them.  Either way, they were there, but other minds were veiled from them.  Where were they hidden?

            There are orders of knowledge still waiting to be discovered by us.  Witness to this is all the knowledge that has been discovered in the last century and a half.  This knowledge explosion shows no signs of slowing down.  But where did all this knowledge come from?  We can not say that humans invented it.  I believe it was always there, waiting for the right time and kinds of insight to unlock it.  Until it is discovered, the human mind is veiled.

           Being veiled can occur for several reasons.  Perhaps the sciences are hidden until the proper mental maturity has been achieved, like a small child veiled from algebra.  One can be veiled because one does not have the proper mental vision, like, for example, how the proponents of Newtonian physics could not see Relativity.  One can be veiled because one lacks the proper context, such as being veiled from the meaning of cultural practices different from one’s own.  A new creation requires a new epistemology, and this in turn means new faculties of knowing, heretofore latent and dormant, are awakened and made manifest.  Perhaps the answer to the question of where is knowledge hidden lies in Baha’u’llah’s statement: “Likewise, reflect upon the perfection of man's creation, and that all these planes and states are folded up and hidden away within him.” (The Seven Valleys and The Four Valleys:34

No doubt new properties emerge: But from where?  New properties cannot emerge that were not there in the first place. Though they may have been hidden or the mind was veiled, discovery can only mean discovery of something that already exists.  We can invent, but we cannot invent knowledge.  We can only discover and communicate it.  The creation is whole and complete and we gradually discover the vast interconnections of principles and laws, insights and experiments that reveal what was there, and that discovery is also self-discovery.  Any new property is not absolutely new, but only new to human awareness.  The last couple of posts explored the theme that all creation, from nature through material civilization, was incomplete and education was the process of gradually completing it.  But it is a never-ending process, though any one stage of it has a beginning and an ending.  But, spiritually, the creation is whole and complete, unimaginably complex, potentially infinitely deep with innumerable levels.  But it must be created whole and complete, or there is no good answer to the question: How can a whole that comes into being only gradually from its parts be the cause of the properties of those parts?

 I am not arguing in favor of preformation rather than epigenesis.  Preformation is a spiritual principle; epigenesis is a material one. Both are necessary.  What emerges in time already existed in spirit.  Guiding that emergence are what I call spiritual templates.  Spiritual templates are found in the Revelations. 

We are moving toward such a conception, but our minds must slog through the veils of materialist science.  The principles of quantum mechanics, for example, emphasize the primacy of energy fields in their influence over matter. Consequently, the universe's matter is organized by information, represented as knowledge patterns.  But where are such patterns? Again, I say, without being able to empirically verify, that the templates for the unfolding of knowledge are contained within the field of Revelation. These were/are the spiritual creation itself unveiled by the Revelators.  With every new Revelation new templates by which to interpret the universe are given.  We have the potentials within us to grasp them, and we will eventually.  But we can do so more quickly should we do as Socrates did and drink one draught when the Most Great Ocean overflowed with gleaming and life-giving waters.

Perhaps by way of example of spiritual templates, historians have noted times in human history that were especially fertile in bringing new ideas and principles to light, often in many fields and places simultaneously.  Such times have come to be called Axial Ages.  “Axial Age” was coined by the German philosopher, Karl Jaspers, in his groundbreaking work: The Origin and Goal of History.  Axial Age (meaning a pivot) denotes the period from 800 to 200 BC, during which, according to him, similar and revolutionary thinking appeared in Persia, India, China, and the Occident.  In addition, the philosopher, Eric Voegelin, referred to this same period as The Great Leap of Being, constituting, he felt, a new spiritual awakening and a shift of perception from societal to individual values.

Jaspers identified a number of key Axial Age thinkers, Socrates was one, as having had a profound influence on future philosophies and religions, and identified characteristics common to each area from which those thinkers emerged. Jaspers saw in these developments in religion and philosophy a striking parallel without any obvious direct transmission of ideas from one region to the other, having found no recorded proof of any extensive intercommunication between Ancient Greece, the Middle East, India, and China.  Jaspers held up this age as unique, and one to which the rest of the history of human thought might be compared.  Jaspers claimed that during the Axial Age: "the spiritual foundations of humanity were laid simultaneously and independently in China, India, Persia, Judea, and Greece. And these are the foundations upon which humanity still subsists today." 

 He said such far-reaching innovations in thought and social life arose in these seemingly diverse places as a response to similar political circumstances: each comprised multiple small states engaged in internal and external struggles.  He is correct in his social analysis, but for me the real origins of these revolutionary advances were due to the revelations of Zoroaster (Persia) Buddha (India and influencing China, but also Confucius and Lao Tzu) and to the fertile influence of the Jewish faith on the leading thinkers of Greece.  These divine thoughts provided the templates for philosophers and thinkers to generate new thoughts, and so did not need to have any contact with each other to do so.  But Jasper’s Axial Age was not an unique event, except in its particular developments.  Rather it was but one of several Axial Ages, all of them having a common Source yet each having its own characteristic advances.  (I am currently studying these ages.)

Jaspers believed that the Axial Age gave birth to philosophy as a discipline.  I would agree, as it represents the collective awakening of humanity’s left-brain functions of abstract thought.  That is its special virtue, and a very powerful one it was.