A "REAL GOOD" having power to communicate itself...

Dear Donovan
Thanks for starting this up for us.

I would like to join in the discussion as well. I am not a deep
student of Spinoza nor of philosophy. I am a beginner as we will all
see.

I have read this beginning paragraph many times over the years and
certainly find it to be one of the most thrilling of opening lines in
all literature, not just in the field of Philosophy. It rings of the
opening lines of an adventure story, albeit, a Great Adventure.

Spinoza clearly says to me he is seeking something new in his life.
My question for the group rests in the middle of the paragraph where
Spinoza tells us he is seeking something that he describes as:

some real good having power to communicate itself

We may be able to leave the nature of A REAL GOOD to see later how
the story unfolds... BUT, what do you think he means by the phrase.

Having Power to communicate itself.

Thanks to all...dgf


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I'm most grateful to have dbf contributing.  I'm still sort of biding time to gather in all interested parties, so in the meanwhile, I've written a bit in an endeavor to discuss dgf's question, which I think Spinoza will answer much better in due time as we get into the heart of the treatise.

The note to me was published originally on a web list which dgf and I subscribe to.  I place it here before you now because it is as germane as ever.  And here's to the GREAT ADVENTURE, which begins anew each moment.  This time around we may be able to learn more of what Spinoza means about this "Real Good" and its "power to communicate." My fingers keep wanting to type "Real God," as if my computer were a sort of Ouija Board. Hmmm, it is, come to think of it. The problem with the word "God" (one of them, anyway) is that it cannot be used correctly, because it sets off different associations in different people, some of whom end up wanting to kill each other.  Perhaps the Buddha and Jesus might walk along arm and arm talking about it, and meaning by "God," much the same Cosmic Omnipresence, but if we use the word, I think it is full of confusion.  So, I don't think we are going to study "God" directly very much here, although Spinoza DOES MEAN that GOD HAS THE POWER to "show Himself" to human beings. But Spinoza doesn't mean anything like what the Old Testament prophets describe; angels, burning bushes and other "revelations" that seem "supernatural," the products of vivid imaginations.  Not to say that these sorts of "inperiences" might not be indicative of of truths--but to me they seem to obfuscate rather than illuminate.  Some people want, even CRAVE, mystical experiences.  And, they may get them.  However, these do not measure up to Spinoza's standard of the HIGHEST and BEST which the human soul may have communicated to it-the "adequate" or "true" idea.  Spinoza says that we will strive for union in our totality with the ONE PERFECT OMNIPRESENT BEING.  We shall be aware when this Ultimate Being is communicated to us, oh yes, very much so, the epitome of clarity and certainty, yet our "ordinary mind" will be so tiny…just enough to register that we are still an individual--perhaps a logical impossibility when ALL IS ONE INDIVISIBLE BEING. Logic obviously has its uses, and, as the famous Mr. Spock character epitomized, some people need to see what these are and what they are not. Spinoza says that logic is like a medicine for the mind, and that it may be applied to the emotions so as to reduce them to simple components.  TEI is about teaching us to think better.  Do we care to?

And again, Spinoza is concerned with the Nature of God as being perfect, and therefore the alpha and omega of all that can be called "really good." Spinoza is not satisfied with an abstract cypher or paradigm put together by his formidable reason.  Something "made up" out of scientific thinking, such as Leibniz's "Monads," may win great esteem from brilliant intellects for centuries, but they are scant comfort to the suffering soul. The sufferer can hardly care about being shown later by science to be "sort of right," like Democritus and his atomic theory.  Not that I'm knocking it. These abstract insights are not devoid of all intuitive power and display intellectual fireworks if we want to try to follow along. Getting back on topic a bit, how can Spinoza hope to "inperience" this Real Good if it has no power to communicate itself? He wants to be spiritually wedded to this Being.  But must he or God be both bride and groom, so to speak? Seems to me that it would take a God to know a God, yet, are we not always joined with our cause?  How can we be without being able to look within for the inner cause of our own being?  Is it when we look in such a way the "the power to communicate itself" is exercised?  Where is the line of demarcation between the "I" who looks, and its cause?  To discover the highest degree of human action--utter acquiescence into the Luminous Emptiness is the Way. "To See." The Yin and the Yang are One?  What does it mean?

There are a number of sayings attributed to Jesus in which he describes the union with the "Real Good" as analogous to a wedding night.  There is a passage in "The Short Treatise" in which Spinoza makes a clear analogy between A] the uniting in mind/soul with this Omnipresent Perfect Being with B] the union of human love. We are reminded that the quality/bliss of the lover's experience is proportional to the Indivisable/Perfection of the thing loved. Indivisibility is the apex of integrity. How often in the great Sufi poets do we hear of "The Beloved?" That Lover who leaves us wanting for nothing, for THERE IS nothing more to want. Ah, but we need to be communicated to.  Can we be still, inwardly, devoid of thought?  While alive, we retain a shard or diamondlike trace of "I."  Patanjali knew this well when he set it down in Part 3 of the Sutras, which deals with the powers the Yogin will attain to.  The Yogi has the power of becoming extremely minute/tiny.  Not like a Lilliputian, but rather, this last simple atom of "I" which remains to understand nothing but the recognition that indeed we "COMMUNE." We go on communing in death, but are not aware of it because this fragment has passed from existence.  

Someone once said, "Well, you can't boss God around, or call Him like a dog."  No, it's something sort of the other way around, so when you see a dog, imagine that God is endeavoring to communicate. LOL.  I mean only as a reminder, a "self-remembering exercise."  Gurdjieff might enjoy such a practice. If you hear a voice telling you to do bad things, go to the hospital, please…. Picture the dog in the Odyssey, just waiting and waiting until at long last, rejoicing. The Master has returned. I think it helps to devote oneself as sincerely and fully as we can, where we are. If we climb the mountain high enough, lightning may strike.  My job is to climb.  If I come to a lovely meadow with an incomparable view, will I have the clarity and fortitude to lace up the boots, grab the pack, and turn my back on what seems like a paradise?  Yes, because I have learned in TEI and elsewhere that the good is the enemy of the better.  Spinoza is well able to impart to some sensitive souls a real sense of the most high standard, even as we have not attained to it--and so we keep going, knowing that we have attained something very REAL, that has communicated itself to us, but not enough to truly say we love God alone, and nothing else.  If we love our wife, our child, it is through God as cause, and we are grateful.  If there is such a thing as reality, or infinite realities, taken altogether, what IS?

Some person once described this "event" of "power to communicate" to me as "like an orgasm, but with your whole mind, body and soul peaking into this perfect bliss for all eternity and seeing that all things are simply Godness;" the modifications of matter/mind that are so mysterious, yet so simply divine.  Well, well.  Does this mean anything?  Not to a logical positivist, who might say, if he were in a friendly mood so as to speak at all about such things, "that means nothing to me, it's nonsense.  It may seem important to you, but what do you mean by "perfect bliss?" How does it compare with (thus and such, fill in the blanks)? I understand "eternity" from theoretical physics, but what does that have to do with feeling good, or something communicating itself?  It all sounds like a lot of secret, cultish nonsense, sorry.

To this I say that it is not my purpose to dissuade anyone from scientific rationalism, physicalism, or any other intellectual "ism."  If only we could live according to the dictates of reason without this great power of Love that is communicated to us intuitively. Such is the ideal of the Stoics.  But anyone observing herself with any attention for more than a day or so will find instances where emotions trump reason unless the emotion is feeble, or is based on mere faulty data which reason can correct immediately. I am mainly going to slowly present the words and ideas of a man I know to be wise.  I claim that much, to understand that Spinoza is most wise and rational, and only offer him up to you with full knowledge that intuition comes from within.  No one can give it to you just like that, bang, done.  Spinoza offers help to those desperate to find "some real good, with power to communicate itself."  It must therefore be knowable in the most certain and perfect sense, better than I know the back of my hand; and so it is, even all the while remaining ineffable.  The unfortunate thing, I think, is that, while people who might otherwise be candidates for essence growth have the intuition to recognize that they must indeed come to the truth by their own light, not by anyone else's, they don't seek real help.  That is so good to know, that we must be a light unto ourselves.   But then, we must avoid missing out on some very helpful data collected by some very amazing people. Sometimes, instead of using this hard won, precious data, like a scientist might exhaustively study the work of others in the field, as part of original research, individuals will instead set about concocting "opinions."  I have friends, who I know have never troubled themselves greatly to find out what the heavy hitters have to say, who will answer a question I put out there, for inquiry, not for "the answer," with the words "ya know, Donovan, my philosophy is…" or "you know, well, I've thought about it and my philosophy is…." Now, these are actual dear friends mind you, and they do have intuitive insights, but not nearly enough to make the kind of inroads we can make with the help of wiser people, and the aid of each other.  The advanced version of all this opinion-making and "wiseacreing" as Gurdjieff called it, is theology, in which some actual data is used, to give a little "tweak" to the intuitive power of the spirit in man, then infused with superstitions which contain fantasies which people convince themselves are true.  Then, once all Hell has been devised, it is turned loose in a highly organized attack on our sanity and well-being in general.

This is precisely where we step in with "On the Improvement of the Human Understanding."  We are going to learn a bit about what the difference is between a true idea and all the rest, so that as we carry our striving forward, we will do so with much better knowledge of how to avoid the pitfalls and stay in pursuit of the most excellent knowledge: the intuition of "a thing in itself."  Most Western Philosophers espouse that knowledge of "a thing in itself" is impossible.  We tend to look for ideas ABOUT things.  In the East, the existence of this esoteric knowledge of "the thing in itself," which is a perfect idea the very essence of a thing, is taken for granted, it is only then a matter of becoming one of the elect, a real "guru," who attains to this knowledge about their own identity.  Then, they have all manner of "practices." It's a great shame, in my view (and I have gratefully learned a little perhaps from B.K.S. Iyengar, Patanjali, Buddha, Jesus, Krishnamurti, Don Juan, the Vedas, etc, etc.) that Spinoza is so overlooked.  He is among the highest of the elect few, as far as I can tell, and although he is not THE WAY for everyone, his first three paragraphs contain some great hooks, like "having POWER TO COMMUNICATE ITSELF" that some of us find to be like great and mysterious music emanating from beyond the darkened hills, from wild country where only the most adventurous minds dare to conceive entering for exploration.