The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius by Pierre Hadot & Michael Chase (Translator)

Author:Pierre Hadot & Michael Chase (Translator) [Hadot, Pierre & Chase, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ancient Greece, Ancient History, Created by me, History, History -Anciety Greece & Rome, Nonfiction, Philosophy
ISBN: 0674461711
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 1998-07-16T07:00:00+00:00

The Levels of Cosmic Consciousness

Earlier I spoke of the stages of consciousness of the self as a faculty of freedom and moral choice. We can now return to this theme, in order to see how the various levels of self-consciousness correspond to different levels of cosmic consciousness.

As long as the self has not yet gained awareness of its potential freedom, and has not yet carried out the delimitation or circumscription of this potential freedom in which the guiding principle consists, it believes itself to be autonomous and independent of the world. In fact it is, as Marcus says, a “stranger to the world” (IV, 29), and it is swept along against its will by Destiny. In the course of the movement by which it becomes aware of the fact that it is not identical with the body, the vital breath, or involuntary emotions, however, the self discovers that, up until then, it had been unconsciously and passively determined by Destiny: it had been nothing but a tiny point in the immensity of space, or a little wave in the immense tide of time. The moment freedom becomes aware of itself, however, it becomes aware of the fact that that self which is determined by Destiny is only an infinitesimally tiny part of the world (XII, 32):

What a tiny part of the gaping abyss of infinite time is assigned to each one of us! For it disappears so quickly into the everlasting. What a tiny portion of universal substance, what a tiny part of the universal soul! On how tiny a part of the entire earth do you crawl!

Our perspective is changed once again when the self, as a principle of freedom, recognizes that there is nothing greater than the moral good, and therefore accepts what has been willed by Destiny, that is to say, universal Reason. If the self accepts itself as a principle of freedom and of choice, it also accepts the portion which Destiny has allotted to it, as the ego which has been determined by Destiny. As the Stoics used to say, the self accepts the role which the divine director has reserved for it in the drama of the universe;68 in Marcus’ case, for instance, this role was that of emperor. As the self accepts this role, however, it becomes transfigured: for what the free self wills is all of Destiny, the entire history of the world, and the entire world, as if the self were that universal Reason which is at the origin of the world, or universal Nature. At this point, the self as will and as freedom coincides with the will of universal Reason and of the logos dispersed throughout all things.

The realization of one’s self as identical with universal Reason, then, as long as it is accompanied by consent to this will, does not isolate the self like some minuscule island in the universe. On the contrary, it can open the self to all cosmic becoming, insofar as the self raises itself

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