4. BRIGHT HERACLITUS
Heraclitus
is the classic ancient philosopher of power of Western civilization
and the founder of the Western pole of the normative way of body-mind
power. His complement in the Axial Age from the eighth to the second
century BC is Lao-tse, the classic ancient philosopher of Power of Eastern
civilization and the founder of the Eastern pole of the normative way
of active-passive power. The West accents the rational, active, militant
pole of Power. The East accents the mystical, passive, pacific pole
of Power. Especially at this time in the epic of Earth, both human survival
and movement toward the goal of life’s free fulfillment require
the critical and creative union of such contrasting philosophical complements
as Heraclitus and Lao-tse.
Here our attention has been confined to the rational prophet of the
West, but his essential message has a worth which is not geographically
restricted. Despite the one-sided limitations of his perspective point
of view, Heraclitus makes explicit some aspects of the common faith
which is implicitly affirmed in the everyday acts of healthy human beings.
He vividly expresses a vital proportion of the actual faith that forever
nerves freedom. This is to no small extent, the real religion of America,
and not America only; it is in some significant measure, a truly ecumenical
faith, a faith for all inhabitants of Earth. Heraclitus proclaims a
goodly part of the eternal gospel of some-none-all Power, announcing
to all their chance to be consciously participating actors in the deathless
drama of the ever-living Fire.
Bright
Heraclitus
by Alexander Laing
As their dark circle tightened on the rim
we closed our whirling ranks.
Eastern horns
belched in the north, in the west.
From the groin and glottis of our sudden dead
we tore unvarying arrows.
Horn bray, bow twang,
loud in the south now,
riding hoof-struck thunder.
Order—keep order—
by order from the center.
And then it happened:
your straight lunge of thought,
axial, ardent, not centrifugal.
Breaking their studded ring
woven of flesh in iron
out to an endlessness of raw stars rising
you thrust our vital anarchy: the mind.
Beyond their circle, nine transparent spheres
splintered. You broke the first.
Then, gladly, each of us
took his own way
to open the ringing sky.
Bernard Maisner, The Way Up Is the Way Down – Heraclitus
Courtesy of Bernard Maisner
From “Searching for the Spiritual” online exhibit
RECOMMENDED READING
The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers by Werner Jaeger, Chapter 7 “Heraclitus,” (Oxford University Press, 1947).