Melissus of Samos
Melissus of Samos was the last of the primary Eleatic philosophers with a similar mysterious history. His story is important because of the need to resolve the contradictions between Eleatic oneness and all the dualistic conflicts humans undergo, as well as the struggle we see in nature. This oneness includes disease, death, animals eating each other, and war. Melissus seemed to want to apply his theories to all of nature nonetheless, if Simplicius is correct that the title of his book was On Nature or On Being. What little is known of Melissus involves the Samian war. According to the Texts of Early Greek Philosophy, Melissus “was chosen admiral by his fellow citizens, and organized a spirited resistance to their Athenian masters. He defeated the Athenian fleet, in one battle in 440 BC, but lost in a second sea battle. There is no report of what happened to him after the battle.”
In the Life of Pericles, Plutarch elaborates further that “on his departure, Melissus, the son of Ithagenes, a philosopher, being at that time the general in Samos, despising either the small number of ships that were left or the inexperience of the commanders, prevailed with the citizens to attack the Athenians. And the Samians having won the battle, and taken several of the men prisoners, and disabled several of the ships, were masters of the sea…Aristotle says, too, that Pericles had been once before this [bested] by this Melissus in a sea-fight.” Of course, the famous Athenian Pericles did not give up. “Pericles, as soon as news was brought to him of the disaster, [made haste to come to their relief, defeated Melissus, and put the enemy to flight.]”
At the time of his treatise, Melissus seemed to have had “…a familiarity with the theories of Heraclitus, Anaxagoras and Empedocles. He further seems to be aware of Anaximenes’ theory of condensation and rarefaction, and elemental change.” A chief area of contention that Eleatic philosophers had was the idea of a void and how it could not exist. Ironically “…it seems likely that his examination of the conditions necessary for change and motion forced Democritus to commit himself to accepting the existence of a void, however paradoxical it might be…[Parmenides’] assertion that if there are many things, they must be like the one, seems to have influenced Democritus’ characterization of atoms.”
The problem of how to reconcile human perception remains the same as in prior Eleatic arguments. The interdependence argument is that if what we call “things” exist based on interdependence with other “things” then can we really say those “things” exist independently as our categories suggest? The conventional argument is that all our survival and sustenance requires manipulation of what’s in our perception, but we ignore the interdependence within our reach because we choose not to ask the question “what is this connected to?” Whether out of tiredness or denial, we tend to go into avoidance with the question, especially if any links between categories are unpleasant or uneventful. Regardless, it’s through the repeated searching, and the not finding of an absolute category, where the categorical mind can find places to rest the searching, which is often described by meditators as a feeling of oneness. It’s a balance between rest and survival. Those interested in these topics will often merge Freudian free association, and Jungian active imagination with meditation so as to rest that typical brutal and exhausting willpower that most of us rely on, while at the same allowing plenty of intuitive thinking that arises without effort. The danger of relying on intuition is mostly solved when prior investigations, experience, and skills develop reliable thinking habits. As this Presocratic series continues we inexorably move towards philosophies that root themselves in duality, which is that sense that we exist, we feel pain and emotions, and what happens to people and objects matter to us, and we should always do something to control our environment.
In Melissus’s first two non-dual beliefs, he brings in a sense of the eternal by doubting that any existence just happens to appear. If there was a void originally then it would have been impossible for something to come out of nothing. This means there wasn’t a nothing originally, but instead an eternal is. How this might be healing is that there’s no sense of a void or nothingness, and despite death, there’s an eternality in that we came from what always is and will eventually return to an eternal that. He goes on further to state that there cannot be eternity without infinite size, or essentially there can be no way to measure something infinite, which makes the act of measurement lose meaning. This infinity of time and size means a oneness that is impossible to subdivide. It also means that the interdependence of what we see is so interdependent that no absolute units of subdivision can be found in matter, just infinite relationships, and the intertwining of such relationships can’t allow the use of the plural word: relationships. A total comprehensive relationship.
Something that is one is identical to itself and cannot exist without infinite relationships, making change an illusion, because is-ness remains regardless of appearance. This is-ness replaces the illusion of a void with a fullness, meaning full of is-ness. That is-ness is immovable for Melissus despite perception. Here he wants to do away with the plural of is which is are. Only one thing is. Aristotle also translates Melissus as saying that additions can’t happen because those additions would also come out from a void, which is impossible. Movement is also a problem because how can something appear from nothing and fill a nothing if nothing doesn’t exist and nothing can come from nothing and there is no nothing for something to fill in? In this case plurality is a form of stress and oneness theoretically alleviates this stress because one controls reactivity to unpleasant change in perception. Also, nothing can ultimately perish because if it did it would disappear for all time.
Unfortunately for Melissus, he stumbles into a difficulty when he goes against rarefaction and density, which is so prevalent in perception, and makes up a lot of what perception is. “…Neither can the dense and the rare exist; for to be rare is to be less full than to be dense, and is therefore to be comparatively empty. The difference between what is full and what is not full is simply this. If a thing has room to receive anything else into itself, it is not full; but if it has no room to do so it is full. What Is must necessarily be full, since the empty does not exist; and since it is full everywhere it cannot move…For suppose there existed, just as we see and hear them, such things as earth and water, air and fire, iron and gold, living and dead, black and white, and all the other different whatnesses which we speak of as existing; then each one of these perceived phenomena would be as it first appeared to us, perpetually just as it was at the first moment, without any alteration whatever…If Being were divided it would be in motion, and if it were in motion it would not Be.”
Here both noun concepts breakdown into verbs and perception is directly attacked. Because perception connects with memory, you would also have to do away with memory as well in order to follow Melissus all the way through his reasoning, and he ultimately mistrusts perception and memory to the point that it is an illusion. Because our sense perceptions are limited we cannot rely on them, which is partially true based on advancements in physics that have gone beyond our human perceptions, but those modern concepts still involve space, void, movement, and displacement of matter. Certainly things don’t just come from nothing despite surprises in our experience, but we can also trace things with inductive reasoning from experiences, though we usually stop the questioning when some utility satisfies us or a mystery is solved. It takes a lot of curiosity to trace things back to the origin of all things. The only way his argument survives this is to put his deductive logic above the senses and induction. If the senses or intellect find something coming from nothing, surprises, different densities, a lack of memory of our lives before birth, or the possibility of no consciousness after death, one following Melissus theory has to accuse perception of being fallible in presenting discrete events to us. There’s an undeniable conflict here.
The problem of deduction is that it has to come from several infallible premises. For Melissus, that is the belief that it’s not possible for something to come from nothing, and on top of that there doesn’t exist such a non-thing as nothing. It all leads back to the mum response when asking the question “what about my experience?” One also has to wonder what concessions Melissus had to accept in order to resist Athens and put up a fight if perceptual movement is an illusion. How can we live our lives with this kind of philosophy?
Socrates worried about this problem of Philosophy and its subjective value to humanity. “My greatest fear – that the theories that keep jostling in on us will, if we listen to them, make us lose sight of what our discussion has been aimed at, the question what, exactly, knowledge is.” This ends up being the exploration of other philosophers to develop perceptual and mathematical categories which are the beginning of knowledge in Western Philosophy. I already reviewed some of Plato’s views which tacks closer to the deductive view with mathematical premises and foundations developed predominantly from the mind versus a more inductive method from Aristotle who wants to start at perception. “In the first place, one must not begin by adopting any opinion, but only those which have the soundest foundations. So that if all apparent truths are not correctly assumed, perhaps we have no right to subscribe to this theory, that nothing can arise out of nothing. For this opinion may also be one of the incorrect, which all of us assume from perception in many cases…and these must always be regarded as more sure than those which are to be demonstrated from arguments of the other kind…There is not more proof that it is one than that it is many. But if the one is better substantiated, then the conclusions arising from it are better proven. We chance then to be confronted with two propositions—(a) that nothing can come into existence from nothing, and (b) that what exists is plural and moving—and of the two the latter is more credible; everyone would rather reject the former view than the latter…Melissus has not proved anything by showing that the premiss from which he starts is correct…For it may be regarded as more probable that something should arise from nothing than that many things should not exist. In fact it is very commonly said that things which do not exist do come into existence, and that many things arise from what does not exist…”
What’s left of Melissus’s theory of Monism? The closest thing would be Melissus’s view of pain, which is strikingly similar to Buddhism. By pushing the limits of oneness, the mind has to relinquish mental pain by disagreeing with thoughts based on perception. Perception at it’s base level notices a lack and measures advantage and disadvantage, like we notice when there are pangs of hunger or the pain of physical injury. Pain is a signal of a lack of health, but if one deconstructs pain signals by focusing on vibration as some Buddhists do and choose to let go of adding emotional pain to physical pain, and with some advanced meditators, to purposefully misperceive pain as pleasure, a certain amount of emotional pain can be alleviated, and then when physical pain becomes too much for one’s skill level, the materialist doctor can bring out the pain medication. The other meditative benefit is stress reduction when someone is still in relatively good health. Ruminating about the past and future all the time can make one absent-minded and it can also obscure the present moment when action is required or if rest is a wiser option. Despite these advanced meditative skills, very few people, including many long-time meditators, will get that far and there’s a certain amount of compromise with dualism. This struggle to integrate dualist perception with a non-dual outlook is still a controversy today.
Meditation and Chronic Pain: https://rumble.com/v1goucj-meditation-and-chronic-pain-various-authors.html
Modern Non-duality
In the modern world these discussions are important for long-time meditators who have worked with teachings for years and maybe decades with only partial success. Teachers are grilled with impossible questions on what happens to consciousness at death and how to handle the fear of death. Francis Lucille, one of the best non-dual teachers in the English language, provides examples of wasted effort that show that the ego is trying to go into places it can’t go… Either you have the Near Death Experience and go some place interesting without the body or there’s no experience in which case there is no personality to complain. A practical skill for modern non-duality students is to defuse pointless loops of dualistic mental effort that lead nowhere.
Can Consciousness Die? – Francis Lucille: https://youtu.be/eZNO99QOFgw
Sam Parnia – What Do Near Death Experiences Mean? – Closer to Truth: https://youtu.be/j-Boi6rzQms
Incredible Near Death Experience with 13 Helpful Teachings! – Shaman Oaks: https://youtu.be/jtd4JEjFDiA
Francis reminds people who are adding effort to their meditation that a direct path shows ultimately that you want to rely on a meditation that is more sustainable, which is relying on what automatically operates, like our consciousness and prior skills. Those things work without a need to flinch, tighten muscles or tense up to control every action or biological manifestation. For example, I don’t have to screw up my eyes in the morning to be able to see, nor do I have to force my lungs to breathe, yet there are lots of superstitious tight areas in our muscles that are only there out of habit. “Any form of meditation that involves an effort [cannot be sustained, because no effort can be sustained indefinitely.] The form of meditation that is sustainable is the one that is natural. Ignorance is an effort…Any form of belief requires an effort. A belief is not natural. A fact is natural. The fact that there is gravity is natural. Whether we want it or not, there is gravity, but if we believe that there are unicorns somewhere in the Universe, in the absence of such evidence, that’s an effort, because we can do very well without this belief. Carrying a belief is like carrying a useless weight.” Here I would agree to a certain extent, but there is a value to thinking and beliefs that are about the past or future so we can operate our skills in the world of perception and memory.
The Noble Eightfold Path: Right Mindfulness (7/8): https://rumble.com/v1grixl-the-noble-eightfold-path-right-mindfulness.html
It’s true that many of our thoughts are superfluous and about having some kind of control over the environment. We flinch and tighten up more than we need to while these thoughts are going on. Yet because we still need to develop skills, we can’t abandon a certain amount of effort. This is where there is some push back from instructors when students arrive with different levels of depression hoping that the instructor will do away with any need for effort. Unfortunately, any new skill development has to become habitual first before it begins to feel effortless. Any new skill requires a directing of attention and a sustaining, which is what concentration is, to create new habits. On top of that, when those actions are not repeated for sometime, the skill can go into atrophy and there is a need to redirect attention again to develop the skill once more. For a non-dual student, these skills gradually deepen from working on behalf of a self-image to working for an impersonal reality. More of what is considered duality can be incorporated with the whole of existence in perception, and in fact, how we detect interdependence is via duality searching for dependencies between objects in perception. By tracing dependencies one relies on, including very complex economies, sociologies, and policies, the sense of survival rooted in the body-mind expands. Rupert Spira reminds that “it’s an endless process of realigning the way we think, the way we feel, the way we act, the way we relate, the way we move, the way we do everything. Once these activities are no longer being done on behalf of a separate, fearful, lacking sense of self, they can be expressed on behalf of the peace, the love and understanding that is inherent in what we are.” Francis says that we can further this along by giving up “this old habit to visualize yourself as an object.” Similar to Jungian practices, modern meditative circles, and new age Law of Attraction principles, they all point to how rest and meditation allow the intuition enough space to generate thoughts that have more zest and excitement. Good ideas come from that space of being recharged compared to the usual toxic ideas that arise in reactivity. It’s takes time and patience to tap into genuine inspiration when it’s buried under social conditioning.
After realization is there still an interest in personal growth? – Rupert Spira: https://youtu.be/1JQkEloZmLY
Francis also taps into this difficult conundrum between inspiration and obligation and the sense of effort and emotional drain that follows, even in meditation. “I don’t like the word Effort because it is associated to me with resistance. That’s why I prefer the word enthusiasm or interest, love or desire for the truth. An action that originates from interest, for love, for enthusiasm, we rarely call it effort. For example, if I play tennis for 2 hours I don’t call it work, I call it play. Work is associated with effort, meaning something I have to do but I prefer to be doing something else, like I have to take the trash out. In terms of effort measured in joules, it is much less than in a tennis match, however, the psychological impact is very different. Enthusiasm should be welcomed…It is this ‘effort’ without an ‘effort-er’ that then we create in daily life, moments of meditation that will be spontaneous, that will come to you, so that you will find yourself in the same circumstances you used to be and your take on it will be completely different, and that will be a byproduct of these moments that you have devoted out of enthusiasm, out of love, out of desire for the truth to the investigation, but as long as there is effort that you would rather be doing something else and you do it out of some obscure sense of duty, it’s better to do something else.” Of course, people have schedules and in order to meet deadlines, it helps to bring out the why or reason for doing something. Sustaining that concentration long enough can provide a boost of energy to the willpower so that it might be more rewarding to put something important behind you than to go out and play tennis just because the thoughts drifted in that direction. On the other hand, I agree with Francis because there may be a burnout situation going on and then it is definitely better to do something else.
Is it possible to maintain self-awareness in activity – Francis Lucille: https://youtu.be/yUzh0EaRrtc
Consciousness Without Perceptions – Francis Lucille: https://youtu.be/-M3wxatQLJk
All these speakers are trying to get students to do is to notice the little bits of resistance that appear now and then in thoughts. Rupert Spira wants thoughts to be included with consciousness so thoughts aren’t treated is something bad needing to be forced out, with even more stress. “It’s only after the fact that we separate out awareness and objects. During the experience of a thought, awareness is one with the thought…It’s not a distant knower but at the same time it’s the stuff the thoughts are made of. The experience of thinking is the activity of awareness.” If you try to find the physical location of awareness and thoughts, not finding an ultimate demarcation line rests that feeling of resistance or separation. The closest thing to an experience of awareness is any control of attention that maintains the feeling of being split off and distantly observing an object, but you can instead go into this pain or resistance with curiosity. Tuning into the emotional pain, with attention to how it is manifesting in the body, is like showing the emotional pain to the source of the emotional pain, which is oneself, and usually the source of reactivity realizes it’s touching a hot stove and it discontinues the reactivity. Over the years, more habits of tightening can unravel with a body scanning practice. The difficulty with having a daily life scanning practice is that you will not be able to maintain it when you are doing a lot of high processing mental activities, and also there is a need to sometimes have likes and dislikes to navigate the world, which involves some resistance, but to not let reactivity make all the decisions. The irrationality is when reactivity becomes too much and takes over the steering wheel. Connecting to positive emotions becomes the skill of letting go and letting the rested mind in.
Overcoming the pull of the ego – Rupert Spira: https://youtu.be/us86Mk6g5F8
Being Aware of Being Aware in the Midst of Experience – Rupert Spira: https://youtu.be/aoS4KC059BQ
Measure “Progress” on the Spiritual Path in terms of Beliefs You Have Eliminated – Francis Lucille: https://youtu.be/kgcP_0m-Wlk
Finding Your True Purpose – Rupert Spira: https://youtu.be/QrjIuFIJQJw
The Purpose of Life is not what you Think – Francis Lucille: https://youtu.be/bk0LxK9L9p8
Meditation: Effortlessness is Our True Nature – Francis Lucille: https://youtu.be/xoolf5pdU_8
A character is needed for complex interaction – Lisa Cairns: https://youtu.be/bpGt0cLZaD4
J. Krishnamurti points out in a very dualistic way how reactivity can “pollute” the mind and why someone would want to support a more quiet mind. A quiet mind isn’t totally empty but when it is rested it can think clearer, and when one has enough information many people actually know what to do, so there’s less need to make a decision because things are too clear to be confusing. “When there is decision, there is always resistance…There is a way to live daily life where there is no decision at all.” He goes on about desire, especially the negative feeling of lack, and how that turns to beliefs, exclusion and resistance. “Choice comes about when there is no clarity…When there is clarity, to see things exactly as they are, [without preferences and prejudice], there is no need for the exercise of will or choice,” because there’s less reactivity. This “just get on with it” casual operation is exercising choice as one would observe externally, but there’s more intuition involved, because when you relax thinking, the thinking continues but the character of thinking is changing when there’s less resistance and more rest. The reality is that we often know what to do but it’s unpalatable for one reason or another and we resist doing it, yet when there’s enough energy and rest, it’s much easier to face.
Living without Decision Making – 11:52 J. Krishnamurti: https://youtu.be/CLaLD1YBvHc
These forms of wisdom can’t be a panacea of course, because so much of what we already know still matters. Politics, economics, and especially home economics are still waiting for our responses. This isn’t lost on another philosopher, Bernardo Kastrup, a some time collaborator with Rupert Spira, who has to make a lot of disclaimers about a non-dual outlook. For Bernardo, it’s letting nature work through the Ego, but it has to be negotiated between duality and non-duality, with the non-duality taking more of the load of the decision making as one ages. Yet for Bernardo, there can be an irrational element to it and the ego can also disguise itself as non-dual and fool the individual again and again. Living in One-ness is actually very slippery and prone to repeated failures. In a recent interview Bernardo describes this struggle.
Q: “You have a computer science background. You developed a business and then you sold that business, so you are no longer dependent on a source of income from somewhere else, and now you are doing all of this. Why do you do all of this?”
BK: “[I’m not] completely financially independent. It’s not at that stage yet. Hopefully I will live long and prosper, so there are decades ahead, so I do need a source of income.”
Bernardo felt that he achieved a lot of what he wanted at a relatively young age but he didn’t have a purpose after that, and he felt that signals in his body-mind were starting to provide that purpose for him and sent him into his current philosophy career. The interviewer here of course brought up the most important question which is “how do you know you are following your nature and not ego or social imitation?”
BK: “I wish I could tell you that when it happens, you know it, but it’s not like that. It requires a kind of attention to a level of subtlety and nuance in your own inner mind, that I don’t know how to give a recipe to anyone to make that discernment. It’s a discernment that comes with age, with maturity, with experience. After having made countless mistakes you start to get attuned to that subtlety and you start to recognize when something that is arising within you is not yours. It’s not your own bullshit. It’s not your own trauma. It’s not your own parents. It’s not your ego with its machinations and plans trying to convince you that ‘oh it’s some higher purpose,’ but now it’s just your little ego’s plans to get self-assurance and self-affirmation, differentiation. I wish I could tell you in clear terms how to make that discernment, how to establish that difference, but I don’t know how to say that. All I can tell you is that it’s not obvious at all and you will fool yourself many more times than you get it right. With age, with experience, with time, you get to a point where you’re attuned enough to your own inner life that you recognize ‘that’s not mine. That’s impersonal.'”
Bernardo Kastrup – Allowing Nature To Work Through You – Dom Sniezka: https://youtu.be/668_Rdj9Eos
How to trust yourself – Adyashanti: https://youtu.be/k2kBzr5i_QY
Re-Cognize Your True Nature Up Until You Don’t Forget It – Francis Lucille: https://youtu.be/gcPz0TWan-s
What Does the “Still Small Voice” Refer To? – Francis Lucille: https://youtu.be/zmlzn0YSq8s
Kings 19:11
The hallmarks of the impersonal, which is a lot like what you find in Analytical Psychology, are impulses that send you in a direction that frightens the ideal self-image in the Super-ego and it can bring up safety concerns in the Ego. It’s a trial and error situation that brings you out of your comfort zone and leads to unexpected decisions. The urge of the impersonal also has a hallmark of not having an obvious reason or purpose for the urge, hence it’s not from your regular personality. This is why there has to be a pact between the different areas of the psyche to maintain some form of ethics, tact, and practicality, but to also give into impersonal satisfaction to avoid the psychological consequences of excessive repression and suppression. Each person makes a different bargain by siding with more duality or more oneness, while managing the consequences. Success would be defined on how much satisfaction, balance, and peace one has developed.
The Ego and the Id – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gvdo1-the-ego-and-the-id-sigmund-freud.html
From the meditative standpoint, Adyashanti has his own description of impersonal guidance. “It’s not the Ego voice. It’s not the personality voice, but there’s something inside that comes from a stillness, and it’s not essentially intellectual, not essentially thought driven. We can receive guidance by what’s been called the still small voice, like a little whisper in stillness, that just gives you the most simple guidance. It’s never a long explanation about anything. It’s usually very succinct, very brief and doesn’t justify itself, doesn’t argue it’s point. The more ego driven voice will produce a long series of analysis, and it will justify itself…The still small voice is just a gift of guidance that comes from stillness, that comes from the heart, and it doesn’t justify itself…You listen or you don’t listen. [It is the deepest form of conscience.] There’s a conscience that’s kind of learned through being socialized, [what in Psychology they would call a Super-ego], but this is different from that. It doesn’t judge and it doesn’t say should or shouldn’t. It’s just like a little gift of guidance…More often than not, that inner guidance isn’t really conceptual at all…The quickest way to access it is in your body. Our bodies are really good truth detectors, so when we’re not in truth, no matter what our mind thinks, our bodies will tend to have some sort of contraction, or some sort of [discomfort], and often that is the underlying sense of spiritual guidance or true conscience, that isn’t culturally derived…[It’s like maintaining balance when you learn how to walk as a child.] It’s not something you figure out. You can’t figure out how to find balance, [like on a tightrope]. As soon as you start thinking, you’re going to fall off…For awhile it’s like trial and error. You feel for what’s trustworthy.”
The problem that most people face is that we are conditioned to follow parents and imitate them and then we replace them with cool and powerful people out in the world and the skill to listen to oneself isn’t developed. It’s exclusively looking to others for guidance. We are the last people we listen to or not at all. “We want our references for what’s trustworthy and truth to be absolute, and we want a teacher to tell us [what that is]. If that’s the way we approach it we never really find out what’s trustworthy within ourselves.”
The Presocratic Philosophers – Kirk & Raven: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780521274555/
The Presocratics – Philip Wheelwright: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780024266408/
The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy – Daniel W. Graham: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780521737630/
Aristotle: Minor Works: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780674993389/
Parmenides, Melissus, Gorgias: A Reinterpretation of Eleatic Philosophy – Johannes Hubertus Mathias Mar Loenen: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781014966537/
Melissus and Eleatic Monism – Benjamin Harriman: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781108416337/
Melissus Between Miletus and Elea – Jaap Mansfeld: Paperback: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9783896656957/
The Life of Pericles – Plutarch: http://classics.mit.edu/Plutarch/pericles.html
Philosophy: https://psychreviews.org/category/philosophy03/