Eros and Logos
I mentioned already the decisive role of Eros in homecoming. But Eros is closely connected with Logos. If Eros is the primal urge that drives us, then Logos is the primal knowledge in us. When I try to explain what I know about the archetype of homecoming, I have to consult first of all this inner knowing. It is the Logos in me, which by Augustine is seen as the magister interior, the inner teacher. That does not mean that I don’t have to read or study on this subject, but that this all can only be checked by my inner knowledge and experience. The Logos is the creative and organizing principle in all that exists. Whether we are conscious of this principle or not, we are part of it. In the tradition one speaks of the Logos Spermatikos, the seed of the Logos, that is innate in every person and has to be developed. For that reason you cannot state that Logos is identical with the modern concept of ratio. The ratio is a static principle, while the Logos, in the same way as Eros, is dynamic and drives us necessarily to develop ourselves, to express what not has been pronounced yet, and should be said. Both Logos and Eros work together in every creature to bring it to completion, that is to homecoming.
Eros and transcendence
In the Platonic view Eros is the desire that wants union. Not a temporary and partial, but a total union. Eros transcends all partial fulfillment. As a child of Poros and Penia, born of Fulfillment and Lack, Eros is satisfied with nothing more than an absolute fulfillment and all his striving is directed towards this goal.
However our real situation is that of a fundamental loss. And as far as we achieve in fulfilling some of our desires, it is often mixed with the awareness that it is only partially. In fact we are mixed in a multitude of desires. Hence our restless searching that moves from one object to another, and that Augustine so thoroughly describes. In this world of multiplicity there can be no end to this restlessness, or we should acquiesce in a partial fulfillment, but that would be a deceitful rest.
Death as the fulfillment of Eros
What could reassure us is the prospect of a final rest in the fullness of being, knowing that death is not a break in our life, but an completion. It may seem cold comfort to postpone the fulfillment of existence until death, but if you deny yourself this view, you deny yourself also the reassurance of this perspective.
As I have already argued, the essence of Eros is oriented on fulfillment which can only be in death. But I have the impression that many reject this perspective as an illusion and that they do this out of an misplaced kind of braveness or determination to venture them not in such vague perspective. Rather they cling fast to the material world, the actual physical constellation. But perhaps it is a hidden fear to lose one’s hold of the well known reality. For them it is impossible to change the grip of the logical ratio in favor of a reality of which the heart speaks. The Heart, the Eros, speaks of homecoming. The ratio speaks: hereafter all is finished, what rest is illusion.
Homecoming, illusion or reality?
The statement that our death should be an absolute end struck me always as a harsh judgment. I have my doubts if it is well founded. It is an assumption and I have never understood the reasons why such a verdict could be so positively pronounced. It is understandable if someone confesses himself to be an agnostic, because we know little about what happens after death and we have very little to say about which is beyond our horizon. But the firmness with which people call themselves atheists and limit themselves to time and place is in my opinion a sign of narrow-mindedness. As if deep in their souls nothing transcends temporality and appeals to a world that remains.
Their argument is certainly to confirm fully this life here and now, because it is short and before you know it is over. Why divert in that case your attention to another life beyond this time?
I agree with Cavafy to enjoy fully your life, but that does not mean that you can deny the temporary and transient nature of what life has to offer. For me all I taste refers to something transcendent, that this temporality exceeds.
For what is the case, when you have the reverse opinion: how much appears in this temporal life to be an illusion, when we limit ourselves entirely to it? In any case what material is, is subject to decay and will not endure the tooth of the time. But on the interpersonal level too, there is a constant cycle of construction and deconstruction. What is the hope of the career builders? What one generation builds up is by the following systematically demolished. What is more illusory than the belief in progress? Certainly, there is a certain evolution. But wherever the world is made it is not by definition easier or happier, on the contrary.
All this may sound pessimistic in the ears of the convinced confirmers of life. Yet my view is not prompted by pessimism or lack of vitality, but rather by a concern for what is permanent and extracts itself from the transitory character of time. In that case we have to leave all the material and physical world and all social structures and turn ourselves to our inner self. If anything transcends time, it has to be in our consciousness. It must be there where we gather our experiences in time together into our memory. This awareness of all that passed in our lives and is concentrated in memory, that is what we really are, that is our identity. That remains when we are gone through the different stages of life. What is in this perspective illusion, what reality? Not everything we imagine is illusion. Many things in our imagination are not invented, but found. You can express and understand certain realities only in images, because they are on the border of our existence. Homecoming is such a reality.
Homecoming from abroad
According to Augustine and his neo-platonic philosophy we are strangers in this life, as far as we are submitted to this material and transitory world. When you talk in this perspective about homecoming, you are talking about a different world, the homeland. It is not a world elsewhere, but deep within us and difficult to reach. Perhaps this world remains for many people in this life unknown or unconscious, so their death coincides with homecoming. In that case means homecoming entering to a deeper consciousness, to those original world which is experienced as new and at the same time familiar.
It will be a revelation for those who did not expect or wanted any comfort. But for those too, who thought they knew anything of this homecoming, it shall be something beyond their understanding. Yet it should not prevent us to speak about it. This is only possible in images. But we have to provide for ourselves a certain beauty and comfort in this life to keep in mind the track of the world we came home from
Homecoming as coming to yourself
When Augustine speaks of homecoming in the haven of the happy life, he is inspired by Plotinus, who in Enneads 1:6.8., In the essay About Beauty, speaks of the return to the Fatherland, the land where we come from and where the Father is. But unlike Augustine, who chooses the image of the ship as a means to return to home, Plotinus declines in this journey any vehicle. The journey is not on foot, not on horse or cart or ship. We should not look out for any external means of transport, but close our eyes and come to a different kind of seeing. The road we have to go is the way of introspection.
When homecoming is to come to yourself, then it is entering into a deeper level in yourself. The ego that has been far away from home, returns to his base, and is aware of what it in origin is. It turns out that it is a misconception that the ego, or rather the self is an emptiness, a tabula rasa, that is totally determinate by impressions from outside. In ourselves we have already inner structures, in which we receive what comes from outside.
When the ego comes to his self, it discovers that it is creative and can give meaning to what happens. It discovers that it can transcend facts and events and is not entirely a part of what the outside world dictates. The ego enters into a spiritual world of a different order, which is not subject to time and space. It finds in the mind already existing ideas which give us the sense of what happiness is, what true, what beautiful and what good. They are not ready-made notions, but formal archetypes, by which we can be guided and are able to communicate with others. The self can therefore be a centre which can give meaning, though not at random and arbitrary. It knows itself embedded and connected to a deeper archetypal layer, which is collective, and by which it can find and give meaning.
Emotion as a way of homecoming
Our self has a notion of what home is. If we determine that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then we express that beauty is not an objectively given fact, but dependent from the subject who has the notion to see it. It means that this qualification of beauty stems from our mind. So when we call something beautiful, it assumes a link to our inner consciousness, to there where we can be moved.
A painting, a book may have many qualities, but we just call it beautifulif we have recognized something in it what in our deepest consciousness lives. It moves a sense of beauty that is already present, although unspoken. Here I find the link between beauty and comfort. A sadness about something what lies hidden in our consciousness and wants to be expressed, but can find no form, is turned into joy and emotion when we see it expressed in something or by someone. I think this comparatively applicable to our inner notions of perfection, truth, goodness, etc. All these moments of emotion, when I am confronted with something beautiful, true, good or perfect, are ways of homecoming, of coming to yourself.
You could describe this kind of emotion as if an inner chord is touched and vibrates and gives the sound of what you feel as good or beautiful or true. It reminds you of that hidden idea of goodness, beauty and truth, which you know already, because it are these ideas which are at the origin of your existence. Therefore is by this memory homecoming mixed with emotions.
Home is not far away
I want to avoid the impression that, when I talk about homecoming, I speak about a totally different world. My belief in the transcendence of consciousness has nothing to do with what they call Weltverneinung or contempt of this world. I don’t try to be outside of time, but to recognize in this temporary and local constellation an eternal reality. As I said: a book for me is not good because it creates its own world, but as far as it is able to touch that chord in me of the innate longing, which is collective and exceeds time and space.
This view is closely related to the Platonic philosophy, I know. And I am aware that there I found for the first time my inspiration. I know that one blames Platonism to have created a world of ideas, which stands apart from this earthly reality. I think it is a misinterpretation of Platonism. What matters is not to flee from this world, but to see through it to discover a perspective that opens views. In this way the world reveals what we call home. Maybe it's a much larger misjudgment of the world to see her as a closed reality.