Modern Non-duality · first century CE
Philo of Alexandria
The Alexandrian school · Middle Platonism · By way of negation · via negativa
A Hellenistic sage who, two thousand years before neo-advaita, took apart the "I" with the same direct negation.
The essence of the teaching: Only the Absolute, Pure Being, is changeless and real; the created world is motion and strife. Freedom lies in shifting one's identity from the perishing, composite "I" to the uncreated and simple.
Transmission
Philo lived in Alexandria, at the meeting of Jewish faith and Greek philosophy, and arrived at the very thing neo-advaita would arrive at two thousand years later. God cannot be seen as an image or named with a name – He is known by realizing His incomprehensibility. The highest knowing is the acknowledgment that He is beyond knowing. The created "I," the compound of body and soul, is "war," endless motion and discord. Pure Being is "peace," a motionless stillness. Leave the composite "I" wholly behind, and what remains will be no person, but that silent center which holds everything, while never changing itself.
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