CONSCIOUSNESS
- in a monistic reality that includes conscious beings, the potential for consciousness must be implicit in all things; the various forms of awareness are a function of the particular structures and processes characterizing conscious entities
- in Iamblichean monism, another universal feature of entities is the "double identity" (individual and unitive) noted previously; consciousness and identity are in fact closely related in this system
- identity as both part and whole is a paradox; without a mediating term to link these seemingly incompatible self descriptions, a viable universe composed of such paradoxical entities could not exist
- for Iamblichus, the mediating term is psyche, or soul; psyche designates the intersection of the "horizontal" and "vertical" aspects of selfhood
- the tension between the poles of the identity paradox gives rise to the phenomenology of consciousness in the arena of the soul; awareness of anything is awareness of the particular and unitive aspects of the object, and indirectly of our own individual and unitive selves
- every object of awareness has specific features, as does the individual cognizer; but every object also reflects the One, which implies the cognizer’s own unitive identity
- thus, we can experience each percept, thought, memory, feeling, fantasy and volition in purely "horizontal" terms, as a collection of separate objects; this attitude strengthens our own sense of individual identity, intrinsically isolated from the rest of reality; or, we can attend to the "vertical" presence of these objects, and thus be reminded of our continuity with the undivided One