ESSENCE AND SUBSTANCE

Various aspects of the traditional wisdom might be taken as a starting-point; but perhaps the most fundamental of all is the science of the two principles which underlie the manifestation of the universe.

Aristotle called these two principles Morphe and Hyle the Hindus refer to them as Purusha and Prakriti, the Chinese tradition names them T'ien and Ti; the Mediaeval Scholastics speak of Forma and Materia. We shall use the names Essence and Substance.

What are these two fundamental principles upon which everything we know is based? Perhaps the Scholastic/Aristotelian designation of Form and Matter is a good starting point for understanding them. Everything that is consists of Form manifested in Matter.

Aristotle illustrates this concept with the image of a statue. Let us say wehave a statue of the Goddess Diana carved in Marble. What is the Form orEssence of this statue? The shape of the Goddess. What is its Substance?Marble. Now, suppose we could remove the Essence or Form from the statue. We should no longer have a statue of Diana. What should we have? Simply a piece of marble. Now, is this piece of Marble pure Substance or Matter? Certainly not, because it still has qualities -- thus it still has Essence or Form. What are those qualities? The qualities of marble. The Essence or Form of what remains is marble-ness. Now, suppose we could remove this Essence too. Suppose we could take the marble-ness away from this piece of stone. What should we have? Pure stone -- not marble or granite or limestone, but pure stone, the substance underlying all stone. Of course, we can never see pure stone on earth. All manifest stone has to be some particular form of stone -- marble or jade or flint. But is this Stone, even stripped of the Essence of any particular stone, pure Substance? It is not, because it still has qualities -- the qualities of stone-ness.

Now, in theory, we could go on stripping away qualities or Forms or Essences, until we were left with pure Substance, or Matter -- Materia Prima as the Scholastics called it, What would this pure Matter be like? Clearly it would not be like anything. It would have no Form, no Essence, no qualities. So, it would have no colour, no weight, no texture, no sound, no scent. It would not be hard or soft, cool or hot, rough or smooth. Obviously, then, we could not see it, feel it, smell it, taste it or hear it, We could not perceive it in any way. Indeed, it is not a physical thing at all. All physical things must have Essence and Substance. The very definition of a manifest thing is that it is a combination of Essence and Substance--a Form impressed on Matter. Pure Essence and pure Substance of necessity lie outside manifestation -- which is not the same thing as saying theydo not exist.

It is worth taking some time to familiarise yourself with the concepts ofEssence and Substance, because they lie at the very foundation of thetraditional view of the universe. Everything else begins to fall into place inthe light of this understanding.

It is interesting to note, in this context, the findings of scientists who haveattempted to probe the inner nature of matter. The more we learn aboutsub-atomic particles, the more they seem to defy all normal physicaldescription. They seem at times to behave like particles and at other times to behave like waves. They do things which would normally be called physical impossibilities, and scientists are compelled to surmise that they are not physical entities at all in any sense of the term that means anything to us. What they seem to be, we are told, is pieces of pure information.

Now this is patently absurd. How can information exist on its own with nothing to inform? -- and remember, there is nothing for these sub-atomic particles to inform, because they are supposed to be everything; that is, every material thing is built up from them and nothing else. Scientists themselves admit the logical impossibility of the thing--the fact that the whole mechanistic, materialistic system of modern science turns out to be based upon an impossibility. The laws of cause and effect upon which science is based fall to pieces as we reach the very foundations of matter itself.

Nevertheless, this description makes perfect sense in the light of thetraditional doctrine. Essence is precisely pure information. Itinforms--forms from within--every material entity. Essence is Form--orinformation--working on Substance, and Substance can only be seen when thelight of Essence is shining on it--we can only perceive marble, for examplebecause of its qualities--its hardness, colour, weight,stone-ness.

At the sub-atomic level we cannot detect the Substance upon which Essence isworking. This is because there is some truth in the scientist's belief that heis "getting to the very building blocks of matter itself", and while he is not,and could not be, at the level of Pure Substance or Prima Materia, heis seeing Matter stripped of many of its Essential qulaities.Consequently, at this level, Matter is no longer prehensible, and all that canbe seen is the low-level action of Essence, which appears to be acting on its own as "pure information", but is in fact in-forming Matter at a very rudimentary level.

There is an irony -- but in fact it is something more than a mere accidental irony -- in the fact that modern science, which bases itself exclusively upon a purely material and quantitive approach and upon the assumption that everything can be explained from the side of Matter, ignoring Essence altogether, should, upon approaching what ought to be, as it were, its own domain par excellence--the nearest we can get in manifestation to "pure Matter" -- runheadlong into the problem of Essence and see its material and quantitativeaxioms go up in smoke.

It is also important for us to realise from the outset that when we speak ofEssence and Substance as the fundamental principles of cosmic manifestation, we are not talking merely of philosophical abstractions or ancient notions that have been superseded by modern science; we are speaking of vital truths which have always been true, and which, while they may have seemed to be rendered obsolete in the comfortable, closed world of 18th- and 19th-century `scientific' materialism, they are thrown into sharp relief by the findings of 20th century atomic- and astro-physics and shown to be vitally relevant.