Anthony is a Damian: in his presence you saw clearly, felt deeply. He used thought rather than doing away with thought: thought was a springboard to shifting beyond thought. Anthony was interested in the process as much as the product: he was interested in the investigation, bringing out the questions. Each week was a new perspective: a suggestive inquiry. Philosophy was alive: based in human questions. Many of his dialectics are directed to the individuals asking the questions, aimed at deconstructing their fixed standpoint, so they can be more free to hear the possibilities in the moment.

Experiencing the “presence of an idea.” Recognizing when you were just regurgitating thoughts and when thoughts were becoming bright, shiny, new. To think a really new thought means to invite the cosmos to think through you. This means to put aside the ego thoughts, desire, attachment.

Anthony and the group were like a counterbalance: each feeding the other. Anthony said sometimes he was miffed: he would think about a question and then, boom, someone in the class would just come out with the intuition he was looking for.

Anthony’s own stated purpose is to get you to have a “glimpse” of reality, and then to move on your way “and I like to get rid of you as soon as I can.”

[Brahma: thinking becomes realizative.]

Anthony was interested not only in the ultimate essential reality of the universe, but how the ultimate reality, said to be infinite, ineffable, no-thing, could become this vast space-time universe, and our very experience of it. “individual mind is the burning focus of the ideas.” Familiar with many ancient views, as well as modern science, he was not satisfied with the idea that “something” comes from “nothing,” with “That” becomes “this”, or the scientific view of Big Bang something from nothing, or the Vedanta view of Maya as Illusion, as the play of reality. Although familiar with the non-dual teachings of Vedanta Buddhism and Platonism, he would not have been satisfied with certain modern interpretations of “no one here” or “all is One.” L

For Anthony, the “individual journey” can’t be wiped away with the stroke of a pen, any more than the vast cosmos. There is a supreme value of philosophy, as the expression of humanity, the sage as the full expression of humanity. “That life matters…”

Anthony wanted to fill the gap “noticeably left vacant” between the Infinite reality and our everyday experience. His premise is that the formless and ineffable reality expresses and presences itself as this everyday experience. How does the many, the “10,000 things” come from the “one reality”, and how does every one of the 10,000 things, and our very everyday experience express and presence the ultimate ineffable reality. “How from such a nature as we declare the One to be, does anything arise” is Plotinus question in 5.4.1.

This quest for meaning lead Anthony to explore not only the nature of the One, such that anything could arise without there being two “realities,” but also the very details of how the divine ideas arise in and from the One, how the infinite transforms itself into this universe, and how the divine is present in as and through our very experience, and not write it away. He was not even satisfied with the fabulous chapter “The Birth of the Universe” in TWOTO of his teacher PB that “all our knowledge is the transmutation of consciousness into a world,” as PB writes. Anthony wanted not only to understand the process of universing and individuating in detail, but to try to fathom something of his teacher.

But he refused PB’s suggestion to write a commentary and update the chapter. Instead, Anthony expressed in his own way what one of my thesis advisors said: simplicity this side of complexity is nothing. simplicity the other side of complexity is the real deal. For Anthony, the quest for meaning paralleled the quest of “realization.” It brought him to appreciate that “the One is so complex in its simplicity” including both “active perfection” and “passive” perfection. As each human being is a unique expression of the divine, each is to be honored, in a true democracy of the spirit: as all gold, and as a unique form. Cosmology was a bridge between the view of “all is one” and the complete materialistic reductionism of modern atheistic science. It is complex, because the universe itself is complex as well as simple, and as my advisor said, its simplicity can be appreciated only after we appreciate its complexity.

His grand mandala symbol went through several incarnations. At some point, the writings of modern neo-vedantist KC Bhattacharyya formed a theoretical basis. Later, in the mid-70’s, the writings of Plato in the 6^th book of the republic and the Parmenides were essentially incorporated. Along the way, refinements from Buddhism, Kabbalah, Alchemy, Sufism, and other traditions. Then Anthony began using the vastly comprehensive Enneads of Plotinus.

Anthony did many classes on Plato and Plotinus, from the early 1970’s through 1984. He originally focused on Plato’s dialogues of the Republic, and the divided line, Parmenides, and vision of the One and Many, and Timeaus, on Cosmology. Very early on, Anthony had a vision of the juxtaposition of philosophy and cosmology. He found that a symbol could bring us to para-doxa, use the mind to go beyond the mind, or throw the mind out of gear. Symbol enables us to juxtapose different or complementary points of view in one vision. It is visual as well as auditory. So symbol can point to and express para-doxa truths. Anthony drew cosmological and symbolic diagrams to express the insights into the nature of reality and the reality of nature in Platonism. He discovered a key article by T. Subba Row on “the 12 signs of the Zodia”, which he expounded on in September 1976.

In particular, the symbol of the cosmos was the most compelling. The Universe itself is a manifest expression of the divine reality. The universe has some flavor of the inspired atmosphere in which and from which it arose. It gives us a window to that reality. Anthony felt that the ancients had already gone far to transform the image of the visible cosmos into a symbol and symbolic mode in the astrological mandala. Astrology and the horoscope use geometry and mathematizing, a qualitative and symbolic imaginative view of number, to create a simplified, schematic and dynamical model of the universe. The astrological mandala allows us to both model the universe and to get a sense of its vastness and ineffability, and not only figure it out.

Anthony, Plotinus and PB.

Some years into his project, after several students had gone to Europe to help PB in what were to turn out were the last years of his life, the vast writings of the sage came to Hector. In these, Anthony found a vindication and focus of his own life and ideas that transformed the last three years of his life in a tremendous vital alchemical process, resulting in some of the most astute and astounding synthetic perspectives on these questions of synthesis and nonduality, on epistemology cosmology and metaphysics.

For Anthony non-duality was quite different from Monism or illusionism. Much later on, we found a para in PB: “ when duality is blended with and within unity.”

In one particular direction, Anthony found a focus and deepening of his ideas: the double non-dual nature of Soul or, in PB’s language, Overself. Here he found a deep sympathy, in the explanation of the purpose of life as a human evolutionary journey, a fabulous view of the double nature of Soul and intelligence, and a grand view of the flowering of humanity as the philosopher-sage. [quote PB on Philosophy and Philosopher: I want the philosopher to be identified with the man of insight.”]

From May of 1983 to March 9, 1984, Anthony had a series of deepening and unifying visions of the double nature of Soul.

It started with a paper Anthony wrote based on a quote from The Notebooks “what is the use.” He presented this synthetic view in a class of May 27 1983. Anthony refined this view in June and July, perhaps best in a class of June 18 1983 [check date!]. Anthony then gave a 10 day seminar in Sweden to a group of PB students, that later was published as “looking into mind.” Although he focused on Meditation and Mentalism during the seminar, he explained what he wanted to do with cosmology-astrology. [Quote here from LIM]

During this time, Anthony was continuing to apply and unfold his grand vision of Philosophy to and with the cosmology of Astrology. When he returned from Sweden, he presented some classes on his detailed re-vision of cosmic epistemology: the details of the arisal of our experience as mirrored by the cosmos: how “The World-Mind thinks its ideas into our mind.” See especially classes of Sept. 14 and October 14 1983

During the later fall, he found a tremendous parallel between PB ideas of philosophy and Plotinus’ ideas of the Nous and the “double knower” of 5.3. The philosopher was the person of “insight” which was for Plotinus “noesis,” or the presence of the Nous in the Soul. The soul had two essential directions: reason or dia-noia and insight, or noesis. These paralleled its double nature: “that the soul is both inviolable and becoming something is extraordinarily beautiful.” He explained the relation of the Soul—Overself of PB, Atma of Vedanta—and the World-Idea as an interdependent arising characterized by Buddhism. “Our way is to teach the soul…” showed him that the soul was learning from the cosmic intelligence, the World-Idea. From this journey unfolds the true flowering of humanity as expression of divine ideas, and the double nature of Insight and understanding as Knowing, Willing and Feeling. Classes of dec 7 1983 January 4 and 25 of 1984 were particularly powerful in unfolding this vision of Philosophy and the double nature of soul in PB.

Over the winter of 1983-84, Anthony wrote a series of final papers on synthetic view of the nature of soul presented in classes Jan 6, Jan 13, January 27, Feb 3 and culimating in the in the class of March 9, 1984. “Deliberate repetition and Emphasis”; “Omnipresence of the authentic existence” and “Our venerable guide…” [These papers were incorporated into the magnum opus work on Plotinus and Cosmology: Astronoesis.] One day during that period, I was in the museum in Rochester, and a double tanka from Chinese Buddhism flashed on me that this “double nature” was a divine idea itself.

What he visioned in the deep philosophical meanings, he also wanted to find in the astrological horoscope, and thus in our lives. Thus, the exploration of the lives of great beings deepened greatly during this period.