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- Oct 27, 2025
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I had this written down some time below, thought I'd share it here. My view on things is more so akin to the first principle of concepts and not mistaking thought-forms for the ultimate substrate or basis of reality itself. Like the Monad of Leibniz, simple things precede complex things. Mind precedes matter. I look for the universal present in particulars. If you understand the basics of Plato, you'll understand what I mean by this. If you take Bees, I look for the quality of Bee-ness in them, not assuming any particular to be the ''true'' Bee. I also realize that potentiality precedes actualization, like cause before effect.
But anyway...
These beliefs of mine can't be boiled down to any particular school of thought, as they're syncretic - as adhering to a rigid school of thought is limiting in my view, so I figured this would be the appropriate place to put this. I would like to know your opinion on what you agree, disagree with, and what I could be getting wrong. My way of thinking aligns with Plato's Intelligible aspects of the . I'd also like to say that his notion of Universals/Particulars influences my thinking as well. I'll have many other posts on other aspects of my beliefs and speculations. I'd like to say that Plato's Forms are not ''Forms'' and are both transcendent and immanent, as Parmenides and Heraclitus were both right, albeit on different aspects of the bigger picture.
With that being said, I hope you get something out of this.
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Something that's infinite can't have a perspective. If it has a perspective of any kind, then it's finite. The God All/One is divine logos, latent perfection. But perfection necessitates a state of being instead of becoming as becoming involves change and flux. That which is perfect can't be subject to change. Theoretically, perfection in a complex thing requires perfection of its subsequent parts. Perfection is aligned with the will of the one bringing this about. A perfect cube, in a hypothetical, would have to have every atom in perfect alignment, otherwise it wouldn't be a perfect representation. The latency of god, which is not a being in the anthropomorphic sense, is that of what precedes a thought. You can't conceive it as it's no-thing. All possibility is latent by default. Actualization is drawing upon and unveiling that source, which is god. God is an energy source, but not necessarily energy itself. Think of an energy source in the material plane, such as fossil fuels. It has latent potential to be converted into a source of energy for use in industrial society. If simple things precede complex things, we know being precedes becoming, an unmoved mover. Potentiality is a different ontology than actualization. We do that through mind, but our thoughts are fleeting. In part, this is due to the interference of sensory input in the material domain with the actions of the imaginal domain. When one is asleep, the imaginal domain is far more vivid. After all, the soul is not in the body but rather develops a sense of egoic individuality or perspective through it.
The prima materia is like sand and you take that sand and mold it into what you desire. The sand is the manifestation of the words spoken forth or the first means of actualization. You can build a castle, you can dig a hole, you can build a mote, or whatever you desire that is contained within the latent possibility of the sand - which is god. Of course, you have to wet the sand in order to make it hold together. But structures of sand don't last forever and will return to whence they came when a tidal wave washes ashore or someone tramples it beneath their feet. This is similar to how your thoughts don't hold up for long when you're in a conscious mode of being. Theoretically, consciousness is a mode of perception while the actual creation is unconscious. If you create a cube in your mind, the creation itself involves a lot of details that are dealt with unconsciously. A cube is not simply one whole thing, it's comprised of many things. Every aspect of the cube, down to smallest portion that can be perceived, is not something we focus on. I'll compare it to a wave, which is comprised of who knows how many water molecules. But all of those water molecules, different sizes and properties, all seem to move by some form of energy or divine logos to form the structure of the wave. When we see a wave or visualize one in our minds, we're not considering all the parts but the sum of all the parts. In the same way you're not considering all the pixels on a screen, just the image that shows up. Even a point is comprised of many things. Perhaps you get what I'm saying. We manipulate this hidden logos/energy source/energy to shape reality within our mind. As we elevate our consciousness, those thoughts can take on a life of their own and our reality will reflect our soul. Even that which has no extension nor dimension has qualia/qualities which count as something rather than nothing. Some form of logos, some form of energy is utilized and structures itself according to your perception to create the cube. I would suggest that is the Great mother, Binah, that is an extension of the masculine urge for creation in giving creation stability and form. The unconscious is feminine, as it's the passive structured principle as opposed to the masculine active free flowing principle. The ego is tricky though, since it is a limited perspective which would fall in line with Binah of constraint, since perspective implies femininity, especially if you're a perceiver in which you create something while focusing on the creation even though you're not intimately involved with every little detail of creation. So I disagree that ego is purely masculine, as limit implies the feminine. I'd go so far as to suggest that there isn't a clear boundary between ego and subconscious, since the actions of the egoic perceiver can't always be explained and fall into the category of unconscious impulses. You don't get ''rid'' of the unconscious through individuation, but rather come to draw its power to shape reality around you. In extreme cases, before one dies, one could find themselves moving rocks or perhaps even mountains if they could manipulate the molecules or the atoms by means of the pauli exclusion principle and how one could do so via mind. Of course, I'd wager few, if any, individuals could do that in this plane.
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With Spinoza's conception of god as mathematics or eternal cosmic laws, my theory is that god is an energy source or source of energy. Not necessarily a sentient being in the conventional sense of sentience that a human would possess. But this source of energy is not actualized and thus many aspects of it are hidden from itself. Like the Zohar in Xenosaga, one can have a conduit or means to draw upon this source of energy - which is infinite and thus never depletes - for their own usage. After all, god is infinite and has no lack nor gaps/holes in its being. It is complete in the sense of that in a domain of frequency, but complete to me is more so something is brought together but does not know itself or does not have control over itself. But unlike Spinoza, I don't posit that god is perfect. It is true that god is not even a being in the traditional sense. In other words, there can be perfection in potential but not actualization. Of course, based on Henri Corbin's work, I believe there are three primary planes of existence - material, imaginal, and spiritual. The first and third are like what Plato spoke of in regards of his divided line analogy, but the middle one - the imaginal - it not bound by material reality yet is perceptible in a supra sensory means like what you'd see in dreams. I'll explain that more another time, but for now I want to explain more on Spinoza and why I believe god or divine logos is not perfect, per say, if you look at it from my perspective. It'll be a bit tricky to explain, so bear with me.
Spinoza had the following observations -
If god is truly infinite, omnipresent and eternal as the Bible claims, then it cannot be somewhere. It has to be everywhere. If god is truly perfect, it cannot desire anything because desire implies lack and perfection cannot have lack. If god is truly eternal, it cannot change it's mind because change implies time and eternity is beyond time.
Each snowflake followed perfect physical laws. Each ice crystal formed according to precise mathematical patterns. There was no whim, no temperamental mood, no favoritism, only laws. Laws that worked with absolute consistency. The same laws that made the planets revolve. The same laws that made one's heart beat. The same laws that made light travel and music sound. And Spinoza realized that was god. Not an anthropomorphic character sitting on a cloud, but the very logical structure of reality. The force that made the universe exist from nothing. The intelligence that organized atoms into molecules, molecules into cells, cells into conscious organisms capable of contemplating their own existence. This force didn't have an ego because it was too infinite to need validation. It didn't get angry because it was too perfect to feel threatened. It didn't make political deals because it was too universal to have favorites. It didn't demand worship because it was too complete to need anything external. If you want to know god truly, he said, stop looking in books written by men, look at nature. Look at reality.
God, Spininoza said, is reality itself. Its nature. It's the laws that govern the universe. It's the mathematical logic that makes the stars shine and the planets revolve. This God has no ego. He doesn't get angry. He doesn't throw tantrums. He doesn't need worship. He doesn't choose favorite peoples. He doesn't ask for money. This God simply is. And anyone using their natural reason can know him directly without intermediaries, without interpretations, without anyone's permission.
Funnily enough, this aligns with what I've been saying for a while now.
Of course, these laws are immaterial and don't exist in this plane, per say. Or another way is to say they exist both in this plane and in another plane. They are why a given mode of input always leads to a given mode of output. Why the universe is structured by a form of reason rather than faith or irrationalism.
One thing I'll say is that man creates the gods, angels, devils, and demons...not the other way around. A passage by Henri Corbin explains this perfectly, in which we create through mind our own gods, per say. Our own thought-form entities. It ties into what Spinoza said, although I don't know if Spinoza ever outright said what I'm saying here on us being gods and the gods being our creation, not the other way around. Or even being parts of our unconscious expressed to us. We, in a sense, mold this energy that is god into beings of our own. In a sense, we draw from an infinite source but our mind itself is finite. If you consider a monad as its own point, it itself is in the domain of the infinite but has finite qualitative qualities if that makes sense. Since if it were infinite, then it'd have no defining qualities. But god is infinite, a source of energy and is the logical structure of existence.
“If you say that a certain form is God, you are homologating that form, because it is one among the forms in which He manifests Himself (maẓhar); but if you say that it is something else, something other than God, you are interpreting it, just as you are obliged to interpret forms seen in a dream.”43 But homologation and interpretation are valid only when taken together, for then to say that the theophanic form is other than God is not to deprecate it as “illusory” but on the contrary to prize it and establish it as a symbol relating to something symbolized (marmūz ilayhi), which is the Divine Being. Indeed, revealed being (ẓāhir) is theophanic Imagination, and its true hidden (bāṭin) reality is the Divine Being. It is because revealed being is Imagination that we require a hermeneutics of the forms manifested in it, that is to say, a ta’wīl which carries them back (as the etymology of the word ta’wīl indicates) to their true reality. The world of dreams and what we commonly call the waking world are equally in need of hermeneutics. Nevertheless it should be borne in mind that if the world is recurrent creation (khalq jadīd) and recurrent epiphany, if as such it is theophanic Imagination and therefore requires a hermeneutics, or ta’wīl, we must conclude that the ultimate reason why the world is Imagination and like dreams demands a hermeneutics, is to be sought in the recurrent creation, imperceptible to the senses. The saying attributed to the Prophet: “Men are asleep, they awaken at their death,”44 implies that everything human beings see in their earthly lives is of the same order as visions contemplated in dream. The advantage of dreams over the positive data of waking life is that they permit, or rather require, an interpretation that transcends all data, for data signify something other than what is disclosed. They manifest (and herein lies the entire significance of the theophanic functions). We do not interpret something that has nothing to teach us and signifies no more than what it is. Because the world is theophanic Imagination, it consists of “apparitions” which demand to be interpreted and transcended. And for that very reason it is only through the Active Imagination that consciousness, awakened to the true nature of the world as “apparition,” can transcend its data and thereby render itself capable of new theophanies, that is, of a continuous ascent. The initial imaginative operation is to typify (tamthīl) the immaterial and spiritual realities in external or sensuous forms, which then become “ciphers” for what they manifest. After that the Imagination remains the motive force of the ta’wīl which is the continuous ascent of the soul.
Homologation is saying this form is God. That means affirming the divine reality within the form. You recognize it as a valid theophany (manifestation of God). Interpretation is saying this form is not God but points beyond itself. That means the form is symbolic, a sign (marmūz ilayhi) pointing to God. Every form is a real theophany, God appearing. But every form is also symbolic, pointing beyond itself to the Divine Being.''
I'm still working out the kinks, but getting closer. Truth is a process of unveiling, not creation.
But anyway...
These beliefs of mine can't be boiled down to any particular school of thought, as they're syncretic - as adhering to a rigid school of thought is limiting in my view, so I figured this would be the appropriate place to put this. I would like to know your opinion on what you agree, disagree with, and what I could be getting wrong. My way of thinking aligns with Plato's Intelligible aspects of the . I'd also like to say that his notion of Universals/Particulars influences my thinking as well. I'll have many other posts on other aspects of my beliefs and speculations. I'd like to say that Plato's Forms are not ''Forms'' and are both transcendent and immanent, as Parmenides and Heraclitus were both right, albeit on different aspects of the bigger picture.
With that being said, I hope you get something out of this.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Something that's infinite can't have a perspective. If it has a perspective of any kind, then it's finite. The God All/One is divine logos, latent perfection. But perfection necessitates a state of being instead of becoming as becoming involves change and flux. That which is perfect can't be subject to change. Theoretically, perfection in a complex thing requires perfection of its subsequent parts. Perfection is aligned with the will of the one bringing this about. A perfect cube, in a hypothetical, would have to have every atom in perfect alignment, otherwise it wouldn't be a perfect representation. The latency of god, which is not a being in the anthropomorphic sense, is that of what precedes a thought. You can't conceive it as it's no-thing. All possibility is latent by default. Actualization is drawing upon and unveiling that source, which is god. God is an energy source, but not necessarily energy itself. Think of an energy source in the material plane, such as fossil fuels. It has latent potential to be converted into a source of energy for use in industrial society. If simple things precede complex things, we know being precedes becoming, an unmoved mover. Potentiality is a different ontology than actualization. We do that through mind, but our thoughts are fleeting. In part, this is due to the interference of sensory input in the material domain with the actions of the imaginal domain. When one is asleep, the imaginal domain is far more vivid. After all, the soul is not in the body but rather develops a sense of egoic individuality or perspective through it.
The prima materia is like sand and you take that sand and mold it into what you desire. The sand is the manifestation of the words spoken forth or the first means of actualization. You can build a castle, you can dig a hole, you can build a mote, or whatever you desire that is contained within the latent possibility of the sand - which is god. Of course, you have to wet the sand in order to make it hold together. But structures of sand don't last forever and will return to whence they came when a tidal wave washes ashore or someone tramples it beneath their feet. This is similar to how your thoughts don't hold up for long when you're in a conscious mode of being. Theoretically, consciousness is a mode of perception while the actual creation is unconscious. If you create a cube in your mind, the creation itself involves a lot of details that are dealt with unconsciously. A cube is not simply one whole thing, it's comprised of many things. Every aspect of the cube, down to smallest portion that can be perceived, is not something we focus on. I'll compare it to a wave, which is comprised of who knows how many water molecules. But all of those water molecules, different sizes and properties, all seem to move by some form of energy or divine logos to form the structure of the wave. When we see a wave or visualize one in our minds, we're not considering all the parts but the sum of all the parts. In the same way you're not considering all the pixels on a screen, just the image that shows up. Even a point is comprised of many things. Perhaps you get what I'm saying. We manipulate this hidden logos/energy source/energy to shape reality within our mind. As we elevate our consciousness, those thoughts can take on a life of their own and our reality will reflect our soul. Even that which has no extension nor dimension has qualia/qualities which count as something rather than nothing. Some form of logos, some form of energy is utilized and structures itself according to your perception to create the cube. I would suggest that is the Great mother, Binah, that is an extension of the masculine urge for creation in giving creation stability and form. The unconscious is feminine, as it's the passive structured principle as opposed to the masculine active free flowing principle. The ego is tricky though, since it is a limited perspective which would fall in line with Binah of constraint, since perspective implies femininity, especially if you're a perceiver in which you create something while focusing on the creation even though you're not intimately involved with every little detail of creation. So I disagree that ego is purely masculine, as limit implies the feminine. I'd go so far as to suggest that there isn't a clear boundary between ego and subconscious, since the actions of the egoic perceiver can't always be explained and fall into the category of unconscious impulses. You don't get ''rid'' of the unconscious through individuation, but rather come to draw its power to shape reality around you. In extreme cases, before one dies, one could find themselves moving rocks or perhaps even mountains if they could manipulate the molecules or the atoms by means of the pauli exclusion principle and how one could do so via mind. Of course, I'd wager few, if any, individuals could do that in this plane.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
With Spinoza's conception of god as mathematics or eternal cosmic laws, my theory is that god is an energy source or source of energy. Not necessarily a sentient being in the conventional sense of sentience that a human would possess. But this source of energy is not actualized and thus many aspects of it are hidden from itself. Like the Zohar in Xenosaga, one can have a conduit or means to draw upon this source of energy - which is infinite and thus never depletes - for their own usage. After all, god is infinite and has no lack nor gaps/holes in its being. It is complete in the sense of that in a domain of frequency, but complete to me is more so something is brought together but does not know itself or does not have control over itself. But unlike Spinoza, I don't posit that god is perfect. It is true that god is not even a being in the traditional sense. In other words, there can be perfection in potential but not actualization. Of course, based on Henri Corbin's work, I believe there are three primary planes of existence - material, imaginal, and spiritual. The first and third are like what Plato spoke of in regards of his divided line analogy, but the middle one - the imaginal - it not bound by material reality yet is perceptible in a supra sensory means like what you'd see in dreams. I'll explain that more another time, but for now I want to explain more on Spinoza and why I believe god or divine logos is not perfect, per say, if you look at it from my perspective. It'll be a bit tricky to explain, so bear with me.
Spinoza had the following observations -
If god is truly infinite, omnipresent and eternal as the Bible claims, then it cannot be somewhere. It has to be everywhere. If god is truly perfect, it cannot desire anything because desire implies lack and perfection cannot have lack. If god is truly eternal, it cannot change it's mind because change implies time and eternity is beyond time.
Each snowflake followed perfect physical laws. Each ice crystal formed according to precise mathematical patterns. There was no whim, no temperamental mood, no favoritism, only laws. Laws that worked with absolute consistency. The same laws that made the planets revolve. The same laws that made one's heart beat. The same laws that made light travel and music sound. And Spinoza realized that was god. Not an anthropomorphic character sitting on a cloud, but the very logical structure of reality. The force that made the universe exist from nothing. The intelligence that organized atoms into molecules, molecules into cells, cells into conscious organisms capable of contemplating their own existence. This force didn't have an ego because it was too infinite to need validation. It didn't get angry because it was too perfect to feel threatened. It didn't make political deals because it was too universal to have favorites. It didn't demand worship because it was too complete to need anything external. If you want to know god truly, he said, stop looking in books written by men, look at nature. Look at reality.
God, Spininoza said, is reality itself. Its nature. It's the laws that govern the universe. It's the mathematical logic that makes the stars shine and the planets revolve. This God has no ego. He doesn't get angry. He doesn't throw tantrums. He doesn't need worship. He doesn't choose favorite peoples. He doesn't ask for money. This God simply is. And anyone using their natural reason can know him directly without intermediaries, without interpretations, without anyone's permission.
Funnily enough, this aligns with what I've been saying for a while now.
Of course, these laws are immaterial and don't exist in this plane, per say. Or another way is to say they exist both in this plane and in another plane. They are why a given mode of input always leads to a given mode of output. Why the universe is structured by a form of reason rather than faith or irrationalism.
One thing I'll say is that man creates the gods, angels, devils, and demons...not the other way around. A passage by Henri Corbin explains this perfectly, in which we create through mind our own gods, per say. Our own thought-form entities. It ties into what Spinoza said, although I don't know if Spinoza ever outright said what I'm saying here on us being gods and the gods being our creation, not the other way around. Or even being parts of our unconscious expressed to us. We, in a sense, mold this energy that is god into beings of our own. In a sense, we draw from an infinite source but our mind itself is finite. If you consider a monad as its own point, it itself is in the domain of the infinite but has finite qualitative qualities if that makes sense. Since if it were infinite, then it'd have no defining qualities. But god is infinite, a source of energy and is the logical structure of existence.
“If you say that a certain form is God, you are homologating that form, because it is one among the forms in which He manifests Himself (maẓhar); but if you say that it is something else, something other than God, you are interpreting it, just as you are obliged to interpret forms seen in a dream.”43 But homologation and interpretation are valid only when taken together, for then to say that the theophanic form is other than God is not to deprecate it as “illusory” but on the contrary to prize it and establish it as a symbol relating to something symbolized (marmūz ilayhi), which is the Divine Being. Indeed, revealed being (ẓāhir) is theophanic Imagination, and its true hidden (bāṭin) reality is the Divine Being. It is because revealed being is Imagination that we require a hermeneutics of the forms manifested in it, that is to say, a ta’wīl which carries them back (as the etymology of the word ta’wīl indicates) to their true reality. The world of dreams and what we commonly call the waking world are equally in need of hermeneutics. Nevertheless it should be borne in mind that if the world is recurrent creation (khalq jadīd) and recurrent epiphany, if as such it is theophanic Imagination and therefore requires a hermeneutics, or ta’wīl, we must conclude that the ultimate reason why the world is Imagination and like dreams demands a hermeneutics, is to be sought in the recurrent creation, imperceptible to the senses. The saying attributed to the Prophet: “Men are asleep, they awaken at their death,”44 implies that everything human beings see in their earthly lives is of the same order as visions contemplated in dream. The advantage of dreams over the positive data of waking life is that they permit, or rather require, an interpretation that transcends all data, for data signify something other than what is disclosed. They manifest (and herein lies the entire significance of the theophanic functions). We do not interpret something that has nothing to teach us and signifies no more than what it is. Because the world is theophanic Imagination, it consists of “apparitions” which demand to be interpreted and transcended. And for that very reason it is only through the Active Imagination that consciousness, awakened to the true nature of the world as “apparition,” can transcend its data and thereby render itself capable of new theophanies, that is, of a continuous ascent. The initial imaginative operation is to typify (tamthīl) the immaterial and spiritual realities in external or sensuous forms, which then become “ciphers” for what they manifest. After that the Imagination remains the motive force of the ta’wīl which is the continuous ascent of the soul.
Homologation is saying this form is God. That means affirming the divine reality within the form. You recognize it as a valid theophany (manifestation of God). Interpretation is saying this form is not God but points beyond itself. That means the form is symbolic, a sign (marmūz ilayhi) pointing to God. Every form is a real theophany, God appearing. But every form is also symbolic, pointing beyond itself to the Divine Being.''
I'm still working out the kinks, but getting closer. Truth is a process of unveiling, not creation.
