Two realms of truth, one above soul in the realm of absolute truth, the other below soul in the real of objective, relative truth — converge in the highest understanding.

This is how the two highest moral principles, properly understood, each and together, are one:

• Above, the V’ahavta, (which follows the Shema, which affirms the Jewish covenant with Adonai Echad, One, Absolute) “Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)
• Below, (which is embedded in a longer list of commandments concerning how one acts toward one’s actual fellows “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Leviticus 19:18)

Adonai is Hebrew for “Lord”, and it is used in place of the Tetragrammaton — a name not to be pronounced, lest it misleadingly appear to refer to some comprehensible “spiritual” object — the four letters: Yod – Hey – Vav – Hey.

Each of these four letters corresponds to one of the four worlds, the Olamot — Atzilut, Beriah, Yetzirah, Assiyah — each with a distinct but connected way of being, understanding, inhabiting a given reality.

These worlds are not places, or entities, or spiritual states, or stations of attainment — (these modes of being “exist” only in the lowest world, Assiyah, the actual world) — but rather modes of being in which — in Whom — we participate, consciously or otherwise.

We can think of the olamot as dimensional habitats. As a person simultaneously “inhabits” length, width, height and time, a person also simultaneously inhabits each and all of the olamot.

The absolute truth above (which is neither objective fact, nor subjective participatory perspective) is Beriah, designated by the first Hey. The truth below (which is actual and objective knowledge as we know it) is designated by the second Hey.

Hey and Hey — above and below, alike, one in One.

Our objective understanding of the world should reflect our absolute situation within reality of realities — Yod. This is effected in Yetzirah, the world of formation, where subjectivities of every scale (from ephemeral spark of intuitive capacity, to individual souls, to collective beings of every type and scope, like organizational brands, cultures, religions, political faiths, etc.) enworld given realities according to their own pluricentric participation. The Yetziratic beings (Vav) who harmonize Hey and Hey understand their participatory situation within Yod. Many, however, focus only downward toward the lower Hey, and deny the reality of the higher Hey, and attempt to impersonate Adonai Echad, by denying the truth or even existence of anything beyond the grasp of their own objectivity.

Speaking normatively: Design should work to form and organize the material and non-material reality around us to enworld ourselves in a way that brings the lower objective world into luminous convergence with the higher world, so its light can circulate and bathe the tissues of the world in divine meaning.

This is design ethics, and more than ethics. For ethics is only good conduct within an ethos, a particular enworldment.

Only some enworldments circulate the divine light. These are moral ethics.

Other enworldments eclipse the divine light. The ethic of an eclipsed ethos is a code of immorality. It drowns the world in false light. The more ethical its adherents are, the more depraved they become. An eclipsed ethic imposes , immoral morality, unjust justice, tyrannical equality, oppressive liberty, oblivious enlightenment, nihilistic inspiration, phony authenticity and antinatural nature.

In the Axial Age, everything was split apart into domains, and the domains were things and split things up into things, which could be recombined into things. Religion was a thing. Art was a thing. Commerce was a thing. Domestic life was a thing. Public life was a thing. We rendered unto each domain that to which the domain was owed.

Have we at last come to the end of this kind of vision of Heaven?