Ruach (Spirit) can intuit existential threat, just like Nefesh (Soul), but where Nefesh returns to dust (Hyle), Ruach returns to Neshamah (Nous). In both cases, finite being anticipates its dissolution and reabsorption into the indefinite nothingness from which finite life emerges.

Ruach, however, can ascend through the veil of nihilitude, and dissolve in Neshamah, before redescending, reconstituted ex nihilo in a newly given world — without returning Nefesh to the earth.

This is what “born of the spirit” means: Ruach is reborn from Neshamah, and Nefesh finds itself re-selved and re-enworlded.

Neshamah is the superpersonal Self in the hypostasis of creation-revelation ex nihilo known as Beriah.

Ruach is the transpersonal self in the hypostasis of transcendental subjectivity known as Yetzirah.

Nefesh is the objectified person in the hypostasis of objective actuality known as Asiyah.

Nihilitude separates Ruach from Ruach, and all Ruach from Neshamah, in whom every Ruach subsists. Ruach dreads the piercing of nihilitude and the inconceivable indefinitude beyond everything.

Exnihilation and annihilation are indistinguishable from below; from above the distinction is unimportant. To Neshamah, birthpangs, deathpangs, graves and cradles are all alike — finitude desperately and futilely defining itself against its infinite ground. To Nefesh, every pang is a potential threat to present life, and life is to be preserved at all cost.

Existential dread is the herald of transcendental reformation. Nefesh fears demise. Ruach fears damnation. Neshamah repels as it attracts, leaving the choice open.

Is this the metaphysical truth? No.

Are these Neoplatonic hypostases hypostatized? Yes!

It is a design meant to faithfully situate and orient any self who adopts its implicit transcendental subjectivity — as a fully present I-here-now, aware of and responsive to its transcendent ground.

The transcendental subject is its “hermeneutic presequence“. Its pragmatic consequence is an evolving world rendered intelligible, livable and valuable, inexhaustibly renewable ex nihilo, liberated from nihilism.

Its given reality is manifestly valuable: our material world, nature and artifice alike; our inherited past and our future bequeathal; our inner potential unfolding in participation in life with others.

What makes this philosophical design true is the faithfulness of its situating ideas to its given world. It harmonizes given reality and given truth, and at times the two even seem one and the same. Circular? Spiral.

Why the arcane language? Partly its aptness. Partly because our situation convenes a plurality of ancestral inheritances — Hebrew, Indian, Greek… — and we owe gratitude. I cannot prove this, but neither can I doubt it.

…

So, what can I do to get you to drive home today in this shiny, terrific new enworldment?