Category Archives: Metaphysics

Dysapparitions of material

Metaphysics, Philosophy, Politics

I read Bruno Latour very much as the best kind of Catholic.

I read him as a radical Marian (and the furthest thing from a “Sophiologist”).

I read Latour as the most rigorously devout disciple of Mary Mater.

And Latour knows better than anyone that, just as no woman can be reduced to what some man thinks of her, matter is not reducible to scientific fact — that is, what “the” scientific community thinks of Mother Nature.

Nietzsche, the devoted son of a Lutheran minister, once asked “Supposing truth is a woman — what then?”

But supposing truth is absolutely not a woman?

Supposing truth is a self-serving, unfaithful notion of woman?

Supposing this notion of “woman” makes relationship with any real woman — actual or metaphorical — impossible?

Now what?

Materialists are the incels of philosophy.

They are obsessed with an ideal object of thought they confuse with real being, and this confused obsession kills all possibility of relationship. The more the materialist obsesses over his object of thought, the more unreal and alienated his notions become. And she can intuit this. She feels it directly: this dude is interacting with some creepy doppelgängeress in his head, not with her. She recoils. Her devastating pronouncement: Ick.

She will open only to those who meet her as real, who converse with her as existent, who live life with her as companion, who become transformed by her, with her, in relationship with her.

She appears as herself only in relationship. She dysappears to those who grasp her as an object of hate or of infatuation or of distant worship.

Believe me, I raised two daughters, and I know an abusive profile when I see it.

The abuser’s tell: He arrives with a defined woman-role in mind, and he demands conformity to it.

“If you were a good girlfriend, you would…”

“If you really loved me, you would…”

Marxism is a collective abuser.

Marxism is an incel driven to psychosis by disappointment and resentment.

The world failed to live up to his high expectations, and he is extremely upset about it.

And he is making that disappointment her problem.

The existent real material order will not play her role, because she is a bad material order, and that is why she is unhappy.

A good material order would behave like a good material order, and then he would happy.

He would toil a little during the day, and write a little poetry in the evening. And the material order would smile sweetly and submissively. She would shelter him for free. She would cook for him for free. She would be an angel of compassionate care when he needs free healthcare. She would fetch his newspaper and slippers. She would perform her wifely duties, and not out of duty.

If she were a good material economic order, she would do all these things.

But she isn’t.

And now she will pay for it.

See what she made him do?

More than every possible everything

Metaphysics

I used to say this often, but I haven’t in a while: a soul extends to the limits of what we mean when we say “everything”.

Each soul is universe-sized. This is why I sometimes refer to everythings, plural.

Materialists who believe that a soul (psyche) is an emergent property of our nervous system, and folk-believers who understand souls as spiritual bodies enveloped within our carnal bodies — both believe they have nothing in common, but they are wrong. They both confuse souls with person-sized mental entities: ghosts.

And because they see souls as ghosts, they fail to recognize their true everything-sized self for who it is: themselves. They call their own all-encompassing everything-soul whatever God or God-equivalent term they’ve adopted. Misapotheosis is the result of failure to comprehend the true nature of selfhood and mistaking it for the Absolute.

Self is ultimate comprehension. God is what incomprehensibly comprehends each and every self.

God is incomprehensible, but the fact of God’s realness can be comprehended (“God is both real and incomprehensible”).

More important than this theoretical knowing is a practical know-how. We can adopt an attitude toward incomprehensible reality that learns first to expect the unexpected, then to expect the inconceivable (and therefore unimaginable), and eventually learns to recognize and welcome inconceivable realia as the very substance of life.

Let us call this attitude or relation suprehension — the everted complement of comprehension.

Our own conception “everything” is comprised from without by infinitely more than what any or all of us can mean by everything.

Mine is a metaphysic of surprise.

Not only our religious life, but our human relationships depend on this attitude of suprehension — of openness to realities transcending our own compressive self.

Some come by it naturally. Others of us must cultivate it through effort.

No, what really is metaphysics?

Metaphysics, Philosophy

Metaphysics is the transcendent remainder of one’s own ontology. It is the surplus oblivion around what each of us means when saying and meaning “everything”. It is the radical surprise we anticipate when we attempt to expect the unexpected or to account for unknown unknowns. Nothing could be more personal than one’s own metaphysics.

Psychedelic meaning

Autobiography, Metaphysics, Phenomenology, Philosophy

I don’t know what conventional mystics experience in ecstatic visionary states, but I assume these experiences are related to psychedelic experiences.

In my limited experience, psychedelic experiences were intensely meaningful in ways that are nearly impossible to talk about. Although I did experience vivid visions in that state, I was never terribly fascinated by the visions themselves nor in the question concerning the ontological status of the mysterious noumena. At the time, my strong unexamined inclination was to take them as imaginary, and not to attribute any kind of real existence to them.

I prefer to phenomenologically bracket visions, and approach them phenomenologically. I am most concerned with the significance of the ineffable meaning. I am interested in the genus of this meaning, the question of why this meaning is ineffable, and how we may relate ourselves to it.

Maybe my other conceptual commitments preserve themselves through this attitude and this field of relevance. But my gut tells me that this focus will bear fruit. This doesn’t exactly put me at cross-purposes with traditional mysticism, but it does put me at what could be described as a parallel purpose.

Kabbalistic everso

Everso, Exnihilism, Kabbalah, Letterpress, Metaphysics, Philosophy

I spent all day Monday (Dec 22, 2025) printing two Sefirot pieces — one safely orthodox and one riskily extra-orthodox (or maybe postorthodox, but probably flat-out wrong).

Now I want to sanctify what I printed by using it to say impossible things.

For years, I’ve been working out a topological conception of modes of knowing. The topology can be expressed clearly in Kabbalistic language. Apologies for the repetition of recent posts. I’m rehearsing. I might fold Everso and Exnihilist Manifesto together into a short Kabbalistic text.

Natural knowing is cognitive comprehension (etymologically “together-grasping”) and conception (“together-taking”) of finite forms, defined as something against an indefinite field of everything else. Object: ob-ject “thrust-before”.

Let us call this kind of objective understanding Pshat, the subject who understands in this mode Nefesh, and everything given by this kind of understanding Assiyah. Assiyah is a world of convex objectivity — material or nonmaterial — physical, psychic, conceptual, ethical, etc. In Assiyah, even subjects have objective form.

Objective form as opposed to what? This, precisely, is the problem. Few people transcend Pshat, in order to have something with which to compare it — mainly artists, poets, mystics, philosophers, literary connoisseurs and weirdos.

To transcend Pshat we must apperceive our acts of perception, conception, comprehension, and our failures to conceive and comprehend, and our changes in perception, conception, comprehension. The grasping of comprehension and the receiving of conception are not forms that can be comprehended or conceived, but rather formative acts, which participate in one of myriad possibilities of formation.

Formation is known only indirectly by the forms they produce. They are trees known by their fruit. They are media known by their content. Behind all objectivity — “thrust-beneath” it, “under-standing” it — is subject.

Let us call this kind of understanding Remez, the subject who understands in this mode Ruach, and everything given by this kind of understanding Yetzirah. Yetzirah is a world of concave subjects, each an ontology with its own objectivity.

Expressed topologically: Forms are convex; formation is concave.

Transcending form altogether (both form and forming) is the supraformal ground of form and forming, which enters awareness when formative modes destabilize and recrystallize, and entirely new givens are revealed ex nihilo. New givens are received in a luminous flood of meaning and wonder. Reality is profoundly strange and infinitely meaningful.

What is pragmatically comprised by the word “everything” is surprised by more-than-everything.

Let us call this kind of understanding Drash, the “subject” who understands in this mode Neshamah, and the more-than-everything given by this kind of “understanding” is Beriah. Beriah is a world entirely beyond subjectivity and objectivity — the ground of both and neither.

The luminous influx of meaning is Sod, the “subject” who receives it is Chayah, and it emanates from Atzilut.

Whyness, Whatness and Howness

Design, Esoterism, Geometric Meditations, Kabbalah, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Symbols and diagrams, Trefoil

Intellection gives us supraformal absolute truth (of Beriah) toward/from the Absolute (of Atzilut) to which objectivity-forming subjects (Yetzirah) and objective truths (Assiyah) can be more or less faithful.

Of course, subjects can also be more or less faithful to material reality, and this determines their scope and degree of practical effectiveness.

The modern era has maximized the scope and degree of practical effectiveness in material reality. Its scope is maximized to total universality, and its degree of effectiveness is maximized to total control. It has traded off all considerations of intellection, to such a degree that few are aware of intellection as a possibility of knowing.

Even fewer actualize their intellective mode of knowing.

Fewer still coordinate intellective and rational knowing.

Fewest of all coordinate intellective, rational and practical knowing.

Whyness, Whatness and Howness.

Intuiting-what knows what of is, knows what of can, knows what of ought.

Intuiting-how does how of can, does how of ought, does how of is.

Intuiting-why cares why of ought, cares why of is, cares why of can.

Every explicit understanding is rooted in tacit intuitions.

Intuiting-what grounds fact, method and ideal, and without it, there is perplexity.

Intuiting-how grounds ability, grace and technique, and without it, there is faltering.

Intuiting-why grounds value, taste and purpose, and without it, there is indifference.

Every vital culture must converge Whyness, Whatness and Howness in its collective being. If it fails to do so, each member of its culture will suffer confused perplexity, ineffective faltering or depressed indifference. Or the culture will fragment into factions who maximize one or two and sacrifice the third.

Design at its best is a method for converging Whyness, Whatness and Howness.

Unlike many professions it is not a collection of techniques (What-How) methodically deployed to achieve defined goals. Design discovers its goals as it works, and its most important goals are given to intellection as the Why of the work.

Christopher Costes is right: Design is the heir of magic.

Spiritual programs

Esoterism, Metaphysics, Philosophy

Half the people I know believe that religion as we have it today is sheer nonsense and that spirituality is a fanciful free-for-all — just psychological play done for the pleasure of it.

The other half thinks that religion is wisdom that was originally revealed whole, but subsequently lost — an ancient treasure squandered, that we must now recover, before something dire happens.

As always, I disagree with everyone.

I think religion is institutionalized spirituality, with all the advantages and disadvantages entailed by institutionalization. When I say institutionalization, I mean something more like scientific institutionalization, enabling systematic challenge, response and progress, more than what spiritual-but-not-religious haters of “institutionalized religion” mean.

Indeed, individuals dabbling unassisted in spiritual matters would be as advanced as individual physicists could accomplish — each working in isolation, starting from scratch with their own theories and homemade laboratories. Or imagine amateur physicists watching hours of YouTube videos about the history of natural philosophy and using them to launch their own programs of physics research.

I think religion and spirituality refer to realities that can be understood or misunderstood. I think these realities are not comprehensible in objective terms. They require different intellective modes that few of us engage when we “seek truth”.

An idea to entertain: different religions are analogous to the research programs of Imre Lakatos, with their own lifecycles of birth, ascent, flourishing, decline and dying out, and their own technological innovations, meaning, literally, technique systems, a.k.a. methodologies.

The resemblances among religions are due partly from borrowings across traditions (which is how a spiritual research program is preserved) but also because the truth they pursue is the same and these traditions only thrive and endure insofar as they succeed in that pursuit.

But that truth pursued is not essentially objective. That truth includes objectivity, but transcends objectivity, subjectivity and all distinctions between object and subject.

Kabbalistic reflections on Guenon

Esoterism, Judaism, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Religion

Guenon:

The Self is thus the principle by which all the states of the being exist, each in its own proper sphere, which may be called a degree of existence; and this must be understood not only of the manifested states — whether individual, like the human state, or supraindividual, in other words whether formal or formless, but also, though the word “exist” then becomes inadequate, of the unmanifested states, comprising all those possibilities which, by their very nature, do not admit of any manifestation, as well as the possibilities of manifestation themselves in their principial state; but this Self subsists by itself alone, for in the total and indivisible unity of its innermost nature it has not, and cannot have, any principle external to itself.

This one-sentence passage is very dense and of the highest importance, so I want to break it down into its elemental components, and connect them with Kabbalistic concepts, which are rapidly becoming my native tongue. My own Kabbalistic connections will be italicized and parenthesized.

  • Self is the universal principle. By the principle of Self all other states of the being exist.
  • There is no principle by which Self exists. Self is the principle of all principles.
  • States of being exist in various degrees of existence, which may regarded as spheres. (In Kabbalah, these spheres are articulated into “four worlds”, Olamot.)
  • The human individual state is formal. The supraindividual state is formless. (In Kabbalah, the formal and individual world is Assiyah. The formless, supraindividual world is Yetzirah.)
  • Manifested and unmanifested states is a different distinction from formal and formless. So far, we have spoken only of manifested states which can properly be said to “exist” (again, the actual world of Assiyah and the formational world of Yetzirah. Now we are transcending to the unmanifested worlds of Beriah — creation — and Atzilut — emanation).
  • Of the unmanifested states some do admit of manifestation and are the possibilities of manifestation in their principial state. (The former is the world of Beriah, which manifests by principle and in its lowest Sefirah — Beriah Malkhut — creates the highest Sefirah in Yetzirah — Yetzirah Keter — from which the world of Yetzirah manifests, via the Yetzirah Sefirot).

(Those unmanifested states that do not admit of manifestation are only of Atzilut, but not of Beriah. These are pure ineffable mystery, for the sake of which All is, and we feel this for-the-sake-of whenever anything matters to us. When we say “God is love” the truth of this statement is charged by Atzilut, and beyond Atzilut, Ein Sof.)

I have what might be an unusual understanding of Yetzirah is essentially supraformal, because it forms, but is not itself form, just as seeing sees but is not seen and hearing hears but is not heard.

I’ve come to understand the Sefirot of Assiyah as attempting, in human objective terms, to represent the worlds above, but by uppaya (skillful means to teach transcendent truths inexpressible in the terms of the present faith-state of the learner).

We try to indicate the forming of Yetzirah by the conceptual forms of the Sefirot Yesod, Hod, Netzach, Tif’eret, Gevurah and Chesed. Those are formal indicators of supraformal manifested being, formal fruit by which we know the tree of formation.

(The Hod-Netzach pair in Assiyah, incidentally, is the locus of uppaya.)

By my understanding The subtle (or astral) plane is not Yetzirah itself. The subtle plane is only these non-material objective entities that belong to the Sefirot who objectively represent Yetzirah.

The entire point of my weird term “enception” is to establish a distinction between capacity to form, formation and form, capacity to conceive, conceiving and concept! A capacity to form — to conceive or perceive — or most generally, to receive (the literal meaning of the word “kabbalah”!) is created from Beriah, manifests in Yetzirah as a action — forming — and then actualizes in Assiyah as forms, concepts, sensibly recognized (perceived) material objects, etc.

So an enception is the analogue to the faculty of sight, hearing.

Without the requisite enception, one remains oblivious to what one would otherwise receive. When a person exclaims “I was blind, but now I see!” this is the annunciation of enception. It is by this — disoblivion, anamnesis — that we experience Beriah.

And it is by this that we can never again take nihilism at face value. Everything can, at any minute irrupt from oblivion and bathe the world with overwhelming meaning. Nothingness is where this meaning enters, and so nothing is no longer an argument against anything. Exnihilism annihilates nihilism!

None of this is meant to suggest these worlds are not metaphysically real, only that our attempts to make them objective is uppaya.

Reification is different from objectification. This Kabbalistic ontology hyperreifies and disobjectifies the worlds beyond Assiyah.

Everso and the four worlds

Esoterism, Judaism, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Trefoil

I understand that most of my recent philosophical focus has concentrated in Yesod-Malchut within the world of Beriah, which corresponds with Keter-Da’at within the world of Yetzirah. This is where the plurality of Yetzirah’s forms converge and are constrained by the supraformal Absolute.

(The closest thing we can have to “absolute truth” are truths which are faithful to the supraformal Absolute as they grasp whatever content they comprehend. We can clearly and consistently comprehend all kinds of forms, but only some of these help us maintain our roots in transcendent reality. Many, in fact, sever these roots, in order to grasp more comprehensively, clearly or consistently. This is what Technic systematically, methodically does, in fact.)

Prior to this, I focused on Yesod-Malchut within the world of Yetzirah and Keter-Da’at of the world of Assiyah. This is where the “Everso” eversion occurs. This is where subjective potential “concavity” manifests in actual grasping of “convex” objects of experience — where intentionality finds intentional objects. Those material objects we call “objectively real” are the entities of Malchut in the world of Assiyah. And the truths we call “subjective” are, in fact, the imaginative and emotional objects of Yesod, Hod, Netzach, Tif’eret, Geverah and Chesed. The purely conceptual, abstract objects of modern philosophy reach up into Beriah and Chokhmah within Assiyah. Modern theology extends to Keter within Assiyah.

Assiyah is objective top to bottom, and even what it calls “subjective” (meaning “nonmaterial”) is, in terms of form, objective.

Yetzirah, though essentially formal, is formation — the act of forming — the How of formation. We cannot understand formation in direct formal terms. New terms — new How and new What — are needed to get at this level of truth. The Tree of Yetzirah is known by its objective fruits in Assiyah. Yetzirah conceives and enwords, and manifests an enworldment of Assiyah.

When it seems that we inhabit different worlds, this is because we enworld Malchut by different states of Yetzirah.

And when it seems that some of these worlds are nihilistic, alienated and alienating (or to themselves, uncompromisingly scientific, rigorous, and fully in touch with objective reality) and others of these worlds are saturated with meaning and divine light (or to others subjective, irrational, fantastical, retrograde, woowoo or dogmatic), this is because some enworldments are focused solely on Assiyah, where others are focused primarily or exclusively on Beriah.

Judaism tries to enworld transparently between Beriah and Assiyah. A transparent Yetzirah is angelic, in its proper sense. A Yetzirah that attempts ultimacy and autonomy (from Beriah) is ideological.

Yetzirah, alone with Assiyah, without Beriah, seems pluralistic. The question is only what conceptual systems — Kuhnian paradigms — can adequately organize our material actualities so we can understand and control matter.

Things get considerably more complex and constrained if we consider the subjective effect of our paradigms. Do they flood reality with meaning, beauty and hope, or do they drain it of meaning and drown us in despair? This is a function of Yetzirah’s relationship with Beriah. Now the question is whether our conceptual systems organize our material actualities together with a relationship with the Divine One of whom we are an organic part.

One way I have expressed this is that, since the Enlightenment, we have focused exclusively on the What and the How of our experience, and bracketed the Why. Scientific method excludes all Why considerations. Liberal-Democracies proceduralize public life, and relegate all meaning to the private realm of home, business and faith community.

This moment in history witnesses a popular implosion of nihilism. It seems most people cannot find meaning in the condition we’ve created for ourselves — the enworldment of Technic, the enworldment that capitalism and communism alike enworld and inhabit — both uncritically, unconsciously and with pseudo-divine omniscience.

Intentional focus

Metaphysics, Phenomenology, Philosophy, Religion

In phenomenology, all consciousness is understood to be consciousness of something. We call this something the intentional object.

But must this something be an object?

By object, I do not even mean physical object. I mean forms of every kind. Objective forms are, in fact, primarily conceptual, even when we perceive them as material.

(This points to why I enjoy provoking folks who call themselves “materialists” and call them idealists who traffic in ideas about matter — without ever encountering matter herself.)

Supraformal and infraformal realities can be intended, and intended in quite different ways than objects. But most of us, apparently, only know how to intend objectively, and this is not only intellectually limiting — it is intellectually crippling. It makes religion impossible.

A better word might be “intentional focus”.

The everted present

Esoterism, Metaphysics, Star

Ray Cummings: “Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening all at once.”

“…And,” someone adds, “space is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening everywhere all at once.”

“…And,” another offers, “self is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening to everyone all at once.”

Presence is God’s way of distributing Godself through time space and consciousness.

But within God, everything does happen all at once, everywhere to everyone.

Adonai echad.

The present is the Absolute everted within Itself.

Plotinian summary

Metaphysics

Plotinus: Every soul actually does see outwardly to a self the size of a body, and every soul potentially can see inwardly to a self the size of the cosmos. A soul who sees both inwardly and outwardly together, intuits its root in inconceivable nothingness beyond cosmos, body and being.

Contemplation

Esoterism, Judaism, Metaphysics

A passage from Plotinus reminded me of another passage from Brothers Karamazov:

The painter Kramskoy has a remarkable painting entitled The Contemplator: it depicts a forest in winter, and in the forest, standing all by himself on the road, in deepest solitude, a stray little peasant in a ragged caftan and bast shoes; he stands as if he were lost in thought, but he is not thinking, he is “contemplating” something. If you nudged him, he would give a start and look at you as if he had just woken up, but without understanding anything. It’s true that he would come to himself at once, and yet, if he were asked what he had been thinking about while standing there, he would most likely not remember, but would most likely keep hidden away in himself the impression he had been under while contemplating. These impressions are dear to him, and he is most likely storing them up imperceptibly and even without realizing it — why and what for, he does not know either; perhaps suddenly, having stored up his impressions over many years, he will drop everything and wander off to Jerusalem to save his soul, or perhaps he will suddenly burn down his native village, or perhaps he will do both.

There are a good many “contemplatives” among our peasants. And Smerdyakov was probably one of them. And he was probably greedily hoarding up his impressions, hardly knowing why.

From Plotinus, who might very well have inspired the above passage:

If [nature] were asked why she creates, she would reply — if, that is, she were willing to listen to the questioner and to speak — “You should not have questioned me, but understood in silence, just as I myself keep silent, for I am not accustomed to talk. What is there to understand? That what comes into being is the object of my silent contemplation, and that the product of my contemplation comes into being in a natural way. I myself was born of such contemplation; this is why I have a natural love for contemplation. My contemplation engenders the product of my contemplation, just as geometers draw figures by contemplating. I, however, do not draw anything, but I contemplate, and the lines of bodies come into existence, as if they were issuing forth from me.”

(This is an English translation of Hadot’s French translation.)

Etymonline’s entry on contemplation:

contemplation(n.) —

c. 1200, contemplacioun, “religious musing,” from Old French contemplation and directly from Latin contemplationem (nominative contemplatio) “act of looking at,” noun of action from past-participle stem of contemplari “to gaze attentively, observe; consider, contemplate,” originally “to mark out a space for observation” (as an augur does), from assimilated form of com-, here perhaps an intensive prefix (see com-), + templum “area for the taking of auguries” (see temple (n.1)).

It is attested from late 14c. as “reflection, thinking, thought, act of holding an idea continuously before the mind.” The meaning “act of looking attentively at anything” is from late 15c.

In cogitation the thought or attention flits aimlessly about the subject.

In meditation it circles round it, that is, it views it systematically, from all sides, gaining perspective.

In contemplation it radiates from a centre, that is, as light from the sun it reaches out in an infinite number of ways to things that are related to or dependent on it. [Ezra Pound, 1909, recalling in his own words ideas from Richard of St. Victor, 12c., “De praeparatione animi ad contemplationem“]

Perhaps to con-temple something is precisely to refrain from com-prehending it.

The last passage in Daniel Matt’s Essential Kabbalah is taken from the Sefer Bahir

Whoever delves into mysticism cannot help but stumble, as it is written: “This stumbling block is in your hand.” You cannot grasp these things unless you stumble over them.

This recalled a passage from Aryeh Kaplan’s Inner Space:

The Kabbalists teach that this is the concept of God’s most sacred name, theTetragrammaton, YHVH. The Tetragrammaton consists of four letters Yod, Heh, Vav and Heh. These four letters have a very special significance.

The Tetragrammaton is related to the past, present, and future tense of the Hebrew word “to be.” In Hebrew, “was” is Hayah, “is” is Hoveh and “will be” is Yihyeh. Therefore, when one reads the Tetragrammaton, one should have in mind that God “was, is and will be” all at the same instant.’ This indicates that God is utterly transcendental, and higher than the dimension of time. God exists in a realm where time does not exist. At the same time, the Tetragram

At the same time, the Tetragrammaton denotes that God is Mehaveh, “the One who brings all existence into being. It is in this sense that the Tetragrammaton refers to God’s causal relationship with His creation. He is the source of all being and existence and His essence permeates creation.

We can understand this on the basis of an ancient Kabbalistic teaching which states that the four letters of the Name contain the mystery of Charity. According to this teaching, the first letter Yod can be likened to a coin. The letter Yod is small and simple like a coin.

The second letter, Heh, represents the hand that gives the coin. Every letter in the Hebrew alphabet also represents a number. Since Heh is the fifth letter of the alphabet, it has a numerical value of five. The “five” of Heh alludes to the five fingers of the hand.

The third letter, Vav (t), which has the form of an arm, denotes reaching out and giving. Furthermore, in Hebrew, the word Vav means a “hook,” and thus Vav has the connotation of connection. Indeed, in Hebrew, the word for the conjunction “and” is represented by the letter Vav prefixed to a word.

Finally, the fourth letter, the final Heh (n), is the hand of the beggar who receives the coin.

And every mention of the together-grasping comprehending mind always recalls Kosho Uchiyama’s beautifully titled Opening the Hand of Thought:

I use the expression “opening the hand of thought” to explain as graphically as possible the connection between human beings and the process of thinking. I am using “thinking” in a broad sense, including emotions, preferences, and all sense perceptions, as well as conceptual thoughts. Thinking means to be grasping or holding on to something with our brain’s conceptual “fist.” But if we open this fist, if we don’t conceive the thought, what is in our mental hand falls away. Our universal self, jiko, also includes that which lets go. Sleeping at night is a natural expression of your life with the hand of your thinking mind wide open. Nodding off while you are awake is something else entirely, from the perspective of the self. While you are awake, opening the hand of thought isn’t dozing or thinking, it is the fine line between them where you really are right now.

The self of Western psychology is the Cartesian “I think, therefore I am.” But actually, we are, whether we think so or not, and behind the conscious self your life continues even when you are unconscious or unaware. And precisely because of that we are alive with a life that includes our thinking self. In fact, it is because we have this actual ongoing life that the thought can occur that we are only our thoughts. So our true or whole self is not just an abstract self made of thoughts. Our whole self is the force or quality of life that enables conscious thought to arise, and it includes that personal, conscious self, but it also includes the force that functions beyond any conscious thought.

The whole or universal self is the force that functions to make the heart continue beating and the lungs continue breathing, and it is also the source of what is referred to as the subconscious.

This inclusive self is at heart the creative power of life. It is related to what the Judeo-Christian tradition calls the creative power of God.

That power — what is immediately alive and also what is created — that is self too. If you want to use God as your referent, it is crucial to receive God as pure creative power, as being fresh and alive and working in and through yourself: no matter what I do or think, God is in all things and is working through me.

Whatever is alive — that is jiko, or universal self. All of this — thoughts and feelings, the and desires, the subconscious and the beating heart, the effort that enables other lives to function and the creative power of life itself — is what I mean by the “self.” Saying “whole” or “true” or “universal” self is a way to try to include all the actual reality of life, and what I am saying here is that the actual reality of life is not something separate from the actual reality of your own life.

Mystical topology

Esoterism, Everso, Metaphysics, Philosophy

When we apprehend realities that transcend our comprehension, and find that our minds cannot find objective edges around which a concept may be gripped, we can ignore these realities into oblivion and see them as dead nonexistence. Or we may accept them as living nothingness — divine ground — and attempt to relate ourselves within them in ways that compulsively reduce all realities to objective terms. That is, we can take part in what involves and surpasses objectivity: we participate in being to whom we are subject — in life in whom we are organ. And when we do so knowingly we assuage the apprehension of incomprehensibility in a new kind of awareness of being within being — a knowing we might call suprehension. The old insult “his reach exceeds his grasp” loses its sting. Is it really so bad to have a capacity to touch without grabbing? Everso.

Beyond contemporary mysticism

Metaphysics, Philosophy, Politics

Contemporary mysticism, like all contemporary popular thought, reserves all conceptual clarity and precision for material reality alone. Mysticism is a misty, nebulous remainder, hovering above and glowing behind material reality — an opalescent swirl of vague hopes, of insinuated meaning, of faint underwritings of morality.

I have chosen to distribute my own clarity and precision more broadly — across infraformal material, formal psychic, and supraformal spiritual realities. This choice is informed both by my everyday experiences working among humans and nonhumans as a designer, and by my mornings spent reflecting on these experiences and on my past reflections — integrating, clarifying, iterating.

We all need this expanded clarity, but we cannot even articulate the need, precisely because of our truncated clarity. We have optimized our understandings to account for physical phenomena, but we wave away the immediate matters at the heart of our lives — love, beauty, meaning, relatedness, belonging — as someday-to-be-explained epiphenomena.

We placed the particle at the center of our persons, and set these human matters in orbit around it. And now we must do the most complex calculations of epicycles within epicycles before we can calculate why our families matter to us more than life itself.

Last night Jack asked for the musical instrument “you blow into”. I didn’t know what he meant. Each wrong guess made him more visibly desperate. So we went to the instrument box and started rummaging. We found a pitch pipe tuner, and he was able to say that “it is like that.”. When we found the harmonica, his relief was instant and total. It was obvious, though, that most of his pain and subsequent relief had more to do with his need to communicate than with his need for the harmonica. The two needs were bound up together and compounded exponentially.

When a toddler begins to melt down we sometimes say “use your words.” This does two things. First, it teaches them to begin with communicating their needs before expressing their frustration. But second, the very act of communicating calms and stabilizes them.

Imagine a world where adults feel inexpressible frustration at having their most fundamental human needs unmet, but are, at the same time, unable to articulate their needs and account for why those needs matter.

A toddler with mysterious, inarticulate, unmet needs throws himself to the floor and screams and kicks and demands Froot Loops. An adult with mysterious, inarticulate, unmet needs riots in the streets and makes political demands.

We must rethink our metaphysics. At the very least, our civilizational survival depends upon it.

Good metaphysics

Metaphysics, Phenomenology, Philosophy

I prefer to build out my mysticism, as well as my scientific understandings, from everyday given reality, which Husserl called the lifeworld.

When we proceed this way, carefully preserving the links between what we experience directly in the lifeworld, toward what we gradually recognize as not-yet-known, possibly unknowable in principle, and (at the very least) inexhaustibly re-knowable, we develop an understanding of planes of reality beyond the world of intuitive effective action and the world(s) of constructible-destructible truth(s).

Let those with the sensibilities to conceive what this means make sense of it.

Some folks want to take these transcendent truths (metaphysics) that seem for all the world to explain manifest truth (the lifeworld) and treat them as an adequate substitute for it. “We are in the lifeworld, but not of it.” (The scientistic metaphysicians are just as bad as any other in their need to escape the reality of life. “What do I care what happens in this paltry here and now, to me and my loved ones, as long as the youuuuuuniverse keeps cranking out novelties?”)

Others (correctly) see in this kind of metaphysicry a lame attempt to escape the lifeworld, and (incorrectly) dismiss all metaphysics as escapism.

Good metaphysics never sever these worlds from one another. The ladder stands firmly on the earth and penetrates the roof of heaven, so that truth may circulate between.

If we practice good metaphysics, resisting the impulse to chop the ladder at the knee or neck, our lifeworld transforms. Reality is given to us differently. This is what is meant by revelation. Revelation is not a secret message about reality whispered into a guru’s ear; it is a disclosure of reality to our common sensibility.

I fear I will never transcend Nietzsche.