Category Archives: Everso

Psych everso

Everso

Psychology is how a materialist copes with transcendence. Realities barely within the soul’s reach but well beyond its grasp — including the soul itself — are flipped inside-out, everted, into objects and stuffed inside each individual’s mind.

Everything-sized souls, everted, become minute, and are sealed inside the physical body — ghosts who haunt our physical frame.

And the membrane of nihilitude that insulates each self from infinitude, everts into a vacuum of interminable finitude, endless stacking of spaces, times, subjects.

When wind blows through this ghost, it disturbs our sense of reality, but we know that it originates in the unconscious and terminates in delusion. So it is for psychologists.

Looping in on exnihilism

Everso, Exnihilism, Philosophy

To put it differently (but still topologically), what would be the opposite of a metaphysics of surprise? — its everse?

The everse of a metaphysics of surprise would be a metaphysics of comprise — a belief, explicit or implicit, in our own capacity to comprise the absolute in some ultimate theism, pantheism, theory or praxis. It is the root category mistake that reality, even truth, can be comprised — a comprehensible everything.

Divine surprise, the ex nihilo irruption of light — not from darkness but from blindness — from the oblivion-veiled infinite — annihilates the faithless faith of nihilism.

Now absence of evidence of impending meaning can never again be taken as evidence of its absence. The scotoma of hopelessness is its herald. Exnihilism.

Topology of mystery

Everso, Exnihilism, Kabbalah, Metaphysics, Philosophy

Metaphor: A human mind has both armspan and handspan. The armspan embraces reality itself in an all-embracing, enworlding faith. Within this faith, a handspan grips givens in an ontology and corresponding objectivity of objective truths.

Absolute truth is, with respect to human minds, concave. It is the truth surrounding and surprising the total comprehension of every enworlding faith and all perceptually, conceptual, comprehensible givens within it.

We sense this concavity most at the limits of objectivity, where the reach of mind exceeds its grasp, where comprehension fails. Apprehensive intuitions of incomprehensible givens mark the boundary.

But this concavity also permeates the comprehensible. In truth, it is the very essence of comprehension, and it is this concavity which molds the convexity of each given within whatever objectivity a particular ontology embraces in understanding.

The human mind knows objective truth, not because reality is objective, but because our minds are objective, and when we try to know, we grasp mental objects by their defined outer edges.

The objective mind embraces and grasps. We comprehend only the convex givens our mind can comprise and hold together in its all-embracing, all-gripping mind. Whatever embraces and grasps the mind itself is by nature and structure, incomprehensible.

And when we try and fail to comprehend some comprehensive given beyond the enworlding arm-span, we encounter mystery.

The theological category mistake treats subject as existent object. It cannot help but misconceive mystery as heavenly objects hidden behind a veil. It projects object where the given is not object-form.

Psychology carries theistic category mistakes into atheism, attempting to sate the human need for mystery, without fulfilling it. Psychology misconceives mystery as unconscious ideas submerged beneath the surface of consciousness. But there is no object “there”.

Mystery needs a new topology. Mystery is what we experience when we try to comprehend as convexity what comprehends us within a transcendent concavity.

Mystery hides itself in plain sight, in seeing, and intimates its presence inaudibly, in the silence of hearing. Mystery conceals itself in the pervasive oblivion of ex nihilo creation-revelation, fermenting, sparkling everywhere all at once, always, to all, in perpetual irruptions of minute epiphanies.

Positive metaphysics is objective projection into the incomprehensible comprehending everse of objectivity. Negative metaphysics is awareness of the futility of comprehending the comprehending incomprehensible.

Mystery can be suprehended through everted objectivity — through subjectivity properly understood.

In the light of subjectivity properly understood, personal subject and an academic subject are subjects in the same sense of the word.

An insincere exhortation

Ethics, Everso, Philosophy

This is easier to say than to believe, so please allow me to say something true — from the head and not yet from the heart true — with aspirational sincerity:

We should stop exalting individual genius. The epoch of this ideal ended years ago.

The future belongs to a capacity to participate in transcendent supraindividual genius — to consciously play a part in conceiving something inconceivable to any solitary person, and to feel fitting gratitude for all gifts exchanged to bring the possibility to actualization.

Around a seminal spirit is a wombinal soul.

Gratitude is owed, but gratitude will not be collected until it is freely given.

Return to the fold

Ethics, Everso, Judaism

Aporia is intolerable for individuals.

But groups gripped with aporia is inescapable, all-pervasive, all-encompassing hell.

What immediately transcends the aporia-gripped mesoperson (the all-too-divisible “individual”), is yet another aporia-gripped macroperson.

No where to go. No escape. No hope.

Collective aporia is experienced as anomie.

Anomie dyspires violence: scapegoating, persecution, war, and collective suicide.

A collective can be two, three, a dozen, a gross, legion, myriads…

A collective can be a shattered individual person.

The sole way out of anomie is a return to within: principled integrity.

Metanoia is necessary but insufficient.

Teshuvah alone — echad — is sufficient.

Everso.

Even a two-millennia-old collective aporic — a mutating being at war with itself, spasmodically oscillating between perverse antiworld-religiosity and revolutionary anti-religious worldliness — can return to the fold.

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.

More on Scholem’s seventh aphorism

Everso, Kabbalah, Phenomenology

The following are three emails about Scholem’s seventh aphorism, and about Biale’s apparent misunderstanding of that aphorism. I’m posting them mostly for myself, because there is some good clear thinking here, if you know the context.

Email #1:

I think what you are saying is true, but I am not sure you are saying anything true that is not well known within Kabbalah.

Microcosmic/macrocosmic analogy is assumed by all Kabbalists. And one of the core struggles of Kabbalah is the incomprehensibility of its most essential and consequential insights. Scholem indicates this problem in his aphorisms, from multiple angles. Students of Kabbalah quickly learn to release the mundane expectation that they can cognitively grasp anything important beyond the objectivity of Assiyah. Beyond Assiyah only cognitively indirect methods of intellection work at all. I think even Biale knows these things, and the unreliability of his commentary comes from something else I haven’t yet pinned down.

Rereading Scholem, I do not believe he is denying the truth of Plotinus, but rather denying that emanationist accounts of the Olamot “do” what Kabbalah set out to do. A pat explanatory model — and worse, a model objectively graspable — replaces a within-outward, first-person experiential account of one’s layered and (cognitively) elusive relationship with the One. In other words, Scholem is making a procedural, not substantive objection.

So, the emanationist model may very well be true (that is where I have recently arrived), but accepting of it, without doing the spiritual and phenomenological work of arriving at it via actual participation and reflection cheats the Kabbalist of Kabbalah’s best fruits, which are not theoretical constructions, but influx of incomprehensible divine light. This gift is received precisely through doing the work of aware participation — not by reaching the conclusion and possessing the answer.
Ironically, my earlier rejection of emanationism came from having not completing this work for myself, and from not recognizing the links between my incomplete “everso” theme and Kabbalah.

Email #2:

To clarify, I think Biale’s commentary completely misconceives Aphorism 7. Biale does, in fact, seem to treat the problem as substantive doctrinal disagreement. In doing so, he flies off in the wrong direction and both obscures and accidentally demonstrates Scholem’s point. He treats Kabbalah as objective metaphysical information that can be more correct or less correct, or reach more correct or less correct conclusions. Ironically, this is precisely the “misfortune” Scholem is indicating in this aphorism. No wonder Biale calls the aphorism “obscure”. Its meaning is entirely eclipsed by Biale’s confinement to objectivist cognition!

Email #3:

Actually, maybe I can pin down Biale’s problem. 

To me, Biale seems a scholar with a lot of academic knowledge about Kabbalah, but who lacks Kabbalistic knowledge of academia’s objectivist limitations.

Objective knowledge — that is, knowledge of what is experienced and comprehended objectively — is effective only within Assiyah. But the entire point of Kabbalah is to transcend Assiyah. So if one tries to build systems of objective knowledge about Kabbalah, this knowledge might be true as far as it goes, but it is useless for progressing as a Kabbalist or for representing the most crucial insights Kabbalah offers.

Biale seems unaware of this truth — a truth of Beriah.

Everso and the four worlds

Esoterism, Everso, 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.

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.

Design and form

Design, Enworldment, Esoterism, Everso, Philosophy

We can speak of objective truth, but if we speak of objective reality, we reveal a fundamental metaphysical misconception. Objectivity is “real” only as a subjective phenomenon.

If we say “objective truth” while meaning “absolute truth”, we reveal two fundamental misconceptions. The first, of course, is the erroneous belief just mentioned, that reality is itself objective. The second is that absolute truth is an objective truth.

If we deny the existence of absolute truth, what we probably mean is half true. The true half of the meaning is that there is no absolute objective truth. But the untrue implication lurking behind the truth is that truth is essentially and necessarily objective. This is a philosophical limitation that can be overcome.

To overcome objectivist confinement, we must learn to think supraformal and infraformal truth.

Designers, especially, already know how to engage supraformal and infraformal realities in purely intuitive practice. But when pressed to explain or justify our way of working, our concepts and language mystify rather than clarify.

When designers try to be faithful to what we do, we bungle it — confusing and alienating nondesigners. So often we “translate” what we do to objective business language, and call it “design thinking”. But the stubbornly non-objective truth of design is lost in translation. In trying to represent design objectively, we misrepresent, misdirect, and mislead — offering only an illusion of comprehension and mastery. These nondesigners then share their “expertise” with other nondesigners. (Lesson #1: Everyone is a designer!) They found programs, institutions, consultancies, and whatnot, until we have a whole industry of nondesigner design experts. None of them ever actually design, and if they did, they would quickly discover that their theories and wise words — so compelling to executives, academics and writers — are useless to designers designing real artifacts. But of course, this is no argument against their expertise.

Much harder is clarity faithful to the reality of designing. But this requires us to “open the hand of thought”. We must allow some fundamental and unexamined beliefs about reality and truth to drop from our grip, and invite new ones to alight in their place.

Everso II

Everso, Fables, myths & parables, Metaphysics

Having broken free of the bolts that gripped my skull and held me in place, I turned away from the glaring screen and began to grope in the nothingness around me — that off-screen nowhere where nothing happens. As the blindness gradually abated, I could see silhouettes and shadows cast against the ambient glow of the screen. I felt the edges of objects around me, wrapping my fingers around their contours and comprehending what they were and how they were situated relative to one another within this space. But as I explored further, beyond where light could reach, I found dark edgeless surfaces that could only be touched but not defined. I sought the limits of this space, and finally apprehended that it was an inner surface, which comprehended me in every dimension, confining me and all I could comprehend within its own interior.

Seventh aphorism of Scholem

Esoterism, Everso, Judaism, Kabbalah

I have been very slowly reading Gershom Scholem’s mysterious “Ten Unhistorical Aphorisms on the Kabbalah”. This is the seventh:

As the actual misfortune of the Kabbalah (as with many nonindigenous forms of mysticism), one ought to consider the doctrine of emanation. The insights of the Kabbalah concern the structure of what exists. Nothing would be more disastrous than to confuse the connections of this structure with the doctrine of emanation. This confusion perverts its promising formulations in favor of the most comfortable and intellectually lazy of all theories. Cordovero would be much more at home as a phenomenologist than as a disciple of Plotinus. The attempt to construct the thought of the Kabbalists without the doctrine of emanation (and to think it through to the end) would have to pay the debt that a true disciple of Cordovero would incur, if one should ever exist. In the form of theosophical topography, which Kabbalistic teachings have assumed in the literature, its objective content remains inaccessible. The conflict between mystical nominalism and its light symbolism in Kabbalistic writings derives from the irreconcilable tension between the Kabbalists’ most significant intentions and their inability to help bring these to pure expression.

To evert subjectivity into object is — and I mean this as literally as I can mean anything — the original sin of religion. And to evert religion back to its proper relational (participatory) non-form is esoterism’s proper goal, within religion.

As I’ve said before, every subjectivity is an objectivity within which certain kinds of objects of experience (intentional objects) are taken (conveived, perceived, -ceived) as givens. Our subjects — both personal subjects (I, we) and academic subjects (subjects of study) — are finite manifestations within the infinite subject, God, who transcends not only every possible subjectivity and objectivity, but subjectivity and objectivity, per se. This is the most radical panentheism, the dialectical sublation of subject-object.

Radical panentheism is the hermetic androgyne, which today’s antireligious fundamentalists misread as gender fluidity, and cling to and enforce as sacrosanct doctrine.

Fundamentalism is the original sin taken to extremes. The fundamentalist is oblivious to the first-person garden, experiencing only the third-person objects of the garden. The foreground eclipses the divine background. Fundamentalists compulsively grasp at and mis-comprehend finite “holy” things instead cultivating awareness of who comprehends us even as we comprehend the myriad things of the world.

Twenty years ago I thought myself into social alienation. I learned that human beings need shared truth or they lose community. I’m thinking my way back to the same places now, but this time I have company. Scholem, Kaplan, Schaya, Idel…

My next sacred pamplet will be Everso.