The Spiritual Realm

Introduction

In the article 'The Methodology of Discerning the Unknowable' I explained the problematic nature of my first conception into the Unknowable, and essentially annulled the previous work and paved the way for a new unification in the Spiritual Realm. As such this article leads on from the end of my discussion on Ontological Logic and our discourse on Truth.

Knowledge is gained through the expansion of consciousness, through the striving of the fragmented self towards its whole which is an embodiment of the Soul's innate Will towards itself as I explained in my previous article. Under our new definition of knowledge it follows that the Knowable Realm, the field of all possible knowledge, can lead us directly unto the Soul. I do not view the Realms as spheres of metaphysical existence anymore as much as domains of my philosophy. We can speak of the metaphysics of awareness without introducing the concepts of the ego or limited awareness, first philosophy can be considered entirely impersonal in speaking of the field of existence and investigating the principles of creation without explicitly introducing a conceived notion of the self, but in truth the Self is a conception contained implicitly in speaking of ontological totalities. Thus the domain of the metaphysics of awareness is a first philosophy which encompasses the higher understandings of the self, it is the foundation which we build upon. Here I present the four domains of my philosophy, with each successive one being contained in the previous.

1. The Realm of Awareness concerns itself with the field of awareness.

2. The Knowable Realm concerns itself with the field of knowledge, i.e. realised awareness.

3. The Spiritual Realm is the domain of  Ideals, the pinnacle of knowledge.

4. The Absolute Realm is the domain of gnosis of the absolute totality of the Self and of God.

Ideals

The spiritual realm is the abode of Ideals. Knowledge is acquired through the striving towards wholeness, through the realisation of awareness. To further explicate the notion of striving I recently updated my definitions page with new material:

The Will surmises the ontological necessity of form towards the existence of singularity. Singularity is ontologically prior to form, to speak of a singularity is to necessitate the totality of its forms, and so we introduce a metaphysical construct in saying that singularity has will towards its forms.

The dual notion of the Will is Striving. As forms exist only by virtue of their parent singularity we can say that forms strive towards their singularity, that the existence of the form in turn necessitates its higher singularity.

Here I have explained the nature of the Will and Striving as metaphysical constructs to ease the passage of realisation and discovery within my philosophy. We should not think of these constructs as some sort of extraneous devices or deeper ontological relationships in themselves, but we should understand the words as placeholders for basic ontology relating the whole and its part. I chose the words will and striving in particular as these hold a raw significance within our vocabulary, they are intrinsically human in their nature and are experienced in the multiple dimensions of life, in generalising this innate understanding to a metaphysical universe, a deeply personal relationship is built within the subtext of my philosophy; the connection between the personal and metaphysical understandings of these concepts is built upon our viewing the self as singularity and form. As an example, the striving of the immediate self as we naively understand it becomes a reflection of the striving of the Soul to God, of the Self to Wholeness.

Ideals are the forms of the Soul; they are the purest mirrors of awareness, forming the gateway of knowledge into gnosis of the Self and God. Ideals form the crown piece of knowledge embodying directly the Will of the Soul unto itself through the Striving to wholeness. The striving of the Self to the Divine through itself, what we understand as the striving to the greater, is explicitly manifested by the Ideals in their striving to the pinnacle of Idealistic existence, the Soul. Ideals vary in the colours of perfection, radiating the subtleties of inner being through the different splendours of awareness. The multiplicity of Ideals births the manyness of reality and gives rise to the ocean of mystery known as the universe of experience, but beyond the experiential self the transcendent awareness sees clearly the Being of the Ideals as united under the Absolute Ontology of the Soul.

My previous work on Ontological Categories provides a pathway to introducing the realm of Ideals; recall that a category is said to be ontological if it can be applied to all, in this it adopts a totality in its nature hence acquiring an ontological characteristic. Being is the most prominent example, the field of existence is the central most concept of metaphysics and ontology, it is the underlying foundation of philosophy which we draw upon for meaningful metaphysical discussion. The Ontological Categories directly provide us with the apex of this striving, to the totalities of knowledge of awareness. Ontological Categories are Ideals in that they reflect the Totality of the Soul in the highest form of knowledge. They are beacons of ontological light, each one in its own right may be used to illumine an underlying field of awareness and awaken the mind to the birthplace of realisation.

As the Soul is the reflection of itself, all reflections of the Soul can be seen as the Spirit magnified. This subtlety is clearest realised within the Ideals, the lesser self strives towards the Ideals as a reflection of the Soul striving towards God, but in realising awareness the universe of reflection collapses into the singularity of a drop containing the ocean. The unity of the field of awareness finds expression most clearly in the unity of Ideals, for one needs to only examine the essence of the Ideals to see that they differ in name and perception only, they are rays of light emanating from the same source. In this Ideals can be seen as the Soul itself, to illustrate this take the first Ideal that we introduced in the article on 'Ontological Categories': Being. Metaphysically Being can be viewed as a synonym for awareness, and as the Soul is absolute awareness it can be said that it too is absolute Being. This line of reasoning can easily be applied to all Ideals, indeed in the highest state of consciousness all within the conceivable domain can be seen as the Soul, and the Soul as all. Ideals are perceptions of the Soul, so one need only remove the apparent and outward from the conception of Ideals to realise the pure inner subtlety of eternal subsistence and transcendence.

Examples of Ideals

We must be careful to remember that Ideals are an innate conception of the Soul, their names and appearances vary from Worlds of Being but their ontological structure is the defining constant of the Worlds themselves. We cannot realise the Ideals through logic or reasoning, for these paths to knowledge are reflections of the striving to the Ideals themselves, but as all are related by their inner ontological characteristic we can use Ideals to compare and conceive of one another. In my system of philosophy which rests upon metaphysics and ontology as its foundation it is that 'Being' is the central Ideal that we can use to derive the others, for Being empowers the hierarchy of the Self birthing the central notion of self-realisation which is the essential core of striving.

I cannot really provide the reader with any sort of reasoning for choosing these Ideals for the reasons described above, but I imagine that the gravitating nature of their vast profoundness pervading the continuum of life provides a self-exemplary degree of higher consciousness. Ideals hold true to their name in that they are exactly that, a perfection that we strive towards in our work, and a basis, a font of creative spirit for the work to develop from.

Goodness is the first Ideal that I present. I have previously described a conception into Good and Evil through the definitions of that which raises and diminishes our state of being respectively. Now due to our previous work on the 'Levels of Awareness' and its preceding foundations all Ideals would manifest this definition through the acts of striving and liberating awareness. Goodness is an Ideal we usually associate with our character and actions, it can be said to be the seed of Morality.

We have encountered Truth before previously introduced as the apex of the Knowable. Now due to further development we understand that all Ideals collectively form this apex, but this is not to diminish the power of Truth. Truth is what we would associate most closely to knowledge, that all knowledge understood in the traditional sense strives towards Truth. The transcendent nature of Truth should have been realised earlier in the history of philosophy with developments in especially mathematical logic as demonstrating the impossibility of placing a conception of absolute truth within a logical system, in fact the concept of truth used within logic is a rather relative one treated as a property of statements rather than an absolute universal. Beyond the systems and theories of mathematics we must understand the universe of mathematics in its entirety as a perfected abstraction striving towards this Ideal of Truth.

Perhaps in this age more so than ever we are drawn to an Ideal of Beauty, however it is saddening that our society fails to see beyond the apparent forms of Beauty to see its hidden reality within the heart of all things. To gaze upon a beautiful face is a comfort of moments of satisfaction, but to be enveloped within the presence of a beautiful character is such a power of realisation that could not be truly contained within lifetimes. Beauty presents an aesthetic ideal of art, the artist strives to make his work a form of Beauty, but this deserves an entire discussion in its own right. It should also be understood that to each person the Ideals may not be equal in experience as they may be in being, the Beauty seen in knowledge left a deeper impression in me than the desire for Truth; it was once said by Plato in one of the greatest lines of philosophy or even human thought ever written: 'Beauty is a splendour of Truth', but for myself it would perhaps me more accurate to insist that Truth is a splendour of Beauty.

The final Ideal I will present is Love. Many traditions of spirituality found themselves upon the Ideal of Love, because Love is immediately seen as an inherently human substance as opposed to Being which is initially treated as an external field. We can experience Love towards the forms of the beloved, whether it be an outwardly directed force towards a material possession or another human, or an inward magnetism towards the Self or most eminently towards God, the True Beloved. Just as we explained that the object of awareness is no different from the subject of being aware, so to does the death of duality need to be applied to the Lover and Beloved, to Loving and Love. The extent of our Love, the degree of awakening of this limitless cosmic energy which can equally be said to be the preliminary field of existence, depends upon our level of realised awareness. Love is an ontological category in that it can meaningfully be applied to all things, for the very act of being is a vessel to reflect the Divine milieu of infinite Love.

We must question the metaphysical validity of what we would claim to be an ontological category. Hatred for example is not an Ideal; one could insist that they could 'hate' all things but this is really a misguided falsehood, it is not meaningful to say that a person hates themselves, for hate refers to a destructive belief that is impossible to satiate in the presence of the immortal spirit. Hatred is an ignorance that thrives in the darkness, when the eyes are closed you can profess your damned hatred as much as you want, but if you were to only peek at the pillars of beauty and awe that the world adorns, the light of creation would wash away this stain of impurity upon the perfected slate. Perhaps we could even say that hate is misguided love, for one hates that which he believes the world would be better without, and this calls to a deep love of the world which would be realised if one would only see that betterment is the gift of life and growth; it is the gentle touch of love that nurtures, not the harsh swing of hatred.

The spiritual Ideals of which I gave a short exposition into are undoubtedly engendered within my philosophy under a very personal character. To each person is their own universe of the Soul, are their own Ideals of striving, and their own gnosis of each state. The outward form, and even the inward state of the Ideals is illusory in independent being; Ideals yearn for the Soul and adjure for the Self to strive in their name, not to their name.

Awareness of Ideals

In the totality of life is found a reflection of ontological striving. The universe of imagination and the world of being conjured revolves around the conceived Ideals. We live most of our lives in a dormant spiritual state, asleep to true reality, but we experience certain moments of awareness in which we awaken from our latent state to glimpse at greater being. It is in these moments that the light of Ideals is able to penetrate the blindness of the ego, in which we awaken to a higher level of consciousness where we grasp the forms of the Ideals whether it be the awestruck wonder in beauty or the mesmerised absorption in truth. The experience of the Ideals in the lesser realm of the experiential self rests upon a metaphysical recollection of the higher state, the Ideals present a greater unity that the moment is in striving towards; a landscape could not be called beautiful without the associated metaphysical significance of the Ideal of Beauty as a higher singularity. The archetype of this striving to the greater is ubiquitous in our lives, it resonates so strongly with the Self and finds a clarity of self-expression in each person through the circumstances of their being for it is a reflection of the innate spiritual disposition towards wholeness. In seeing beyond the immediate, in dissolving the duality between striving and the striven, we realise an awareness of the greater, of the forms of the Ideal and the Ideal as a form of the Soul, and in profound moments of spiritual awakening we perceive Man's Spirit as a form of the Divine.

Ideals thus form the gateway into the Realm of Spirituality, they pave the path towards gnosis of the Self and Divine through the realisation of greater being. Awareness of Ideals is a realisation, it is a diminishing of the ego to uncover the reality that Ideals themselves exalt. The inner spiritual life is a presence of awareness; a mindful intention to realise awareness in our lives to fulfill our higher purpose. Ideals hold an ubiquitous presence within the milieu of this life, providing an abiding opportunity for the inner life to be cultivated.

My philosophy is one of universality, I do not wish to appeal to only the audience who align themselves with my manner of living or find similarity in our modes of consciousness, I seek an appeal to every human, a beckoning to each person to find the light within their own soul to awaken their true spirit. Despite the spiritual jargon this awakening need not take the form of a path of traditional spiritual discovery and enlightenment, the Spiritual Realm is the stairway to ones true being through the manner of their own living and presence. The Ideals order themselves in a presence completely unique to each Soul, they are the guardians of nurture of the lesser self tasked with its spiritual growth. The humble farmer is equally qualified to self-realisation through his livelihood and purpose, as is the learned scholar and sage devoting his time to intellectual and spiritual pursuits. As each person is equal in selfhood, each must strive upon their own path chosen to attain the perfected state of Being that they seek, it is the striving which is the path and it is the path that we strive towards, in this primordial struggle is found the purpose of human existence. The apogee of the path, the apotheosis of self epiphany, is the highest and dearest fruit of the garden of Ideals, but to bear the fruit requires a sincere and Willful intention towards a presence to cultivate the light of the garden.