3.     The Levels of Reality    

I. The Terrestrial Plane (The gross, the material, the sensible, the corporeal, the phenomenal, or the human plane)

II. The Intermediate Plane (the subtle, the "animic" or the psychic plane often encountered in phantasms that have no sensible counterparts)

A. Animate phantasms - Ghosts, departed souls, our own subtle bodies disengaged as in sleep

B. Inanimate phantasms - impersonal furniture of the psychic plane - most importantly the archetypes

C. The Psychic plane houses evil as well as good

III. The Celestial Plane - The sphere of the personal God, the God of "Theism"

A. The source of what illuminates the lower planes

B. Source of what we encounter in tangible objects, universals such as beauty, goodness, justice

C. Three points about theism, God's personal mode:

1. The view is natural - it is the way he appears to us.

2. It is true but not his final mode or reality.

3. Theism is not the final truth - the final reality is unlimited.

IV. The Infinite - God in his ultimate nature

A. Four points on God's Infinite nature:

1. Only negative terms characterize it literally - infinite, unconditioned, ineffable, immutable.

2. Positive terms apply to the Infinite only analogically - e.g. The Infinite is more like a lion that exists than a unicorn that does not.

3. The degree to which positive terms seem apposite will vary because it depends on the experience (or the imaginative capacity) of the person who is using them.

4. The most effective way to underscore the negative side of analogy - how much attributes  when predicated of the Infinite differ from the modes in which we usually encounter them - is through paradox.

B. The above four points show our minds incapable of grasping the Infinite. But truth does not need us and is in no way dependent upon our powers of conceptualization.

 

[ Home ] [ Up ] [ Preface ] [ 1. The Way Things Are ] [ 2. Symbolism of Space: The Three-Dimensional Cross ] [ 3. The Levels of Reality ] [ 4. The Levels of Selfhood ] [ 5. The Place of Science ] [ 6. Hope, Yes; Progress, No ] [ 7. Epilogue ] [ Appendix: The Psychedelic Evidence ]