Divine Creative Personality
Both limited and limitless. Neither god nor not god.
The human individual often gets placed in extreme metaphysical positions. That is to say, we place ourselves in extreme metaphysical positions.
In the West the individual has been raised to a God-like status. There is no intelligence or consciousness higher or greater than the human person.
In the traditions East the individual gets negated and dissolved into a unitive, transpersonal principle: Buddha nature, God, Allah, Tao. This principle is taken to be higher, greater and more foundational than the human person.
But what if neither the personal nor the transpersonal is a higher, greater — or more real or fundamental — than the other?
What would it mean to live by a radical equivalence of the personal and transpersonal?
Of the person and the God?
This leads us to the notion of Divine Creative Personality.
This is the idea that the human personality is God incarnate.
Embodied. Materialised. Visible. Tangible.
Conversely, the transpersonal (or collective) psyche is God disincarnate: a disembodied principle / intelligence / power / love that unifies all incarnated beings.
Immaterial. Invisible. Intangible.
From this contrast we can see that the personal and the transpersonal co-depend, co-arise and co-evolve. They do not make sense, do not even appear or exist, without one another.
As a result, we can release our paradigm (idea) that person is subordinate to God/the transpersonal principle. This is the foundational principle of the Abrahamic religions, and it results in a profound disempowerment of the individual personality. In its extreme this results in ideas that the human is not divine and that the material world is somehow impure, sinful or fundamentally flawed. The entire spiritual project thus becomes an attempt to overcome, conquer and transcend the material world. We see this transcendentalism as a common feature of essentially all ‘Axial Age’ religions and spiritual movements: Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism. In these frameworks, the Divine is decidedly and definitively other… other-worldly. Non-human. Immaterial.
Conversely, the notion that the person is not subordinate to God introduces a very real danger of ego-inflation: the idea that the human person is superior to God (and to other persons and beings). That God / the transpersonal is some kind of idea or creation of the human, and as an imaginary entity is therefore lower, less real, less foundational. Or possibly that is not real or important in any way, as hyper-individualistic Western materialism apparently believes.
We balance and avoid the risk of ego-inflation by realising that every personality is equivalent to and inseparable from the God / deity / transpersonal psyche. Not just me, but every living being in all of infinite reality.
Divine creative personality is impossible without divine creative community (or communion).
The material, embodied Divine is impossible without the immaterial, disembodied divine (what is often referred to as ‘spiritual’).
Individuation is impossible without collectivisation.
Now the West has been hell-bent on individuation for some three thousand years now, with utterly incredible and also harrowing consequences. Look at the artistry, innovation, achievement — and the massacre and torment of millions.
The East has been hell-bent on collectivisation, transcendence and unification. Again the consequences have been profoundly both beautiful and profoundly disturbing.
We are now approaching a world-culture that harmonises these completely interconnected, interdependent principles. This opportunity invites us to synthesise the divine creative personality with the divine creative collective. It also demands that we face and integrate the shadow of both of these principles (namely ego-inflation and negation of the individual).
Again: the individual is impossible without the collective, and the collective is impossible without the individual.
This is similar to how number ‘1’ only makes sense in relation to a) zero and b) the whole number line — all the way to unfathomable infinity.
Let me put this in a way that is clear and relevant to your life:
God is impossible without you.
And you are impossible without God / the whole / the transpersonal / the immaterial.
Indeed the trans-personal can only ever be known or defined in relation to the personal, to which it is deemed beyond or across (hence ‘trans’). Another prefix denoting beyond-ness is ‘meta’. So we can also conceive of the transpersonal God / psyche as the Divine Creative Meta-Personality.
This is the personality who lives as all personalities. The being who lives as all beings. And yet is not limited or defined by any one of these personalities/beings/incarnations.
The divine meta-personality exists, appears, and knows themselves only in relation/contrast to each and every possible personality.
If there was no personality, the transpersonal would not be able to know themselves as such.
“I was a treasure and I longed to be known” says Allah in the Koran.
This longing is realised in the self-knowing of every living being.
Including you!
Every living being is the incarnation of God, the transpersonal divine.
Every unique personality knows themselves as temporary, finite and limited — like a melody or movement in a symphony. And yet, there is no symphony without each individual movement. The part and the whole are so completely inextricable that they are not really ‘two’ at all. Yet nor are they one!
The phrase from the Zen tradition, “Not two, Not one” captures this non-duality perfectly.
So: each individual is a finite expression of the infinite, and is thus so fundamentally dependent on and inseparable from the divine meta-personality / transpersonal psyche that they never need to worry about their inherent limitation. They can make peace with their finitude — as every truly awake and flourishing mortal being has learned to do. And this becomes possible only when you realise that your mortal material being is only possible or even knowable in relation to an immortal immaterial being.
Vice versa, the immortal immaterial being (who some like to call God) is only possible or knowable in relation to the mortal and material beings — because they are the ones who have the capacity to know, see and perceive. It is in and through our limited nature that we can comprehend the unlimited (and that the unlimited can comprehend itself, or anything at all, given that the infinite will always remain, by necessity, incomprehensible).
It is through our unlimited nature that we limited (embodied, incarnate beings) can know and comprehend ourselves!
We are freed from the false conceptual duality and separation (of limited/unlimited) the very moment we realise that neither of these two principles is more fundamental or foundational than the other.
The personal divine depends on the transpersonal divine, and vice versa. The imaginal depends on the material. The conscious depends on the unconscious. And so on for any other conceptual distinctions you want to make between us embodied people and the disembodied/immaterial spiritual consciousness that we depend on and emerge from. The point is that none of these distinctions is true or real, and we would do well to stop clinging to one end of the these poles over the either.
This is not just philosophical abstraction. It is totally relevant to the unfoldment of human evolution and the unprecedented global changes in which we are currently participating.
We are currently undergoing a cultural-psychological-planetary transition.
This is a transition away from human personalities who are unaware of their non-duality with the divine transpersonal / God / collective, and towards personalities who are fully, blissfully and ecstatically aware of that non-duality.
People who know themselves as inseparable from the boundless divine meta-personality and as a result, take responsibility for the continuous (co-)creative manifestation of all reality, and thus for the welfare of every living being.
Humans who know themselves as humans and as God.
A God who knows Godself as an infinite transpersonal potentiality, and as every single human (and animal/plant/elemental) personality!
Such individuals are harmoniously integrated into an infinite and universal divine collective consciousness. They belong to this infinite transpersonal divine principle and are thus at total peace, even in the midst of tumultuous and intense experiences.
In turn, the divine collective consciousness relishes in this opportunity to know, discover and create itself as sublimely limited, incarnated, and embodied individuals/personalities.
We are awakening to our divinity, as Divinity awakens to us.
We are thus co-awakening with and as God.
The Many awaken as the One.
The One awakens as the Many.
O, wonder of wonders!
Joy of joys!
I wonder who is more amazed about this: us embodied personalities or the immaterial divine imagination!
Whatever amazement arises, it is shared by both us and God, due to our utter inseparability and equivalence.
Now a word of caution. Please be careful that this post does not mislead you into thinking that the non-duality (or non-difference) of person and God is more fundamental, real or true than the duality (or difference) between person and God.
Jordan Bates explains this very well in his brilliant piece “You Are Not God”.
In summary:
You are God.
You are also not God.
The person and the transpersonal are separate and different, just as much as they are perfectly the same and non-different. This is a paradox we are going to have to sit with — and blossom into. The Intellect protests, while the Heart laughs — and laughs and laughs. Then it dances into the air, whirling away through an infinite meadow of golden flowers, birds and insects. The Intellect sits crossly on a tree stump with furrowed brow, poring over his notebooks and looking for the correct definition of himself and his God…
Ha!
Got you!
Nothing to understand in this entire post — sorry pal!
Maybe it’s time to give up trying to understand this miracle and just ENJOY IT!
JUST LOOK AT THE CLOUDS — THE SKY — YOUR FRIENDS — YOUR HANDS!
YOUR HANDS!!!
YES: YOU HAVE HANDS!
AND YOU CAN SEE THEM!
HOW UNSPEAKABLY AMAZING IS THAT?!
See what God sees:
Everything!
God sees what you see:
Everything!
I love you!
We love we!
We are God!
And it’s showtime.
Thanks for reading, friend. Do let me know how this landed for you in the comments section.
If you want to support me in this work, you can clap, subscribe, share on social media, or even leave a tip below.
Much love,
Will
Appendix: So who really exists, then?
God neither exists nor doesn’t exist.
God is imaginal. Non-real (which is to be distinguished from unreal or equivalent to nothingness).
And the same is true for us human beings / individuals / personalities.
Ego-inflation is the fallacy / limiting view that I AM GOD and so there is no other transpersonal principle or being on whom I depend. This is the prime fallacy of the western cult of individuality.
In the east we see the fallacy of ego-negation: denying the appearance and significance of the human individual / personality.
This is the view that I AM NOT GOD… I AM NOT DIVINE … EVERYTHING IS UNREAL EXCEPT FOR GOD (the transcendent transpersonal).
Both ego-inflation and ego-negation are extreme views (extreme conceptual-metaphysical conclusions). Between the two lies the unspeakable and inexpressible freedom of the middle way.
Nothing exists, nor does nothing not-exist.
Things appear to exist only in relation to, and dependence on, all other things.
If I don’t really exist, and God doesn’t really exist, then both I and God can only know ourselves in relation to one another.
And since I/we are here thinking about self and God, both self and God are clearly not equivalent to nothing!
Being neither something nor nothing, neither existent nor nonexistent, we see that both self and god are imaginal. Unfathomable. Inconceivable. Not limited or defined by conceptions. And yet, our conceptions about what constitute self and God are precisely what determines the shape, feel and self-experience of each!
Sorry if I’m causing you a brain-melting headache here.
It’s just that: the melting has to happen!
If these conceptions remain liquid, then our knowing of self and God remain free from reification – the process by which conceptions become fixed and rigid and things/entities are taken to be real and non-imaginal, non-empty.
Reification gives way to deification:
the recognition and supra-conceptual experience of the utterly miraculous, divine, imaginal, empty-yet-not-empty, neither-real-not-unreal nature of everything!
The soulmaking dynamic is the process by which reified phenomena and entities become deified: recognised as divine limitless imaginal unfathomable buddha deities. We can practice and play with this, every day, every hour, every moment of perception. Get listening to Rob Burbea for more of that.
To recognise the role that concepts play in generating perceptions is to unbind the concepts (and frameworks) which currently limit the possibilities for perception.
With different concepts the perceptual limits expand and we are able to experience more, and richer, and deeper – more sublime more beautiful more divine.
We realise that we can relate to all beings – including ourselves – as Gods and Buddhas. Utterly free, perfect and divine. Free from all imposition of conceptual limitation, and thus free from all perception (or experience) of limitation. And yet, so too, free to experience limitations as we please (such as embodied mortal human personality)!
This process of limit-expansion by transcending and subsuming our current conceptual frameworks (apparently) continues without limit as we explore the infinite possibilities for perception, experience, incarnation and relationship.
Seeing our own freedom to incarnate and experience mirrors our seeing the freedom of others. And vice versa.
Seeing the freedom and perfection of god helps us to see our own freedom perfection and divinity.
This freedom and perfection is a view not a truth.
In turn, knowing our own suffering and struggle opens our hearts to the suffering of God– the divine creative intelligence who chooses to live and suffers as ALL BEINGS, even the ones we cast and judge: the crackheads, the beggars, the prostitutes, the CEOs, the oil barons, the oligarchs, the hipsters, the passionate poets, and so on. Even YOUR PARENTS.
You are truly free from ego if you can relate to all such people as God incarnate. By doing this you realise you are God incarnate, in self-relation to Godself. You are also just you, relating to other people.
Totally extraordinary, divine and miraculous – yet totally ordinary and natural. The two are inseparable and ultimately indistinguishable.
You pray fervently. You relax into infinite depths. And you have a croissant, read another article, watch the birds, and take a stroll in the park…
