Observations placeholder
Spinoza, Baruch - Ethics - Uniqueness of God
Identifier
004905
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Spinoza's argument is that:
The Creator, the Created and the copies of the Created must be 'made' of the same basic energy and spirit
'Ideas' means function in Spinoza's works, as such the function and the copy of the function that all physical things get must also be spirit.
God, who is the collection of all functions in the system of the universe, is defined by the functions that he/she/it contains, this collection must be unique - another set of functions means another 'God'. From this composite of all functions is derived all collections of sub-functions [the Intelligences] and then by extension our copy of those functions [soul]
The functions of things 'past' and the functions of things ' in the future' in physical terms already exist. In effect, all the functions have already been created, all that is missing is their evolutionary implementation in the physical.
[I'm not sure I agree with Spinoza here, I think that co-creation is about creating new function as well as form]
A description of the experience
Baruch Spinoza - Ethics
If things have nothing in common with one another, one of them cannot be the cause of the other..........
So also a mode of extension and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing, but expressed in two ways. ......
God's idea, from which infinitely many things follow in infinitely many modes, must be unique..........
Ideas, both of God's attributes and of singular things, admit not the objects themselves, or the things perceived as their efficient cause, but God himself, insofar as he is a thinking thing...........
God is not only the cause of things beginning to exist, but also of their persevering in existing, or alternatively God is the cause of the being of things. For whether the things exist or not – so long as we attend to their essence, we shall find that it involves neither existence nor duration …... [thus] God is the efficient cause, not only of the existence of things, but also of their essence.