March, 2013 (Based on a presentation to the special interest group for spiritual exploration in my Sun City community (Georgetown, just north of Austin, Texas).
  Other papers such as The Kabbalistic Tree of Life: A Map of the Soul, and  references.  are elsewhere on this website. Google Blatner, Tree of Life

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   The following theological speculation works as a contemplation of mind and existence as based on the map or diagram called the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, in Hebrew, the Etz Khayyim. In my mind it’s a neo-platonic model, implying that the “more-yet” of each higher realm of creativity is superseded by a further more-yet of another higher realm—and it quickly becomes increasingly difficult for even the most subtle human mind to grasp. But I think we can barely touch into or speculate upon the higher more-yets of what it’s all about!

Start With Our Material World at the Bottom

It begins with a wallowing in wonder at what is! We continue to discover yet further horizons in many directions of all possible variations in rock and geological processes, in transformations over time and involving life forms, extinctions, evolutionary processes. There are in this realm innumerable discoveries yet to be made, innumerable forms of music yet to be composed, dances to be danced, and other possibilities for humanity. Certainly we have not made much progress in creating a truly sustainable and loving world.

Going "Higher" (or Might We Say, "Deeper"?)

But it helps me to know that my dreams, fantasies, visions, hopes, and other extensions of mind are also part of this. Indeed, they give birth to whatever humans can create. Their parallel in oher dimensions are all the unspoken triggers for all instinctual reactions of all animals and plants. So on a level beyond the material expression of the All is the psychic field that gives birth to the material, the hopes and plans, creative ideas—only some of which have any practical potential. But finding these is the game to play. This takes the concept of the unconscious and pre-conscious out beyond the realm of the individual or the group and suggests that Divinity manifests as a vast field of potentials out of which material possibilities form, and others may yet  form, and others again may never find expression.

That such a field exists is a mythic invitation to inspiration and creativity, the realm of dreams that invites us to learn to become more conscious of our dreams, to travel some day and harvest even more of the potential here, just as in the last few millennia we’ve learned to mine and refine more potentials in the realm of minerals.

The Archetypal Images

But there’s more yet. That is another pull of the contemplation of Divinity! Whence comes this vast field of images and interests, talents and temperaments? There is a deeper field that is as vast in relation to the aforementioned psychic field as that psychic field is vast in relation to the field of what becomes manifested in concrete form in our lives.

Our fabulous minds in their most awakened state partake of only a tiny fraction of what all humanity processes—all the different cultures, subcultures, vocations and occupations, games and amusements, types of dress and types of relationships among the parties. Even in our most sophisticated, world-traveled mode, a single human partakes—can partake—of only a relatively limited and minute fraction of the human potential. Most people’s worlds of relevance involve quite different elements and are of quite different interests, tastes, and values from what can be experienced by any given individual.

In a peculiar way, this great realm is a syzygy—it consists of basic themes—but there may be thousands of these—combined in different ways, added to by the other modifications of culture. What it means to feel proud of oneself as “successful” in any given role may have components of value that partake of many different dimensions. Our present view of a successful man or woman in late-modern Western cultures is perhaps a small range of all possible variations for all peoples in all eras. So both the essential “instincts” and the resultant “forms,” the archetypes that are given a pre-existent form by culture as archetypal images—these are the next “step” up.

“Meta-Archetypes”

But there’s More-Yet. This could be a chant, a mystical prayer re-directing our capacity for awe and reverence to ever-“higher” or more essential domains. Beyond the ranges of all human forms there are fundamental processes in nature, aside from our own species, or any species in particular. There is the meta-archetype of harmony, balance, equilibrium, that allows for life itself. And this balance includes a continuing dynamic tension between too much and too little, expansion and contraction, individuation and underlying stability of structure, established wisdom and creative exploration—dualities in process that give life its form.

Essential Tao

But there’s More-Yet: This great dance of becoming is itself an expression of the dynamisms of being itself, material being in space, the cosmos as we know it. Here are mind-stretching dualities, syzygies, that we only describe through mystical paradox: Yang (creative) and Yin (receptive), in and out, up and down, the cosmic pulse of Om, vibration, yes and no, matter and energy that occupies space-time (Yin) and mind-love that gives the impetus to unfold in this matrix (Yang). These are also suggested at the upper levels of the Tree of Life.

Beyond that is the Unity that integrates, combines one-ness and separate-ness. We humans are biased in our genes to prefer life, existence, action, differentiation, becoming, progress, learning, and the like, but the opposites of these qualities are necessary in order to give them contrast and certain kinds of beyond-energy. What, after all is dynamism without its polar opposite of stagnation? We need the latter to pause and take stock, to be readied for a new round. Winter is needed for Spring. I can’t explain it further—it just seems to apply to so much we live and experience.

A Holistic Map

In a thousand years this map may be viewed as being as limited and quaint as the way we view our early medieval maps of the world and the universe. It’s okay. It’s not really necessary for us to get the final, absolute answer. If we did, it might well be that we wouldn’t know what to do with it, how to process it. It might be as meaningless as the humorist and science-fiction author, the late Douglas Adam’s use of the number 42 as the ultimate answer to the meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Summary: A Bit of Theology

For me, God is not a personal king-like image—that’s a terribly perverted form of anthropo-morphism that hardly does justice to whatever is a trillion galaxies and all the life forms in it. My best guess is that the “highest” includes all these and has the pleasant enjoyment of being Everything, and always More, Yet. This quite transcends my little brain’s capacity to imagine in its furthers reachings, aided by science fiction writers, even. Certainly God includes and is all of space-time as we know it, and all dream spaces, too, all imaginations, and all experiences at even the most sub-microscopic level. Now what could do all that? Stretch, mind, stretch!

Okay, so what if in addition to these characteristics there is also an internal desire to differentiate and yet integrate, to expand in certain ways or develop? What if there are disadvantages and costs too being in material form as an extension of Divine action? (For example, in five billion years or more things begin to wind down?) But, like, that’s not a problem so much as a natural extension of the pulse of a multi-dimensional God that does this sort of thing.

My theory is that Mind, too, participates in the All-Ness; it makes it all far more multi-dimensionl than the mere 3 dimensions space, one dimension of matter, and the kinds of energy operating on matter in this system. God’s mind-body in my rudimentary speculations is always being Re-Born into more encompassing forms of Evolution, towards more self-awareness and correspondingly responsible capacities. That’s part of my take on God’s will. Another angle is that God is trying to get as much aesthetic enjoyment out of every event—and that’s in part what consciousness serves.

However puny or insufficient this theology may be in actuality, it’s a goodly stretch for me, and I figure that if theological speculations don’t stretch me, they clearly aren’t worthy (in my book) of being considered as a useful theology.