The logos- in ref. to Spinoza

The opening page of Spinoza’s magnum opus, Ethics
Main article: Philosophy of Spinoza
“ These are the fundamental concepts with which Spinoza sets forth a vision of Being, illuminated by his awareness of God. They may seem strange at first sight. To the question “What is?” he replies: “Substance, its attributes, and modes”. ”
— Karl Jaspers[17]

Spinoza believed God exists only philosophically and that God was abstract and impersonal.[1]

Elena: interesting that he already rationalizes the idea of God as if by his times they had already lost the ability to perceive other realms.


Spinoza’s system imparted order and unity to the tradition of radical thought, offering powerful weapons for prevailing against “received authority.” As a youth he first subscribed to Descartes’s dualistic belief that body and mind are two separate substances, but later changed his view and asserted that they were not separate, being a single identity.

E: interesting also that Descartes would separate mind and body! Already then? And Spinoza reunites everything into one reality (substance)? Why substance?


He contended that everything that exists in Nature (i.e., everything in the Universe) is one Reality (substance) and there is only one set of rules governing the whole of the reality which surrounds us and of which we are part. Spinoza viewed God and Nature as two names for the same reality,[11] namely the single substance (meaning “that which stands beneath” rather than “matter”) that is the basis of the universe and of which all lesser “entities” are actually modes or modifications, that all things are determined by Nature to exist and cause effects, and that the complex chain of cause and effect is only understood in part. His identification of God with nature was more fully explained in his posthumously published Ethics.[1]

E: And only one set of rules. Makes sense. One law. Only that in other realms the laws we are familiar with turn upside down and upwards. The laws we have in our regular realm or second state and their cause and effect is perceived without the connectedness it has to other realms that are actually its source. What’s interesting is that when we don’t perceive the other realms, we are only looking at a minute percentage of the story. Gurdjieff’s system is wonderfully clear about it in the diagram of worlds. World 1, 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, 96, 192. This diagram is very good because when people move within the spheres of those states they can “taste” the hydrogens of each different realm. It is not reality what changes, it is the capacity of each individual to perceive the different worlds in it. Please be clear that I am not an “advanced” person in these matters, I only really practiced for the first few years before the effort turned against me and I dedicated myself to transforming the cult itself. It must’ve been a hell of an efficient effort considering I lasted seventeen years in hell itself!!

But besides the joke what is interesting about perceiving the law in the diagrams in the fourth way system, is that there is unity in them. The table of hydrogens in which all the expressions of matter are depicted with numbers is wonderfully revealing about what one can perceive about matter when in the state that corresponds to world 96 or above and world 48 or below because in the different states, the worlds within matter can also be perceived. We give life to the world itself with our self. The world itself gives life to our self. It is definitely a dialogue between two cosmoses, a harmony, as if when one reaches a high enough note within one’s self, one broke the glass of laws and penetrated other realms. What is interesting is that one is not doing it but being it and in that “being” other realms became accessible and yet, the experiences always, always, felt as if they’d been a gift and profound gratitude accompanied each one of them.------------ back to the text.



That humans presume themselves to have free will, he argues, is a result of their awareness of appetites while being unable to understand the reasons why they want and act as they do.

Elena: This is were I would start being very careful with Spinoza. It is as if he had no perception of his own I and its realm and reign over his will.

Spinoza has been described by one writer as an “Epicurean materialist.”[11]
Spinoza contends that “Deus sive Natura” (“God or Nature”) is a being of infinitely many attributes, of which thought and extension are two. His account of the nature of reality, then, seems to treat the physical and mental worlds as one and the same. The universal substance consists of both body and mind, there being no difference between these aspects. This formulation is a historically significant solution to the mind-body problem known as neutral monism. The consequences of Spinoza’s system also envisages a God that does not rule over the universe by providence, but a God which itself is the deterministic system of which everything in nature is a part. Thus, according to this understanding of Spinoza’s system, God would be the natural world and have no personality.

E: This passage reminds me of the many decades I’ve lived without knowing that I am and “floated” in the world without keel, knowing God was certainly not responsible but human beings and our madness. As long as people can make God responsible they can continue to not assume responsibility for their lives. They can continue to avoid the inhumanity with which we are living and blame it on God, or c’est la vie, or tough luck! As long as people can be manipulated into believing in God and that destiny is arranged by him and must not be tampered with and that people have to continue behaving and not confronting the status quo, the inhumanity of the status quo will continue to tighten its grip over the people. Cults are the maximum expression of this condition, they are already the phenomenon of a people willing to die en masse without questioning the status quo and conforming with their own sacrifice. We live in the saddest times. Is the heroe within each human being dead? When one looks at plays like that of the Fellowship of Friends and the fofblog, what could make one say no?



In addition to substance, the other two fundamental concepts Spinoza presents, and develops in the Ethics are attribute – that which the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of substance, and mode – the modifications of substance, or that which exists in, and is conceived through, something other than itself.
Spinoza was a thoroughgoing determinist who held that absolutely everything that happens occurs through the operation of necessity. For him, even human behaviour is fully determined, with freedom being our capacity to know we are determined and to understand why we act as we do. So freedom is not the possibility to say “no” to what happens to us but the possibility to say “yes” and fully understand why things should necessarily happen that way. By forming more “adequate” ideas about what we do and our emotions or affections, we become the adequate cause of our effects (internal or external), which entails an increase in activity (versus passivity).

Elena: Is it not fascinating that the statement or mind frame in this paragraph is as strongly alive and well today? This determinism is one of the pivotal instruments of control in cults. Say “yes” to everything no matter how inhuman! But in life, in our regular lives it is very much the same. That is why we still need heroic consciousness to get out of the critical situation we are in. It’s precisely this determinism what is being used against people to keep them under control. In a totally different context what is described here can also be found in the practice of non-identification so as not to react negatively in a particular situation. The double sword of this facts should be looked at carefully. On the one hand we have power in our multiple institutions, institutionalizing “good” behavior that is in fact, submissive behavior to authority even if authorities are actually abusive from the day we are born with parents who take their misery out on their children, teachers at schools who are “addicted” to controlling the children and exercising their insignificant little power, universities in which the master classes do not allow students to speak and the so called phhhhhhhhdddds look down on their students who are too way below to merit actual human contact. This has of course, been so much better expressed by Reich and Foucault and all those before me but allow me to indulge myself in expressing an old truth that is new to me. I don’t remember them putting it quite like this or going beyond it. So, on the one hand we have the institutionalized good behavior and whoever doesn’t take it is expelled and on the other hand we have the inner practice of bearing with life’s status quo by accepting the determinism that it is just one’s bad luck if one can’t have access to better conditions in life. If the individual is unable to control himself because of his or her bad luck, then there is the police, the headmaster, the military etc, etc.

Here is where we come to the logos!! And get much closer to Foucault’s understanding of Power because what we need to begin to understand here is that what power has power over in our recent history, (particularly since the introduction of industrialization in our lives), is in the distribution of LIFE and “life giving life”: The logos. We are running out of life. The fact that we are also running out of air, water and even Earth is the physical expression of the fact that we are running out of LIFE. And what is of fundamental importance here is to realize that people in power are as much the victims as the perpetrators of this condition. They are not consciously doing this just like cult gurus are not consciously leading their flock to suicide.

Since this is awfully long and I am just beginning I might as well publish it now so that you can take a look at it. I’ll review and correct later so that I don’t run out of eyes, which are already beginning to sting before I finish presenting the whole picture.