The term ‘Divine Being’ occupies a pivotal position across the depth-psychology corpus, functioning not merely as a theological designation but as a structural category through which thinkers map the relationship between transcendence, cosmos, and individual soul. The passages reveal three broad axes of treatment. First, in Sri Aurobindo’s integral philosophy, Divine Being (identified with Sachchidananda) is the ontological ground from which both cosmos and individual consciousness derive, neither reducible to the other; the soul’s evolutionary trajectory is precisely the recovery of conscious identity with this ground. Second, in Henry Corbin’s exposition of Ibn ‘Arabi, Divine Being is constitutively relational: it is a Creator because it desired self-knowledge through created beings, making theophany and the Active Imagination inseparable from the concept. Third, within the Orthodox Christian corpus—John of Damascus, the Philokalia, Bulgakov’s sophiology—Divine Being is treated apophatically, as beyond-beingness, simple, uncompound, knowable only through its energies and hypostatic relations. The tensions are significant: Aurobindo’s integral personalism, Ibn ‘Arabi’s theophanic mutuality, and the Byzantine apophatic tradition each produce radically different accounts of how the human soul stands in relation to Divine Being and what the stakes of that relationship are for spiritual transformation.
neither the cosmos nor the individual consciousness is the fundamental truth of existence; for both depend upon and exist by the transcendental Divine Being. This Divine Being, Sachchidananda, is at once impersonal and personal
Aurobindo argues that Divine Being (Sachchidananda) is the sole ontological ground for both cosmos and individual soul, transcending and encompassing both while remaining simultaneously impersonal and personal.
, The Life Divine, 1939thesis
The Active Imagination is essentially the organ of theophanies, because it is the organ of Creation and because Creation is essentially theophany. The Divine Being is a Creator because He wished to know Himself in beings who know Him
Corbin, following Ibn ‘Arabi, establishes that Divine Being’s creativity is inseparable from self-knowledge, making theophany the structural basis of Creation and the Active Imagination its epistemological organ.
, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, 1969thesis
The Active Imagination is essentially the organ of theophanies, because it is the organ of Creation and because Creation is essentially theophany. The Divine Being is a Creator because He wished to know
This parallel passage from Corbin’s Alone with the Alone confirms that Divine Being’s self-revelation through creation is the central axiom of Ibn ‘Arabi’s metaphysics of imagination.
, Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, 1969thesis
Just as in pre-eternity our latent existences were the organs of His being, it is this same Divine Being who moves the states of our being.
Corbin articulates Ibn ‘Arabi’s doctrine of mutual ontological dependency: Divine Being animates human states just as human latent existences functioned as organs of Divine Being in pre-eternity, precluding any simple emanationist schema.
, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, 1969thesis
it is to put on the divine being and the divine nature. And since God is Sachchidananda, it is to raise our being into the divine being, our consciousness into the divine consciousness, our energy into the divine energy
Aurobindo frames the Yoga of transformation as the literal assumption of Divine Being, requiring elevation of consciousness, energy, and delight into their divine counterparts across all planes of existence.
, The Synthesis of Yoga, 1948thesis
Every movement there is a movement of the self-aware truth of Divine Being and every part is in entire harmony with the whole.
Aurobindo locates the supermind as the Truth-Consciousness in which every finite action participates in the absoluteness of Divine Being, making supramental integration the fulfillment of the soul’s identification with that ground.
, The Synthesis of Yoga, 1948supporting
the whole of God is beyond being and beyond intellection, because He is an indivisible unity, simple and without parts.
The Philokalia’s apophatic theology insists that Divine Being exceeds all categories of being and intellection, making direct rational comprehension impossible and mystical transcendence the only mode of genuine approach.
, The Philokalia, Volume 2, 1981supporting
it exists as the beyond-beingness of being. For if artists in their art conceive the shapes of those things which they produce… how much more does God Himself bring into existence out of nothing the very being of all created things, since He is beyond being
This Philokalic passage articulates Divine Being as the uncaused cause whose mode of existence as ‘beyond-beingness’ utterly exceeds created beings that derive their being through participation.
, The Philokalia, Volume 2, 1981supporting
the unity of the divine Ousia-Sophia is such that the Father possesses her first of all in the tri-unity of the Holy Trinity and therefore in common with the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Bulgakov’s sophiology situates Divine Being’s inner structure in the Trinitarian possession of Sophia-Ousia, wherein the divine essence is fully disclosed across hypostatic relations without remainder.
, Sophia, the Wisdom of God: An Outline of Sophiology, 1937supporting
it is the Divine in the individual possessing and enjoying in one case the Divine in His pure unity or in the other the Divine in that and in the unity of the cosmos
Aurobindo argues that individual spiritual experience is ultimately Divine Being enjoying itself in differentiated forms, dissolving the opposition between absorption in unity and participation in cosmic multiplicity.
, The Life Divine, 1939supporting
the true name of the Divinity, the name which expresses His hidden depths, is not the Infinite and All-Powerful of our rational theodicies.
Corbin draws on Ismaili etymology to reveal that the deepest name of Divine Being connotes sadness and longing rather than omnipotence, orienting the tradition toward a ‘pathetic’ or compassionate divine nature.
, Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, 1969supporting
The eye of his will must look beyond to a purity of divine being, a motive of divine will-power guided by divine knowledge of which his perfected nature will be the engine
Aurobindo presents the ethical transformation of the yogi as subordination of personal will to Divine Being’s knowledge and power, with the perfected human nature serving as instrument of that higher dynamic.
, The Synthesis of Yoga, 1948supporting
it joins itself to the divine Being from whom the supreme origination of all these partial and lower states proceeds so that the whole of life may become aware of its divine source
The integral Yoga seeks to unite material living with Divine Being at its source, so that all planes of life—mental, vital, physical—consciously express the divine origination underlying them.
, The Synthesis of Yoga, 1948supporting
l-inclusively the totality of substantive being, since He transcends even substantiveness itself. If this is so, there is nothing whatsoever among all the things to which we ascribe being that possess substantive being.
The Philokalia maintains that Divine Being so utterly transcends substantive existence that no created being can be said to truly coexist with God on the same ontological level.
, The Philokalia, Volume 2, 1981supporting
The One is a sovereign that has nothing over it. It is God and parent, father of all, the invisible one that is over all, that is incorruptible, that is pure light at which no eye can gaze.
The Gnostic Secret Book of John characterizes Divine Being through a radical negative theology, defining the One as illimitable, invisible, and beyond every category available to creaturely comprehension.
, The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus: The Definitive Collection of Mystical Gospels and Secret Books about Jesus of Nazareth, 2005supporting
there is in Christ but one person, existing in two natures, the divine and the human, and that this is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Word.
Bulgakov traces the Chalcedonian resolution of Christological controversy as the definitive articulation of how Divine Being and human nature coexist without confusion or separation in the God-human.
, Sophia, the Wisdom of God: An Outline of Sophiology, 1937supporting
The Deity is simple and uncompound. But that which is composed of many and different elements is compound.
John of Damascus establishes the absolute simplicity of Divine Being as the axiomatic starting point from which all other theological predications must be carefully qualified.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
Ibn ‘Arabi says as much: ‘The divine Compassion also embraces the God created in the faiths.’
Corbin notes that Divine Being’s Compassion is expansive enough to embrace even the theophanic constructs generated within particular faith communities, positioning Ibn ‘Arabi’s pluralism within a unified metaphysics of divine self-disclosure.
, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, 1969aside
this fourth human principle is a projection and an action of th
Aurobindo briefly positions the soul as a projection of a higher divine principle, situating the psychic entity within the broader ontological scheme in which Divine Being expresses itself through individual and cosmic levels.
, The Life Divine, 1939aside
God is everlasting and unchangeable essence, creator of all that is, adored with pious consideration.
John of Damascus offers a compact doctrinal summary of Divine Being as unchangeable, self-subsisting essence, laying the grammatical foundation for Trinitarian elaboration.
, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 2021aside