What is the Absolute? The Absolute is substance. The term substance means to stand under. Substance is that which underlines all realities and processes in existence; all realities and processes in existence are carved out of one absolute, infinite and eternal substance. But what is that substance? Suppose we examine a table. The table appears to be made out of wood. The wood appears to be a solid body of matter, and is nothing else than wood. Yet, when we examine the wood more closely, we find that it is neither solid nor wood. The wood is nothing else than a mass of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and other chemical elements, which are relatively to their size as far apart from one another as the earth is from the sun, and these elements are perpetually moving about one another. Thus the table is neither wood nor a solid body. And what about those chemical elements? These chemical elements themselves consist of protons and electrons. Thus the wood and the chemical elements disappear. And what about the protons and the electrons? They are nothing else than forms of energy. Thus all matter disappears. And what about the energy? This is the problem. Before we take up this problem, we must notice the following. All realities in existence, like the table, are nothing else than forms of energy. All realities and processes are carved out of one infinite and eternal energy. This infinite and eternal energy is substance.... What, then, is substance? Spinoza defines substance as that which is in itself and is conceived through itself. What, then, is it which is in itself and which is conceived through itself? All realities and processes in existence exist in substance and are conceived through substance; but substance is in itself, because there is nothing else besides substance; and is conceived through itself, because there is nothing else through which it can be conceived. What, then, is this substance? The answer is: substance is absolute thought—thought without form. All realities and processes are in something else, but thought is in itself. Again, all realities and processes are conceived by thought, but thought can be conceived only by itself. Thought comprehends time, space, matter, motion, force, and so on indefinitely; but thought itself is neither in time, nor in space, nor in matter, nor in anything else, it is in itself. Absolute thought—thought without form—is the substance of all realities and processes in existence. This substance is the Absolute. The Absolute is absolute thought without form. Of the absolute thought we have a direct and intimate consciousness; we are conscious of the thought in us, we think by thought and we live by thought. From the infinite and eternal absolute thought flows through us a stream of absolute thought. If this stream of absolute thought should cease to flow through us, we will cease to exist. The absolute thought is our substance, it is our life, it is our consciousness; so long as this absolute thought flows through us, we live, we are conscious, we think and we act. We become conscious of the absolute thought when it assumes a form, when it assumes the form of a perception, a concept, an idea, a feeling or a state of our body and mind. Absolute thought is in itself, it is implicit in itself. As such it is neither cause nor effect. The Absolute becomes both cause and effect when it becomes explicit, when it comes out from its implicitness and manifests itself explicitly. This explicit manifestation of the Absolute is the first cause and the first effect. Thus we have a trinity: The Absolute, the First Cause and the First Effect. This trinity runs through all infinite and eternal existence. Each and every reality in existence is a manifestation of this trinity. To know and understand any reality or process, we must perceive in it this primordial trinity.
