Divinity-self – The Binding Chaos Lexicon

The self created by euphoric interactions with divinity. These can include spiritual sources but can also be found in everyday euphoric sources, whether or not the subject experiences them as spiritual. Any interaction with primary anima or the conscious expands the divinity self. The divinity self is often trapped into a religious endogroup.

Expanded explanation

The widest of the six circles, and the definition is careful to keep it out of religion's exclusive possession. Euphoric interactions with divinity build it, and those can be spiritual sources or entirely everyday ones, with the subject's own interpretation making no difference. Any interaction with primary anima or the conscious expands the divinity-self, which means music, beauty, discovery and love do the work whether or not anyone involved would call the experience religious. This is the circle a person arrives at after persevering through the others, and Marsh describes its arrival by two negatives. A divinity-self neither desires regression nor fears death. Both follow from what has happened by that point. The earlier protective membranes are gone, the self has expanded through exosocial interactions well beyond the confines of the body, and it is held up by networks rather than by any single membrane, so bodily mortality has stopped being an existential threat and there is nothing earlier to want back. The trap is the religious endogroup, which captures this circle the way a state captures the nation-self and a career captures the creation-self, with church leaders in the endo-ideal position. Capture at this level is the most consequential, since the circle that ends the fear of death is also the one whose capture makes people most controllable.

In Heather Marsh’s words

Marsh describes the arrival at this circle by what stops rather than what begins.

“they will arrive at a divinity-self which will neither desire regression, nor fear death”
The Creation of Me, Them and Us

Examples

Not confined to religion: Everyday euphoric sources expand this circle regardless of whether the person experiences them as spiritual.
Why death stops threatening: A self held up by networks rather than by a single membrane has already extended past the body, so mortality is no longer existential.
The religious endogroup: Church leaders occupy the endo-ideal position at this level, which makes capture here unusually powerful.

How others use it

Developmental accounts of faith exist, most prominently James Fowler's stages of faith, which place a universalizing stage at the end of a sequence, and Abraham Maslow added self-transcendence above self-actualization late in his work. The psychology of religion after William James studies religious experience as a category of its own, and contemplative traditions describe stages of realization in their own vocabularies. What is unusual in Marsh's version is the indifference to content. Fowler's stages concern how a person holds their faith, while the divinity-self is built by any interaction with primary anima or the conscious, which makes a piece of music and a religious rite equivalent inputs and leaves the person's own interpretation of the experience out of the account entirely.