Hyponoetics - Essays
Hyponoesis and Exonoesis I
Abstract: Introducing the two basic concepts of Hyponoetics: Hyponoesis (Universal Mind) and Exonoesis (Individual Mind). This first part of the introduction tries to explain the concepts by means of an analogy. A more technical elucidation of the concepts is given in the second part.
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To gain a basic understanding of the concepts of Hyponoesis and Exonoesis, I use the following analogy:

The ocean can be said to consist of an almost infinite number of water drops. Each water drop has an individual and unique form. But these water forms do exist only potentially, because whenever we look at the sea, we cannot make out any separate water drops. They do not exist independent of the ocean. Actually, only the ocean exists, that is, water. Potentially, however, this indefinite mass of water inheres these potential forms of water, the waterdrops that is.

Take the ocean as Hyponoesis, as the primary totality of everything that exists actually or potentially, and take the waterdrops as the individual entities (forms) of our world, that is, living beings, material things, intelligible objects of our thinking, emotions, etc.

These individual forms, human beings for example, are only forms idealiter, that is, they exist as a potentiality, not as an actuality. Realiter , there is only the ocean, Hyponoesis. These potentially derived forms are forms out of Hyponoesis (Exo-noesis). They are not a substance distinguished from Hyponoesis. The water is the same in the ocean and in the waterdrop, that is, the waterdrop is only a cut-out sequence formed of the one and only substance, water.

Therefore, our material world and our mental world do not constitute a dualism with almost insuperable problems of interaction, but are only different aspects or forms of the same underlying reality, Hyponoesis. Furthermore, we can say, that these forms, or Individual Minds (Exonoesis), are only potentially existing, as an infinite number of possibilities or possible worlds (if we assume every form to constitute a world in itself). And each world reflects the whole, each Exonoesis reflects Hyponoesis, IS Hyponoesis, actually, but potentially it is a separate self-determining world, which can easily interact with other potential forms.

Thus, originally, there is only One Mind, Hyponoesis, that consists of infinite ideal forms. These forms are what I call Exonoesis, or Hyponoesis within the boundaries of the form. In other words, Exonoesis is the limitation of Hyponoesis, the Infinite become finite.

The activity of Hyponoesis posits the forms of Exonoesis. And the thinking of Exonoesis posits the immediate forms of its outer material and inner mental worlds in the same manner.