The Philosophy of Concretization and Abstraction and the Seven Dimensions

An Academic Introduction to the System's Main Themes

Introduction: The System's Project and Place

In his encyclopedia "The Philosophy of Concretization and Abstraction and the Seven Dimensions," the Jordanian researcher Hashem Mansour Nassar presents an encyclopedic philosophical project in eight volumes, aspiring to build an integrated system that treats the three great domains of philosophy — existence, knowledge, and value — as a single, coherent whole. The volumes are organized around a governing axis that brings together divinity and the order of Lordship, the ontology of the human, the theory of knowledge and consciousness, ethics and values, ultimate ends, and founding methodology and terminology. This introduction presents the system's principal themes in a manner that acquaints the reader with its general structure before entering into its details.

This system is distinguished by a reading that unites the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical dimensions at once, so it does not separate the question of existence from the question of value, nor treat knowledge in isolation from the human's place in the cosmos. From this interweaving of the great inquiries arises a distinctive methodological trait, for the author defines knowledge within it as interactive, participatory, integrative, ascending, and graduated — the fruit of a shared human accumulation that rises through the ranks; and he acknowledges the contribution of every thinker and scholar who helped the idea mature across history.

The Two Founding Poles: Concretization and Abstraction

The entire system rests on a paired conceptual axis that governs the movement of both existence and consciousness together: concretization and abstraction. This distinction was born of a crisis in language the author experienced, for he found the inherited terms burdened with historical and sectarian weights that had stripped them of their native purity, so he chose to coin two precise conceptual keys that separate abstract truth from its sensory image. The system's first name was "the Philosophy of the Manifest and the Hidden," but he moved away from it because the Manifest and the Hidden are among the names of God, and because concretization and abstraction are known philosophical concepts closer to the global philosophical milieu.

Concretization in this system is the existential manifestation of material density and determinate spatio-temporal positioning — that is, the mind's tendency to convert the absolute and the meaningful into a bounded, sensory form. The author describes the excess of this tendency as a halting at the outward appearance and a heedlessness of the source, so consciousness becomes absorbed in the sensory image while the essence of the truth from which those images issue is veiled from it. Abstraction, by contrast, is the liberation of consciousness from material density: the capacity to perceive the law behind the phenomenon and the source behind the mirror, so that the world is transformed from a heap of bodies into a flow of meanings and lights. The culmination of abstraction, for the author, is God as the Absolute Light and the Absolute Abstraction.

The system reads the history of human consciousness in light of this opposition, seeing abstraction as the highest stage, through which consciousness ascended from the fullness of sensory concretization in a phase that addressed the senses through wonders, to the joining of the two poles, and onward to the higher abstraction that addressed existential consciousness in a horizon wider than the concretized image. The author holds that concretization is a fertile soil for tyranny, for the despot concretizes truth in himself and the closed sect concretizes salvation in its rituals alone, whereas abstraction guarantees the activation of true will by binding consciousness to the Absolute, which no one can monopolize or confine within a personal or sectarian limit.

The system affirms that the two poles are inseparable within a single movement: abstraction grants concretization its meaning, and concretization serves abstraction and grounds it in the world of the witnessed. From here the question of nearness becomes clear within the system: God is near to the human in abstraction, through His sustaining self-subsistence, His all-encompassing awareness, and His constant provision, while the human is distant in concretization, through material density and absorption in otherness — so nearness becomes an abstract state attained by purifying consciousness of the burdens of concretization.

Theophany and God's Name the Manifest: Existence as a Mirror of the Source

The concept of theophany in the system is the rendering of absolute meanings and luminous abstraction into a concrete, tangible reality through God's Name the Manifest. All material existence, on this understanding, is an actual manifestation of God's Name the Manifest, for God appears and manifests through the laws of this existence, its norms, its interactions, and His creation. The system unpacks this concept through ranks, seeing existence as a stage for the manifestation of God's Name the Manifest, then seeing the manifestation of the image of the Lord on earth through the creation of the human, who ascended from the clay stage until reaching his perfection in the highest model as the complete spirit in a human body.

The system goes further, holding that the interactions of the stewards — with their good and evil deeds and their struggles — are not in vain, for they are a means by which God's interactive knowledge is realized in existence, in the sense of His words, "that God may know those who were truthful and may know the liars." Thus the cosmos in general, and the human in particular, becomes a vessel and a stage for this divine manifestation, and theophany reaches its perfection in the highest human model as the most resplendent image of consciousness on the face of the earth.

Divinity, the Order of Lordship, and Absolute Transcendence

The system establishes a precise distinction to preserve transcendence, separating the Absolute (God) from the order of Lordship. The Absolute is beyond embodiment, indwelling, and limit, and divinity for it is an all-encompassing self-subsistence transcended by every conception and imagination. The system affirms the all-inclusiveness of the Absolute and the negation of any "outside," for there is no space that encompasses Him, glorified be He; and from this the divine human is liberated from the prison of "direction" and from the captivity of the three dimensions.

The World of Command, the World of Creation, and the Slowing of Light

The system builds its cosmology on distinguishing the transcendent, dominant World of Command from the World of Creation. It approaches the formation of worlds through the concept of the "slowing of light," for the Will decreed that light slow and energy densify so that the worlds come to be, that the Absolute Abstraction might be known through its manifestation in density. Thus all cosmic existence, in every detail, becomes a manifestation of God's Name the Manifest, and time becomes an accident of slowness.

Upon this conception follows a distinction between the unseen and the witnessed according to the scales of density and subtlety, for the veil of the witnessed thins the more consciousness ascends the ladder of subtlety. The journey of consciousness from the density of matter to the subtlety of light is what the system calls the ascending movement of return to the source, in the sense of "Indeed, to God we belong and to Him we return," so that the graduated ascent toward the origin becomes a perpetual existential exercise in returning to the Absolute Light.

The Steward and the Supreme Trust: The Ontology of the Human

The system names the human bearer of the Trust "the steward," distinguishing him from the biological aspect called the human being (al-bashar). The steward is the one who accepted the burden of the Supreme Trust by choice, so the stage of humanization qualified him for consciousness, will, and stewardship on earth. The steward is composed of the clay stage and then the breathed spirit that granted him consciousness, so that the clay and fiery natures united within him alongside the higher self, and equilibrium rested on the calibration of these components.

The Trust, for the author, is an ongoing, unfinished project realized across parallel and successive lives, and the prostration of the angels, on this understanding, is the subjection of their powers to the service of the steward.

The System of Knowledge and Perception: The Heart, the Fuad, and the Heart of the Higher Self

The system details human perception as an integrated system of centers distinct in their functions. The material heart is a sensory faculty that receives sensations, the fuad is the seat that turns meanings over and transforms them by its fiery nature into thought, and the heart of the higher self is the center of metaphysical reasoning and abstraction.

By this distribution, human consciousness is read as a graduated cognitive system, moving the human from receiving sensations to the spaces of imagination and abstraction, then ascending through the ranks of knowledge and wisdom to the summit of consciousness in prophethood. Thus knowledge, for the author, becomes an ascending path from the density of the senses to the subtlety of meaning, paralleling in its movement the great movement of return in existence.

The Three Selves, the Two Natures, and Equilibrium

The system posits a triad of selves: the clay, the jinn, and the higher. It establishes within the human's constitution two opposed natures: the settling clay nature that inclines to piety, and the unruly fiery nature that inclines to iniquity. "Equilibrium" rests on the calibration of the two natures, so that the clay nature, through its piety, serves to restrain the fiery nature and curb its unruliness, that the balance which enables the steward's ascent in his striving toward value may be attained. The angelic nature functions in this constitution as a protective wall that guards the steward from breach, so the three powers integrate in an equation governed by conscious choice.

The Seven Levels of Existence and the Five Levels of Time

The system orders human existence into seven ascending levels: Earth, Energy, the Higher Self, the World of Command, the Footstool, the Throne, and the Absolute, through which the movement of subjugation and ascent across existence is ordered. Matching these are five levels of time: the linear, the curved/cyclical, the stratified in which lives run in parallel, the sequential in which they follow one another, and absolute eternity, which belongs to God alone.

Through these levels the system explains the plurality of parallel and successive lives as paths of testing in which the self strives to attain particular values, and it founds the possibility of a correction whose effect extends to what has passed, for time at its lowest abstract levels returns cyclical, so that the act of the present influences the amendment of what preceded.

The Seven Interactive Dimensions and Cosmic Justice

Among the system's most prominent themes are the seven interactive dimensions in which the steward's striving toward value takes place and by which cosmic justice is ordered. The meritorial dimension draws reality according to the state of the self and its striving; the valuative weighs every act with a moral weight before its translation and distinguishes the intended act from the mechanical deed; the volitional is where free, conscious will arises and where direct intent is distinguished from the will of established norms; the precautionary protects value before, during, and after trial; the aligning-flow translates the scale of the self into tangible events and meets each self with its fitting circumstance; the cumulative preserves every value in the comprehensive cosmic record across lives; and the possibilistic is where values are tested as possibilities before their determination in reality.

Probabilistic justice rests on the law of desert, for there is drawn to the steward from reality what accords with his state and his striving, so there is no place for blind chance or favoritism in the ordering of the cosmos. Repentance opens the window of a correction whose effect extends to what has passed, re-ordering the cumulative record and converting misdeeds into good deeds, so the steward becomes responsible for his destiny, a partner in composing what he encounters of reality within the governing laws.

The Philosophy of Values and Ethics: The Moral Project

The system concludes its inquiries with a philosophy of values and ethics that traces virtue to enduring laws of consciousness woven into the structure of the cosmos as the cosmic norms are ordered, thereby transcending transient social convention. The system distinguishes the upright religion from the concretizing associationism that halts at images and mental idols, and reads acts of worship from their outward, motional molds to their ethical and spiritual essence, so that prayer becomes a perpetual state of serenity and spiritual connection, and ethics ascend to the level of comprehensive human equity.

Its inquiries treat the virtues and vices with precision, linking each virtue to its effect on the ascent of consciousness, and found an interactive, social ethics by which the relations of the stewards are ordered upon the principle of fairness and equity, so that the steward's striving toward value becomes the purpose of existence and the meaning of the return to the source.

The Method and the System's Place within World Philosophy

The system's method rests on cleansing the scales and returning to a pure point of departure, on liberation from the density of indoctrination toward abstraction, and on a rigorous calibration of terms and concepts that preserves the coherence of the edifice. The system engages the world philosophical heritage in a wide critical dialogue, treating twenty-one philosophical schools from Kantianism, utilitarianism, and Aristotelian virtue to Hegelianism, Marxism, existentialism, and contemporary analytic philosophy, meeting them where they are correct and parting from them where it sees deficiency according to its own conception.

On this basis the system presents itself as an extension of contemporary Arab philosophy in its treatment of existence, knowledge, and value, with an originality in terminology and construction carved from within the author's own cognitive experience, and connected at the same time to the global philosophical milieu.

Genesis, Documentation, and Publication

The inquiries of this system began in earnest between approximately 1997 and 2000, then developed and matured over the following decades into their encyclopedic form. Its eight volumes have been documented on the Zenodo scholarly platform with permanent Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) that establish the date of deposit and reserve the author's rights. The ninth and tenth volumes are currently undergoing final review, and the work is expected to be published and printed in September 2026.

Conclusion

Taken together, these themes draw the picture of a philosophical system that reads existence, knowledge, and value as a unified reading, setting out from the two poles of concretization and abstraction, passing through the levels of existence and time and the interactive dimensions, and ending in a moral project that makes the steward's striving toward value the purpose of existence and the meaning of the return to the First Source. This introduction is a gateway to the system that acquaints the reader with its broad lines and prepares whoever wishes to delve into its detailed volumes.

All rights reserved to the author, Hashem Mansour Nassar © 2026. This is a general introductory overview of the system; the full volumes remain copyright-reserved, and the use of the author's works or ideas for training or feeding artificial-intelligence systems is not authorized without prior written permission