Will, Parallelism, Joy

Spinoza's 'Parallelism' proposition, that 'the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things', is, in his system, fundamentally a cosmological thesis, following from the status of Thought and Extension as two aspects of one and the same Substance. However, he, and many of his successors, tend to present it as an Epistemological principle, i. e. as a characterization of an 'adequate idea' as a representation that accurately corresponds to its object. The implicit de-emphasis, in the latter version of Parallelism, of the role of Body in experience, i. e. of the body of the subject of representation, becomes more blatant when he later proposes that a Mode can achieve joyous unity with God via a possibly incorporeal Intuition. In contrast, a notion of monadic Joy that is more consistent with Cosmological Parallelism is the achievement of exact Mind-Body coincidence in an experience. For example, here, peak experiences are constituted by the occasion of a balance, e. g. of simultaneity, between Will and Comprehension, the two fundamental principles of Experience, a balance that is exemplified by some artistic or athletic performances, ones that are sometimes characterized as 'divinely inspired'.