3.13
When I say this tree is an intensity, that, becoming global, opens onto a prismatic god (§3.10), I don’t mean this tree is a prismatic god. Selves are not gods. Rather, the tree (or a self) ‘has’ or is ‘looked after by’ a prismatic god.
This god is in the background, stitching the world, which includes one’s self. It’s part of the orbital gathering of the god.
While an individual entity can have its own attendant spirit, which draws others into an intensity, the prismatic god is not the god of or for an individual. The prismatic god is the god of a group. Although individuals can be intense, they’re intense within a group. (We don’t always notice this for beings we aren’t used to seeing in a group.)
Intensities, spirits, gods cut across the way we usually think of an individual thing, leaping across boundaries, shifting our understanding. Deities aren’t wed to one particular thing as this thing: they wander, blend, and shift. A tree may have a spirit, but so may a meadow, or some ‘thing’ we may not think of as a thing: this meadow and this tree taken together; or just the lower part of this tree.