  The second stage, broadly speaking, is defined by the standpoint of place or topos (basho). This involves the attempts to articulate levels of differentiation and place them in more and more inclusive circles (to use one of Nishida’s metaphors) until one reaches the most concrete and comprehensive circle, a circle without circumference whose center is everywhere.  Nishida calls each such circle a place or topos, each alloowing things to be and to be seen as what they are. The final topos places self-awareness in the world of action and expression which contextualizes it, and ultimately in absolute nothingness. Nishida refers to the ultimate topos, alluding to Buddhist doctrine, as “the form of the formless,” clearly replacing earlier attempts to describe the basic form of concrete reality in positive and subjectivistic terms such as pure experience and absolute free will, This stage is evident in essays in From That Which Acts to That Which Sees (1927) and The Self-aware System of Universals (1930), and extends to much of The Self-aware Determination of Nothingness (1932). A Hegelian language of dialectics gradually became more and more prominent in his formulations, as he turned his attention to the place of individuals interacting in the world. He wrote of individuals as the “self-determinations” of the universal of self-awareness; and of absolute nothingness as a dialectical universal.