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Just the usual Friday flight into a full-blown freeforall of freakflaggery.

We left off in the mydst of an elucidation of the One Weird Trick for clearing up metaphysical confusion and incoherence via seeing God stereoscopically (or better, tri-scopically).

Rather than building a careful bridge to our conclusion, let's start at the far end and then ski back down, i.e., descend from the celestial mountaintop to the terrestrial plains. After all, the book from which we are quoting is called From the Divine to the Human, and we mean it:

both conceptions -- the unitary and the trinitary -- meet and are resolved in their archetype, which is none other than the Absolute at once immutable and radiating; being what It is, the Absolute cannot not be immutable, and It cannot not radiate. Immutability, or fidelity to itself; and Radiation, or gift of Itself; therein lies the essence of all that is (Schuon).

Problem is, immutable and radiating are a bit like particle and wave herebelow. But in nether case is there contradiction, rather, complementarity, i.e., two views of a single reality.

Hmm. There are as many paths back down as there are up, and we're trying to choose just one. 

Come to think of it, if you really want to feel overwhelmed, there are as many paths as there are individuals. And ultimately, each person is essentially a path back to God. Or from God. Your choice.

The image comes to mind of a body stretched over an abyss so others can scurry over. But we'll bridge that cross when we get to it.

As Fr. Garrigou explains, even a single trail presents the vertical wayfarer with "great variety": "one part crosses the plain, another climbs more or less steep slopes; part of the road can be covered in daylight, part at night, and that in fair or stormy whether," etc. 

At the moment, for example, there's a bit of fog in our channel, but we're forging ahead anyway. Damn the torpidity!

In any event, there is no stasis in this cosmos, not even if we're mouldering in the doldrums: for as Garrigou says in The Three Ages of the Interior Life -- and he's boiling down the collective testimony of centuries of pneumanautical adventurers --  "Not to advance is to retrogress."  

That's pretty much our daily directive, isn't it?: oneward, inword, upward! What's the alternative?   

Nor is our progress -- or our retrogression, for that matter -- at a uniform rate of speed. Rather, -- at both ends, evidently -- our velocity increases as we approach the singularity (or diversity, depending): 

the soul ought to advance more rapidly toward God as it approaches Him more closely and is more drawn by Him, just as the stone falls more rapidly as it draws near the earth which attracts it.

Vertical gravity. Which, come to think of it, isn't so much an attraction as it is the tendency of space to curve around large objects. 

Now, what is the largest object? Yes, it is what men call God, but recall the image of the point surrounded by concentric circles: supposing you're a vertically untutored physicist orbiting around the center. Obviously, the circle is larger than the point, which is inconceivably -- literally -- small. Physics wins! 

But the physicist loses, in the time-honored manner of "gaining the whole material world while losing your immaterial soul." Yes, it's one of those pyrrhic victories in which the operation is a total success. Only the patient died.

So let's make a memo to ourselves: don't do that. It's not just soph-destructive, it's plain stupid, the height of absurcularity.  

Back to our mountaintop. Before descending, let's have a look around. Interesting. Here is a house with three doors. Well then, let's invite ourselves in!

Locked.

That's okay. The doors are labeled; or rather, each has a main heading in ALL CAPS, with various subheadings below. One door says ABSOLUTE. A second says INFINITE. The third says PERFECTION.

From outside, these appear as three different aspects or dimensions or modes. But behind the doors these three are somehow one. It's a bit like the Deep State: we know it's there because its effects are obvious, but there's nothing we can do about it.

Another image comes to mind of a triangular mountain. At its peak is the peak of another mountain, this one upside down. The three doors are at the point of contact between the peaks, but upper mountain is off limits, at least in this life. Among other things, it is infinite, while we aren't.

Note, however, that "infinite" has no positive content. Rather, it's just the negation of finitude. We know all about finitude, since we're plunged into it. What is its negation? Just nothing? No, it's something alright, both in form and content, respectively, for it is the radiation of the sovereign good, precisely.

Put it this way: as Plato well understood, it is in the nature of the Good to communicate, i.e., to radiate, itself. What good would the Good be if it kept all the goodness to itself? Not very!

Which leads to the subheadings on the doors, alluded to above. Or rather, it is like one of those blinky toys: tilt it one way and it says ABSOLUTE. Tilt it another way and it says FATHER. For which reason we just say ABBASOLUTE.

Now, the FATHER is necessary being, except in the ghetto, but that will take us far afield. And there is no FATHER in the absence of the SON, so he too partakes of necessary being in a "secondary" (so to speak) way. And of necessity they have a "relationship," this being what is called HOLY SPIRIT.

Here again, tilt the blinky and we see ABSOLUTE, GOOD (or PERFECT), and RADIATION. We also see a number of other primordial trinities, so I think we're on to something. To be continued.