Continuing with the idea that O must be our first idea and the source of all ideas, in it (O) there must be something like Thinker and Thought -- or Absolute and Infinite, potency and act, implicit and explicit, principle and manifestation, reality and appearance, field and particle, etc. I could go on, but you get the point. And sphere.
Call it the First Complementarity, so to speak, otherwise God is truly AllOne, with no room at the inn for the outword, let alone us.
As Christian Raccoons, we know fool well that God is indeed AllOne, and yet, not so fast: let's approach this from a purely translogical and metaphysical standpoint before mixing in theology or faith or any other vertical mischief.
Frankly, this may be above my praygrade. Let's let Schuon sort it out, stopping along the way to ask questions as they arise (in particular, asking how we might square his universal metaphysic with orthodox Christianity).
In Ultimate Reality -- O -- there is
a principle of polarization, perfectly undifferentiated in the Absolute, but capable of being discerned and the cause of every subsequent deployment.
Okay, let's stop right there: "perfectly undifferentiated in the Absolute" goes to, of course, the principle of God's radical unity, i.e., that he is of a single substance, so this checks out as far as it goes. Only God can know his own unity, but this unity is surely "capable of being discerned" by us, otherwise we wouldn't be here discerning it right now.
Somewhat -- or pretty darn -- paradoxically, we can understand metaphysically that God is One, even though saying so seemingly cuts us out of the picture, or renders us less than Real; or, if only God is ultimately real, this renders us less than. We are second class cosmic citizens at best.
Unless there's more to the story -- the story of man as such -- which I suspect there is. But let's not get out in front of our headLight. Rather, let's just stipulate that there either is or isn't more to man than we might appreciate on superficial consideration.
Either way, it's a true binary question, something like "no meaning whatsoever" or "ultimate meaning beyond your wildest imagination," e.g., the beatific vision, nirvana, moksha, perfect and total Slack, etc. Which is it going to be?
With regard to this ultimate complementarity or bifurcation or polarization, Schuon -- paraphrasing him -- says that it can be represented both horizontally and vertically. This is full of implications, but for me it suggests that this primordial polarity is going to be fractally present in everything -- heaven and earth, celestial and terrestrial, man and God, etc.
Come to think of it, just yesterday I was reading a used book I picked up for a dollar at the weekly library sale, called The Creator and the Cosmos, by Hugh Ross, which turned out to be much more interesting than I had anticipated. Explaining why would be the subject of a different post, but in it he writes of how, on the one hand, our sense of time is characterized by a one-way cause-and-effect, but on the other, how God is able to cause effects "even before the beginning of the time dimension of our universe."
How is this possible? Easy: revelation "speaks of the existence of extra dimensions beyond our time and space, extra dimensions in which God exists and operates." How many dimensions? Wrong question. Speaking only for myself, it can't be a quantity, but must be a quality. A qualitative dimension? Absolutely.
However many it turns out to be, Ross estimates that, given all the parametrical fine-tuning we now understand to be present in the cosmos, and without which life would be impossible,
the Creator at a minimum is ten trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion times more intelligent, knowledgable, creative, and powerful than we humans.
Like anybody could even know that!
The only way we could know that is by translating those eight trillions into a single quality. Call it a lot, AKA Infinitude. See how easy that was? God is Absolute; and also Infinite. Two words or qualities for what must also be a single substance.
Let's get back to the vertical and horizontal axes or polarities. In the first, there is a distinction between Being and Beyond-Being, which reflects the ultimate "creative principle."
Speaking again only for myself, although we live in a "creation," I suspect this can only be understood in the context of an eternal creativity that takes place within the Godhead itself, and which can be schematized with the Beyond-Being <--> Being axis.
Is there any reason for a Christian to believe such perfect nonsense? Oh, I think so, although only for weirdos and hyper-curious misfits such as ourselves. Or Eckhart:
God is a being beyond being and a nothingness beyond being.
Or, try this on for size:
[T]he Trinity constitutes the inexhaustible fruitfulness of the Unity. From the Trinity comes all unification and differentiation....
The Father is God beyond all, the origin of all that is. The incarnate Son is God with us.... The Spirit is God in us (Olivier Clement, The Roots of Christian Mysticism).
So, if God's pronouns are I AM and WE ARE, his prepositions are Beyond, With, and In. We'll continue down this rabbit hole in the next post.
8 comments:
It's the cosmic area rug. From herebelow, we only see one surface, but on the other (or an other) the view might reveal connections that would seem impossible from herebelow.
Along the lines of Bob's 12:03:00 comment on yesterday's post, looking at the backside of the same area rug, all a normal person would perceive would be a tangled, incomprehensible mess of knots and hanging threads which don't at all resemble the image on the other side. Or maybe one of those old telephone operator stations with a ton of crossed wires. It might provide clues as to how one thing connects to another, but it would probably also drive one a little or a lot crazy.
Or in current year, maybe it would just make you a conspiracy theorist, I dunno.
Can I buy... no, better not if Berensen is right.
I AM beyond. WE ARE with and in. Yes. I like that.
This is great. I have a Hugh Ross section in my bookcase, from decades ago. Very heartening to read your words here. Also, St. Gregory of Nazianzus has a marvelous riff in the Theological Orations on how the Unity gives rise to Duality which then resolves in the Trinity, which echoes the Schuon writing.
No time to linger here now, but thank you for the post!
Over the years I've become much more partial to a purely metaphysical approach that transcends whatever science proves or disproves, and will thus always be true. So, revisiting the science via this book by Ross has been interesting. It echoes a lot of the stuff in my book, but with the passage of time, the purely scientific evidence of God only grows.
I really like what he says about the extra-dimensionality of God. Looked at this way, it is as if the Incarnation literally involves a declension into a lower dimension. Which in turn reminds me of the asymmetrical bi-logic we've discussed in the past, and will no doubt be revisiting soon. God's hyper-dimensionality is to this dimension as dream logic is to Aristotelian logic.
Which I suppose is why Finnegans Wake intrigues me, as it is supposed to mirror dream logic. And is therefore a little less incomprehensible than God.
Rather, let's just stipulate that there either is or isn't more to man than we might appreciate on superficial consideration.
I think we can more than simply stipulate that this is so, and would buttress this with the words of The Messiah Incarnate himself: From Matthew 17:20 - I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.
For myself, this indicates as creatures made in God's image we have the potential to tap into powers undreamed of, though I do not know if my inability to move a mountain, or perform other feats, is the result of faith that is even smaller than a mustard seed, or simply being kept in my place, but if He is telling us so, there must be something to His words.
It's looking to me like the whole cosmos was teleologically ordered to the Incarnation. Change one of hundreds of cosmic parameters, and it doesn't happen.
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