Being, Intelligence, Freedom, and the Two Meanings of Infinite

Let's undergo a critical examination of this helpful cosmic matrix (drawn up by perennialist Harry Oldmeadow and emailed to me by a One Cosmos stalker). It shows the various levels of being and the different ways of considering them (click to expand):

For example, the dimensions of Being and Beyond-Being are said to compose the Divine, even though only Beyond-Being is properly called Absolute, and in fact, this is the primary claim I want to examine and compare with Thomas. We're not choosing sides, just calling balls & strikes or strikes & gutters.

Note also that the graph places the Supra-personal God above the Personal God, the latter demoted to relativity, although still uncreated. 

On the face of it, supposing the greater cannot come from the lesser, how does the personal come from the impersonal? Schuon acknowledged that Advaita -- which is to say, nondual -- Vedanta was the most adequate expression of his perspective, but.... That's all, just but. The rest of this post is about the but.  

First of all, as alluded to in a recent post, we have to determine whether the distinction between Being and Beyond-Being is truly ontological, i.e., real, or just nominal, that is, a name. I say this because if we understand Being rightly, it is already way beyond being, in other words, at once infinitely knowable and infinitely incomprehensible.

Which goes to two meanings of the word "infinite." Let me add at this juncture that I've been wrestling with a book that is somewhat above my praygrade or right at the cusp of it, Volume II of Garrigou-Lagrange's God, His Existence and His Nature. He's a strict Thomist, so we're essentially trying to determine if Thomas can be reconciled with Schuon.

The answer is "no" if it means that Christian personalism must be subordinated to a Hindu or Buddhist nondualism. This would be a nonstarter for exoteric Christianity, but perennialist authors imply that there is a Christian esoterism as represented by someone like Eckhart that is essentially nondual and ascending all the way to Beyond-Being.

G-L acknowledges at the outset that "the formal principle of Deity as to what properly constitutes it as such, cannot be known by our natural powers," and quotes Dionysius to the effect that "The divine reality is prior to being and to all its differences: it is above being and above the one." 

Again, this implies that Being is already Beyond-Being; no need to posit a separate reality: "The Deity contains formally the notes of being, unity, and goodness, but it is above these." 

But "We have no grounds for conceiving a divine perfection" as "determined by another perfection extrinsic to it." However, in the chart above, the perfection of Being would be a first (and therefore relative) determination of Beyond-Being. 

Precisely because the divine Being is already -- from the human perspective -- beyond any intimate knowledge on our part, revelation is necessary: since "it is impossible for us to know, by the power of natural reason, what formally constitutes the divine nature as it is in itself," "there must be a supernatural revelation."

Now, Schuon maintains that the intellect itself is a revelation, i.e., that it is to the microcosm what revelation (as we typically think of it) is to the macrocosm, but if this is true, Bob is thinking to himself, it's hard to imagine an intellect without a person attached, and vice versa. We'll no doubt return to this subject.

Right now, in fact, because G-L goes into the metaphysical degrees of intelligence; at the bottom are lifeless creatures that have only being (but are nevertheless intelligible), while "intelligence belongs to the higher form of life." 

Of course, Schuon draws a distinction between mere intelligence and the Intellect as such, but I wonder if this is a necessary distinction; for as far as I'm concerned, to say intelligence is already to say God, otherwise it's not intelligence, just your opinion, man.

Can anything be prior to intelligence, bearing in mind that the greater cannot come from the lesser? G-L writes that liberty, for example, cannot possibly be prior to intelligence; rather, "the free being is intelligent. It is useless to dwell on this point." "First comes the intellect," and "liberty is derived from it."

What about the personal God being caused by something beyond itself? This seems impossible if God is defined as the uncaused cause; nor can God be the cause of himself, "for nothing can be a sufficient cause of its own existence, if existence is caused." God can only be "His own sufficient reason," such that the very principle of causality is derived from God's own intrinsic sufficient reason.

For G-L, Being is prior to everything, including infinitude. He writes, for example, that "infinity is a mode of each of the divine attributes and not a principle from which they are derived" (emphasis mine). 

Again, Schuon often seems to equate Absolute + Infinite, whereas G-L is saying that infinitude is a mode of Absolute Being, and it is this mode that carries the other properties of Being into creation, i.e., goodness, unity, truth, beauty, etc.

As to the two meanings of infinite, one is negative, as in merely not-finite, whereas another must be positive, as in maxed out to the max, as with, say, God's goodness. 

There's also the matter of God's Big Hint as to what and who he is, for "God Himself has told us His name," that is, I am who I am. Similarly, in the NT, "I am Alpha and Omega," "who was, who is, and who is to come," meaning outside time and space as we conceive them. He is "not only capable of existing," but rather, existence is His very Being (in Him existence and essence are one, or His essence is existence).

Unless there's something above Being, but if so, it either is or isn't, and from nothing nothing comes. 

Having said that, we appreciate the fact that from our perspective God is certainly nothing, or no-thing. Just yesterday I was thumbing through a book of wise cracks by the Catholic mystic Angelus Silesius, and he says many things along these lines, for example, 

God is an utter No-thingness, / Beyond the touch of Time and Place: / The more thou graspest after Him, / The more he fleeeth thy embrace.  

Or

What Cherubs know sufficeth not: beyond their zone / I would fain to take my flight into where no-thing's known. 

And "Naught can ever be known in God": 

The more thou knowest God, the more thou wilt confess / That what He truly is, thou knowest less and less.

This is a radical apophaticism, but does this imply conformity to a separate realm of Beyond-Being, or is Being itself weird enough to cover it?

To be continued.