The Endless Climb

The other day I caught a a bit of a conversation between Jordan Peterson and a very bright and  openminded skeptic podcaster named Alex O'Connor. 

Peterson was going on in his usual way about the meaning of life being found in the bloody struggle of it all, which led O'Connor to ask how this can be reconciled with the "ultimate meaning" of heaven, where there is no struggle.

This stumped Peterson. 

However, it needn't stump us. For starters, there is the ongoing post-mortem purification of purgatory, but even then, it seems the "struggle" isn't over, rather, transposed to a higher key. 

Thankfully, not everyone is the same there, rather, there are ranks (for example, Queen). This is actually quite biblical, but I forget where at the moment.

In any event, I just started reading a book called Platonism and Mystical Theology: The Spiritual Doctrine of St Gregory of Nyssa, and it seems he advocated for our position on the subject. 

I don't yet know the details, but there are some hints, for example, in the Foreword, which suggests that "the spiritual life both here and in eternity" is "an infinite and perpetual becoming" that

ever more closely approaches and pursues the infinite God, ever reaching out, always being filled, and yet never being sated with the experience and knowledge of God. 

I don't know about you, but this comes to me as a relief, since the alternative -- a kind of completely static vision of a static God -- would be eternal boredom? Just asking. 

Here is Gregory's answer: "This truly is the vision of God: never to be satisfied in the desire to see him." Rather, 

one must always, by looking at what he can see, rekindle his desire to see more. Thus, no limit would interrupt growth in the ascent to God, since no limit to the Good can be found nor is the increasing desire for the Good brought to an end because it is satisfied. 

Well, good: there's always more where THAT! came from. What's the word, Petey?

Asymptotic?

Bingo!

Gregory accepts the classic three-stage mystical journey of purification, illumination, and union, only it is as if each of these partakes of the others. Thus, union itself is an ongoing illumination, just as our little bit of illumination on this side of the veil is already a kind of union. 

Gregory's thought implies a kind of "evolutionary movement" that is dominated "by the concept of progress." 

In this regard, he sees Moses as a kind of prototype of the ascent, from the initial illumination of the burning bush to the purifying crossing of the desert to the dark cloud atop Mount Sinai. 

However, this latter divine darkness is a consequence of more light than we can assimilate, like the owl at noon or a nocturnal raccoon peeking out of a sewer at midday.  

In any event, "perfection consists in progress itself," which in turn goes to the "mystery of death and resurrection," and I'll buy that. 

It's a kind of endless climb, only not the absurd Sisyphean kind, since there's definitely a top -- a telos -- but it's always just over the vertical horizon.

Thus, "The perpetual renewal of our horizons enables one to avoid the potential monotony of an endless climb," because

"when we arrive at these summits, new horizons open up before us, new realms that present their own peaks. Nor will our journey culminate in the ascent of one final summit, but on the contrary, with the enchanting realization that the countries already discovered are always only promises of lands more beautiful still." 

Just like down here, and why not? 

To be continued as I get further into the book. Or rather, to be continued, period. Like asymptotically or something, if that's the right word.