Reality is an Open Relationship

We've been discussing a mysterious principle of openness that not only permeates being but may in a sense be being; or at least being is literally inconceivable in its absence, because there would be no one open to it, nor anything intelligible to which to be open.

The reason this principle is mysterious is similar to the reason why relation is mysterious. We usually -- at least insofar as the left brain is concerned -- think of the terms related as more real than the relation between them. These terms are cutandry objects or nouns, while the relationship between them seems posterior to the relata. Or, the relation seems both contingent and subjective.

But it turns out that relation is ontologically prior to the relata. This is one of the surprising implications of quantum physics, in that it turns out that everything is related to everything else, and that oneness underlies or sponsors many-ness.

For example, Bell's Theorem shows that reality is nonlocal, and that subatomic particles are irreducibly entangled with one another -- that they are linked in such a way that their fates are intertwined, even when separated by galactic distances.

Now, I say this entanglement, nonlocality, and relationship must be the entailment of a higher or deeper principle, and this principle is none other than the Trinity. If the Trinity is the ground of being, then no wonder everything is interrelated and open to everything else. Openness is no longer an accidental feature but an irreducible property of the ground.

For Thomas Aquinas and other bright-minded thinkers, being is inherently active and self-communicative. It is is essentially diffusive, meaning that it naturally tends to share itself. Here again, this is a reflection of what goes on in the Trinity, what with the Father diffusing and sharing himself with the Son, and vice versa.

The intellect, whatever else it is, is open to reality. Along these lines, Dobie writes of how it "is essentially open to existence or being as such." At the same time, "being is the cause of truth in the intellect." Thus, "being is essentially Word, whose essence is to communicate -- to communicate existence, truth, and goodness." Intelligence to one side, intellect to the other, always in open relationship.

And here we are. The intellect is "none of the things it knows," but a potential to know everything knowable, up to and including God. It is not only open to God, but it is openness as such. But in order to be radically open, we must detach ourselves from all created images and concepts, for that way lies idolatry. 

"The detached intellect is pure receptivity" (Dobie), and in such a state "the soul is able to know God 'without any mode' and share in God's pure act of of understanding since understanding in and of itself is 'without any mode' (i.e., unlimited by any act of finite existence" (ibid.). 

Here we're verging upon the unsayable, into the mind-blowing paradox and perplexity discussed in yesterday's post, but it can't be helped -- not if we want to purify the soul and render it fit for God. I don't make the rules.

Eckhart compares the soul to a wax tablet that can receive God's "writing" only to the degree that it is blank and free of all "words." The soul is the place where God "writes" his revealed Word, and it is the proper end of the soul to allow God to write himself as the divine Word or Logos in itself.

In short, "Because the human intellect is pure potency to form, it also has a potency to be conformed to God.... Being pure potency, and thus empty and free, it is... able to be conformed completely to the divine understanding as its actuality and thus to be the vehicle for the revelation of God's Word." 

It is as if God and man are dual nothings reflecting one another. For Ibn 'Arabi, "the self is an ocean without shore, so knowledge of it has no end." Nor is there any end to knowledge of God, and for the same reason: 

To enter into the essence of the human self is... tantamount to entering into the essence of the divine, because human existence is essentially linked to the divine existence.

There's that relationship again, which links the two relata, in this case ourself and Godself: "there must be a mediating link between the individual human being and the divine Essence in its utter transcendence," and this link is "the logos of creation that is, importantly, also the immanent essence of human existence." 

In other words, there something linking "the divine reality and the human knower," this being "the vehicle in and through which human beings return to God by realizing the full potentialities of their own humanity." (This, of course, touches on the Incarnation, but we'll leave that for a later discussion.)

Now, this principle of self-reflection -- which is to say otherness -- exists first in the Trinity. This otherness is, of course, mediated by love, truth, and beauty, which are at once names of God and God himself in the mode of the Holy Spirit. I suspect. Things are beginning to get a little caliginous, as it were.

This is a little tricksy, but there are never really two things, or rather, the two are related in oneness; for our purposes, "there is only the self-disclosure of God refracted back upon himself in various modes according to the preparedness of creatures to receive and refract it." 

Man as such is "the 'place' in which God comes to self-awareness," and this awareness comes in various modes such as love, truth, and beauty, each of which revealing a relationship between terms.

My brain is flaming out, so I guess that's about the size of it this morning.