New Writ Has Come to Light

Here's something: a newish book called Towards the Essential: Letters of a Spiritual Master. It consists of of letters from Schuon, mostly to folks asking for advice on how to proceed -- as in, I've read your book(s), now what? I'm here, God is there, and how do we tie the room together?

Over a third of the letters are addressed to Christian correspondents, followed by other miscellaneous paths, eg., Sufi, Hindu, Native American, etc. I'd skip ahead to the section on Buddhism, but the Chinaman is not the issue. 

Here's a timely passage which, although written in 1986, goes to our era of mis- and disinformation:

the devil is fond of inculcating in people predisposed certitudes that are unshakable but diametrically opposed to the truth; the earmarks of satanism are precisely this diametrical falseness and the obstinacy of error.

Say what you want about Satan: that creep can roll. Worthy f'ing adversary.

Good news / bad news:

There is no spiritual method that does not wound our nature. Spirituality is both the easiest and the hardest thing. The easiest: because it is enough to think of God. The hardest: because fallen nature is forgetfulness of God. 

So, you're entering a world of pain. Nor does Schuon care about your feelings, which are "a matter of indifference" and "a contingent matter without importance." Besides, 

The happiness of worldly people, if one may say, is that they do not see all their disharmonies; they dwell in an opaque and easy homogeneity; it is a harmony procured for a pittance.  

Sometimes I wish I could live in a place where there were more people like me, instead of none. Well, the world doesn't start and stop at our convenience: 

I know where the difficulty lies: it is easier -- or less difficult -- to be alone on a desert island, than to be among men who do not understand us....

Nevertheless, 

we are obliged to accept the destiny God gave us and do the best we can with it.

I get it, but California? Really?

The world is a battleground, and it is necessary that there be warriors of Light everywhere, if I may express myself thus. In the meantime, you are where Providence has placed you...

There are always ups and downs, strikes and gutters: one must

be mindful of the equilibrium of the soul so as to avoid the alternations between phases of enthusiasm and aridity. If we are indifferent to aridity, it will dissipate in the end.... 

Ups and downs are natural for the soul; everything that is situated in duration undergoes phases; every continuous motion contains rhythms.

In short, abide. Yeah, but it's complicated: lotta ins, lotta outs:

In the spiritual life, one must know how to simplify things, which presupposes that one be firmly conscious of the essential elements of the path.... 

A strict regiment to keep the mind, you know, limber: 

I like to repeat that one must avoid complications, and that the essential, of which one must never lose sight, is this: discernment between the Real and the illusory, between God and the world...

But we are surrounded by nihilists.

God owes nothing to sheep, nor to somnambulists.... 

You must not allow yourself to be discouraged.... this absurd ambience, though so full of assurance and arrogance, is monstrously abnormal, with regard to both its convictions and tendencies; these people may be unanimous in their errors and vices, but it is you who are normal; so remain imperturbable in the face of this collective hypnosis....  

A smarter feller than myself once said

Serenity is to be above the clouds, above the world; above oneself. Recollectedness and serenity: we must discover these in prayer, and through prayer.

Ever thus to deadbeats:

The very length of your letter proves your problems are artificial, thus illegitimate, for one does not need to write a twelve-page letter to outline real problems.

You think far too much, in an artificial manner that is both bookish and psychological.

Maybe, but at least it's an ethos. 

New Writ Has Come to Light

Here's something: a newish book called Towards the Essential: Letters of a Spiritual Master. It consists of of letters from Schuon, mostly to folks asking for advice on how to proceed -- as in, I've read your book(s), now what? I'm here, God is there, and how do we tie the room together?

Over a third of the letters are addressed to Christian correspondents, followed by other miscellaneous paths, eg., Sufi, Hindu, Native American, etc. I'd skip ahead to the section on Buddhism, but the Chinaman is not the issue. 

Here's a timely passage which, although written in 1986, goes to our era of mis- and disinformation:

the devil is fond of inculcating in people predisposed certitudes that are unshakable but diametrically opposed to the truth; the earmarks of satanism are precisely this diametrical falseness and the obstinacy of error.

Say what you want about Satan: that creep can roll. Worthy f'ing adversary.

Good news / bad news:

There is no spiritual method that does not wound our nature. Spirituality is both the easiest and the hardest thing. The easiest: because it is enough to think of God. The hardest: because fallen nature is forgetfulness of God. 

So, you're entering a world of pain. Nor does Schuon care about your feelings, which are "a matter of indifference" and "a contingent matter without importance." Besides, 

The happiness of worldly people, if one may say, is that they do not see all their disharmonies; they dwell in an opaque and easy homogeneity; it is a harmony procured for a pittance.  

Sometimes I wish I could live in a place where there were more people like me, instead of none. Well, the world doesn't start and stop at our convenience: 

I know where the difficulty lies: it is easier -- or less difficult -- to be alone on a desert island, than to be among men who do not understand us....

Nevertheless, 

we are obliged to accept the destiny God gave us and do the best we can with it.

I get it, but California? Really?

The world is a battleground, and it is necessary that there be warriors of Light everywhere, if I may express myself thus. In the meantime, you are where Providence has placed you...

There are always ups and downs, strikes and gutters: one must

be mindful of the equilibrium of the soul so as to avoid the alternations between phases of enthusiasm and aridity. If we are indifferent to aridity, it will dissipate in the end.... 

Ups and downs are natural for the soul; everything that is situated in duration undergoes phases; every continuous motion contains rhythms.

In short, abide. Yeah, but it's complicated: lotta ins, lotta outs:

In the spiritual life, one must know how to simplify things, which presupposes that one be firmly conscious of the essential elements of the path.... 

A strict regiment to keep the mind, you know, limber: 

I like to repeat that one must avoid complications, and that the essential, of which one must never lose sight, is this: discernment between the Real and the illusory, between God and the world...

But we are surrounded by nihilists.

God owes nothing to sheep, nor to somnambulists.... 

You must not allow yourself to be discouraged.... this absurd ambience, though so full of assurance and arrogance, is monstrously abnormal, with regard to both its convictions and tendencies; these people may be unanimous in their errors and vices, but it is you who are normal; so remain imperturbable in the face of this collective hypnosis....  

A smarter feller than myself once said

Serenity is to be above the clouds, above the world; above oneself. Recollectedness and serenity: we must discover these in prayer, and through prayer.

Ever thus to deadbeats:

The very length of your letter proves your problems are artificial, thus illegitimate, for one does not need to write a twelve-page letter to outline real problems.

You think far too much, in an artificial manner that is both bookish and psychological.

Maybe, but at least it's an ethos. 

Last Word on Freedom

We're still toying with the question of how and where man's freedom fits into the overall cosmic scheme of things. Literally: for how is free will possible, and why is it here? If it doesn't exist -- as believed by religious and scientistic determinists -- then at least this frees us of anxiety, since whatever happens must happen, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it. It also frees us of moral qualms and conflicts for the same reason.

If free will is just an illusion, then there are no such things as error or evil. So don't worry, be happy! And yet, despite the presence of more secularism than ever, there appears to be more anxiety than ever, so there's a disconnect somewhere.

Aphoristic pointers and clues:

If determinism is real, if only that can happen which must happen, then error does not exist. 

But error does exist, so... 

Error supposes that something happened that should not have. 

Something is supposed to happen, and we are supposed to make it happen. So responsibility and guilt are built into the fabric of existence? Not sure I like that idea. 

The stone is right, wherever it falls. Whoever speaks of error postulates free actions. 

Wait -- I think I found a loophole: belief in free will must be an error. 

To admit the existence of errors is to confess the reality of free will. 

D'oh! 

The prestige of freedom in a society that professes scientific determinism is a Christian holdover.

That's a low blow.

The determinist is impatient with his opponents, as if they had the freedom to speak as they wished to. Determinists are very irritable people.

Why not? Irritability is an effective defense against self-awareness.     

In any proposition about man its paradoxical fusion of determinism and freedom must emerge. 

Which leads directly to the irreducible paradox of personhood: 

The permanent possibility of initiating causal series is what we call a person.

In this giant book I'm reading on metascience, the author points out that there are some eight different forms or schools of Thomism. This troubles me, since there is only one Thomas, and I even chose him for my confirmation saint. One reason I joined the church is to exit my own circularity and fragmentation, and now I find out that my own saint is riven by octupularity?

Of the eight approaches, I find that two or three of them speak to me; it's not that I ever intended to join a school of thought, rather, that these schools describe where I already find myself. 

For example, the school of transcendental Thomism revolves around the idea that "the ultimate root of all metaphysical inquiry" is "the drive to know and the intelligibility of being." It "argues that the human intelligence cannot be satisfied until it arrives at some 'Ultimate Reality' which is the 'Ultimate Good.'" This Ultimate Being "is implicit in all our thinking and provides the 'horizon' on which metaphysics is based."

So, I guess that makes me a transcendental Thomist. Except I equally relate to what he calls "Phenomenological Thomism," because this includes the personalism which for me holds the Key to Everything. 

Ironically, John Paul II is perhaps the most well-known personalist, despite the fact that he was a student of Garrigou-Lagrange, the latter representing an entirely different school of thought ("essentialist Thomism") which is much more objective, rigorous, and even hostile to the potential subjectivism of personalism. 

Maybe I'm a little slow, but I see the three approaches as complementary. A thought just floated by: it is as if Garrigou-Lagrange's essentialism is the Father, John Paul II's personalism is the Son, and Norris Clarke's dynamic transcendental horizon is the Holy Spirit.  

This may also be how and where the whole existentialada may be harmonized with Schuon, who writes that not only is there "no incompatibility whatever between the 'absolute Absolute,' Beyond-Being, and the 'relative Absolute,' creative Being," but "this distinction is even crucial." For the Divine Relativity

is the necessary consequence of the very Infinitude of the Principle: it is because God is infinite that He comprises the dimension of relativity, and it is because He comprises that dimension that He manifests the world.  

A world that includes free persons:

God did not create an intelligent being so that the latter might grovel before the unintelligible; He created him in order to be known starting from contingency, and that is precisely why He created him intelligent. 

Only if the mind is rational is the will free, and both are rooted in the Person: 

Now one thing is the existential determination of man, which he shares with every pebble, and another thing is his liberty, which he owes to his deiform personality and which causes him to participate in the Divine Nature.  

Now, "The individual will is free insofar as it is real," for "if it were not in any way free it would be deprived of all reality." Rather, only the Divine Will would be free, and we would simply be necessary consequences of it.

I think I'll conclude with a passage from The Way Toward Wisdom:

Since, for Aquinas, the human person is the culmination of the visible universe, and the mediator between it and the spiritual realm, a good understanding of the human person can be considered the key to the knowledge of all Being for which the human person serves as the analogical microcosm. Thus personalism is central to a Metascience, since beings with intellect and will are the supreme form of Being (Ashley).

Concur. 

Last Word on Freedom

We're still toying with the question of how and where man's freedom fits into the overall cosmic scheme of things. Literally: for how is free will possible, and why is it here? If it doesn't exist -- as believed by religious and scientistic determinists -- then at least this frees us of anxiety, since whatever happens must happen, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it. It also frees us of moral qualms and conflicts for the same reason.

If free will is just an illusion, then there are no such things as error or evil. So don't worry, be happy! And yet, despite the presence of more secularism than ever, there appears to be more anxiety than ever, so there's a disconnect somewhere.

Aphoristic pointers and clues:

If determinism is real, if only that can happen which must happen, then error does not exist. 

But error does exist, so... 

Error supposes that something happened that should not have. 

Something is supposed to happen, and we are supposed to make it happen. So responsibility and guilt are built into the fabric of existence? Not sure I like that idea. 

The stone is right, wherever it falls. Whoever speaks of error postulates free actions. 

Wait -- I think I found a loophole: belief in free will must be an error. 

To admit the existence of errors is to confess the reality of free will. 

D'oh! 

The prestige of freedom in a society that professes scientific determinism is a Christian holdover.

That's a low blow.

The determinist is impatient with his opponents, as if they had the freedom to speak as they wished to. Determinists are very irritable people.

Why not? Irritability is an effective defense against self-awareness.     

In any proposition about man its paradoxical fusion of determinism and freedom must emerge. 

Which leads directly to the irreducible paradox of personhood: 

The permanent possibility of initiating causal series is what we call a person.

In this giant book I'm reading on metascience, the author points out that there are some eight different forms or schools of Thomism. This troubles me, since there is only one Thomas, and I even chose him for my confirmation saint. One reason I joined the church is to exit my own circularity and fragmentation, and now I find out that my own saint is riven by octupularity?

Of the eight approaches, I find that two or three of them speak to me; it's not that I ever intended to join a school of thought, rather, that these schools describe where I already find myself. 

For example, the school of transcendental Thomism revolves around the idea that "the ultimate root of all metaphysical inquiry" is "the drive to know and the intelligibility of being." It "argues that the human intelligence cannot be satisfied until it arrives at some 'Ultimate Reality' which is the 'Ultimate Good.'" This Ultimate Being "is implicit in all our thinking and provides the 'horizon' on which metaphysics is based."

So, I guess that makes me a transcendental Thomist. Except I equally relate to what he calls "Phenomenological Thomism," because this includes the personalism which for me holds the Key to Everything. 

Ironically, John Paul II is perhaps the most well-known personalist, despite the fact that he was a student of Garrigou-Lagrange, the latter representing an entirely different school of thought ("essentialist Thomism") which is much more objective, rigorous, and even hostile to the potential subjectivism of personalism. 

Maybe I'm a little slow, but I see the three approaches as complementary. A thought just floated by: it is as if Garrigou-Lagrange's essentialism is the Father, John Paul II's personalism is the Son, and Norris Clarke's dynamic transcendental horizon is the Holy Spirit.  

This may also be how and where the whole existentialada may be harmonized with Schuon, who writes that not only is there "no incompatibility whatever between the 'absolute Absolute,' Beyond-Being, and the 'relative Absolute,' creative Being," but "this distinction is even crucial." For the Divine Relativity

is the necessary consequence of the very Infinitude of the Principle: it is because God is infinite that He comprises the dimension of relativity, and it is because He comprises that dimension that He manifests the world.  

A world that includes free persons:

God did not create an intelligent being so that the latter might grovel before the unintelligible; He created him in order to be known starting from contingency, and that is precisely why He created him intelligent. 

Only if the mind is rational is the will free, and both are rooted in the Person: 

Now one thing is the existential determination of man, which he shares with every pebble, and another thing is his liberty, which he owes to his deiform personality and which causes him to participate in the Divine Nature.  

Now, "The individual will is free insofar as it is real," for "if it were not in any way free it would be deprived of all reality." Rather, only the Divine Will would be free, and we would simply be necessary consequences of it.

I think I'll conclude with a passage from The Way Toward Wisdom:

Since, for Aquinas, the human person is the culmination of the visible universe, and the mediator between it and the spiritual realm, a good understanding of the human person can be considered the key to the knowledge of all Being for which the human person serves as the analogical microcosm. Thus personalism is central to a Metascience, since beings with intellect and will are the supreme form of Being (Ashley).

Concur. 

Metascience and Metatheology

Neither science nor religion are possible in the absence of a sense or vision of the Absolute, whether implicit or explicit. 

Every special science, for example, has its material object, but these objects can't just be floating around independently in the cosmos. We separate them for reasons of convenience, but obviously they must be unified in some higher object, the highest and most general of all called being. Metaphysics is the study of being qua being, while every special science limits itself to an aspect of changeable being.

Is the same thing true of religions? In other words, is it possible that there is a metareligion of which diverse religions are exemplars? Here's a thought: according to Schuon,

Religions are cut off from one another by barriers of mutual incomprehension; one of the principle causes of this appears to be that the sense of the absolute stands on a different plane in each of them, so that what would seem to be points of comparison often prove not to be (emphasis mine).  

Compare this to the situation in science (or among scientific disciplines). Say we're looking at biology and physics and get into an argument over what is prior, life or matter. This won't be a fruitful debate unless we can arrive at a larger system in which to situate both life and matter on a vertical axis. 

Last I checked, people are still trying to reduce life to matter instead of realizing this is impossible in principle. A cosmos capable of hosting life -- let alone persons -- is utterly different from on that isn't. The least we can ask of a metaphysic is How am I even possible, let alone actual?   

I don't want to get sidetracked on this smaller (or is it larger?) issue, but here are some illustrative passages by our favorite theoretical biologist, Robert Rosen, from his book Essays on Life Itself: 

Any question becomes unanswerable if we do not permit ourselves a universe large enough to deal with the question.

In science, for instance, it seems patently obvious that, whatever living organisms are, they are material systems, special cases drawn from a larger, more generic class of nonliving inorganic ones. The game is thus to reduce, to express their novel properties in terms of those of inorganic subsystems.... 

[O]ne manifestation of this claim to the objectivity of reduction is that one must never, ever, claim to learn anything new about matter from a study of organisms. 

Nevertheless, 

Despite the profound differences between those material systems that are alive and those that are not, these differences haver never been expressible in the form of a list -- an explicit set of conditions that formally demarcate those material systems that are organisms from those that are not. 

The List does not exist because it cannot exist, and besides, we're looking for it in the wrong place (not to mention Gödel). We are free to dissolve organisms into "a presumptively larger universe of inorganic systems," but this -- in my opinion -- actually shrinks the universe down to one of our modes of comprehending it, resulting in a total conflation of model and reality, menu and meal. 

No wonder there is so much spiritual hunger among radical secularists: they try to subsist on the menu and wonder why they're malnourished.

Now that I'm thinking about it, we could say that such enigmas result inevitably from the elevation of science to metascience. This redounds to a scientism that can never even account for itself, let alone everything else.   

As it so happens, I'm reading a book called The Way Toward Wisdom: An Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Introduction to Metaphysics, which is all about metascience and the Unification of Everything more generally. My kind of book. Or at least I thought it was. Kind of a slog, actually. Someone needs to write the same book, only make it more irreverent, entertaining, and engaging. I know a guy, but he's a little lazy...

Here's a relatively straightforward passage:

Persons can be judged really "wise" only if, through reflection, they have become conscious not simply of what their worldview is but also of the bases on which it rests. Nor is anyone wise who is unable to enter into dialogue with those of different worldviews.  

Now, we all know there is by definition no wisdom on the progressive left; this in turn is both a cause and consequence of their hatred of free speech. They are trapped in their little model of the world, and repel any information that might help them escape from it. Could there be a theory less critical than critical race theory?

Yes! Because critical race theory is situated in a more general metaphysic of critical theory, exemplified by everything from feminism to Chicano studies to post-colonialism to queer theory. They could save a lot of money by merging these into one big Department of Angry Victims. 

Back when I studied psychology in grad school they just called it "paranoia." Now they call it psychology. In other words, psychology itself has become "critical" and therefore uncritical. Today I don't think a guy like Bob could ever pass the licensing exam except by concealing his true beliefs and toeing the party line.   

Headline I just now saw: Media Watchdog: Big Tech Stepped in to Censor News About Biden 646 Times in Just 2 Years. Pay no attention to that shuffling corpse and get back in the Matrix!

But let's try to focus on our original subject, that is, how and where to situate different religions in relation to one another.  

Nah, out of time. 

Metascience and Metatheology

Neither science nor religion are possible in the absence of a sense or vision of the Absolute, whether implicit or explicit. 

Every special science, for example, has its material object, but these objects can't just be floating around independently in the cosmos. We separate them for reasons of convenience, but obviously they must be unified in some higher object, the highest and most general of all called being. Metaphysics is the study of being qua being, while every special science limits itself to an aspect of changeable being.

Is the same thing true of religions? In other words, is it possible that there is a metareligion of which diverse religions are exemplars? Here's a thought: according to Schuon,

Religions are cut off from one another by barriers of mutual incomprehension; one of the principle causes of this appears to be that the sense of the absolute stands on a different plane in each of them, so that what would seem to be points of comparison often prove not to be (emphasis mine).  

Compare this to the situation in science (or among scientific disciplines). Say we're looking at biology and physics and get into an argument over what is prior, life or matter. This won't be a fruitful debate unless we can arrive at a larger system in which to situate both life and matter on a vertical axis. 

Last I checked, people are still trying to reduce life to matter instead of realizing this is impossible in principle. A cosmos capable of hosting life -- let alone persons -- is utterly different from on that isn't. The least we can ask of a metaphysic is How am I even possible, let alone actual?   

I don't want to get sidetracked on this smaller (or is it larger?) issue, but here are some illustrative passages by our favorite theoretical biologist, Robert Rosen, from his book Essays on Life Itself: 

Any question becomes unanswerable if we do not permit ourselves a universe large enough to deal with the question.

In science, for instance, it seems patently obvious that, whatever living organisms are, they are material systems, special cases drawn from a larger, more generic class of nonliving inorganic ones. The game is thus to reduce, to express their novel properties in terms of those of inorganic subsystems.... 

[O]ne manifestation of this claim to the objectivity of reduction is that one must never, ever, claim to learn anything new about matter from a study of organisms. 

Nevertheless, 

Despite the profound differences between those material systems that are alive and those that are not, these differences haver never been expressible in the form of a list -- an explicit set of conditions that formally demarcate those material systems that are organisms from those that are not. 

The List does not exist because it cannot exist, and besides, we're looking for it in the wrong place (not to mention Gödel). We are free to dissolve organisms into "a presumptively larger universe of inorganic systems," but this -- in my opinion -- actually shrinks the universe down to one of our modes of comprehending it, resulting in a total conflation of model and reality, menu and meal. 

No wonder there is so much spiritual hunger among radical secularists: they try to subsist on the menu and wonder why they're malnourished.

Now that I'm thinking about it, we could say that such enigmas result inevitably from the elevation of science to metascience. This redounds to a scientism that can never even account for itself, let alone everything else.   

As it so happens, I'm reading a book called The Way Toward Wisdom: An Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Introduction to Metaphysics, which is all about metascience and the Unification of Everything more generally. My kind of book. Or at least I thought it was. Kind of a slog, actually. Someone needs to write the same book, only make it more irreverent, entertaining, and engaging. I know a guy, but he's a little lazy...

Here's a relatively straightforward passage:

Persons can be judged really "wise" only if, through reflection, they have become conscious not simply of what their worldview is but also of the bases on which it rests. Nor is anyone wise who is unable to enter into dialogue with those of different worldviews.  

Now, we all know there is by definition no wisdom on the progressive left; this in turn is both a cause and consequence of their hatred of free speech. They are trapped in their little model of the world, and repel any information that might help them escape from it. Could there be a theory less critical than critical race theory?

Yes! Because critical race theory is situated in a more general metaphysic of critical theory, exemplified by everything from feminism to Chicano studies to post-colonialism to queer theory. They could save a lot of money by merging these into one big Department of Angry Victims. 

Back when I studied psychology in grad school they just called it "paranoia." Now they call it psychology. In other words, psychology itself has become "critical" and therefore uncritical. Today I don't think a guy like Bob could ever pass the licensing exam except by concealing his true beliefs and toeing the party line.   

Headline I just now saw: Media Watchdog: Big Tech Stepped in to Censor News About Biden 646 Times in Just 2 Years. Pay no attention to that shuffling corpse and get back in the Matrix!

But let's try to focus on our original subject, that is, how and where to situate different religions in relation to one another.  

Nah, out of time. 

God Knows

God is freedom as such, whereas we only participate in this freedom -- identical to how we are conscious of truth, beauty, and goodness, without ever being the source of these transcendentals. If we were the source of these, then... well, for starters, man would not be such a mystery to himself. 

Supposing you're not a mystery to yourself, I can't think of many good excuses. Most likely, you're just living in a mind-forged reality tunnel, or worse, assimilated into the Matrix created by everyone and no one, prick by prick. Either way, you are existing in a state of ontological contraction in order fit into your shrunken counter-world.

Our mystery is at once an absence and a presence. Schuon:

Whether we like it or not, we live surrounded by mysteries, which logically and existentially draw us toward transcendence.

For -- you will have noticed --

One of the keys to understanding our true nature and our ultimate destiny is the fact that the things of this world are never proportionate to the actual range of our intelligence. Our intelligence is made for the Absolute, or else it is nothing.

Either/or: if our intelligence isn't made for, and conformed to, the Absolute, then it's not even intelligence: "To claim that knowledge as such can only be relative amounts to saying that human ignorance is absolute." The absolute relativity of postmodernity confines us to one of those reality tunnels or matrices alluded to above. 

Thus, "the world scatters us, and the ego compresses us," such that "forgetfulness of God becomes a habit." Man "ceases to be himself; the soul is ensnared by the periphery, it is as if deprived of its center."

I don't know about you, but I hate it when that happens. For "The greatest calamity is the loss of the center and the abandon of the soul to the caprices of the periphery." Genesis 3 All Over Again. 

Bad news / good news: "It is a fact that man cannot find happiness within his own limits; his very nature condemns him to surpass himself, and in surpassing himself, to free himself."

More bad news / good news: 

On the one hand, one has to resign oneself to being where one is, and on the other hand, one has to turn this place into a center through the Remembrance of God; for wherever God is evoked, wherever He is manifested, there is the Center.

Echoing what was said in the first paragraph about freedom, "This freedom would be meaningless without an end prefigured in the Absolute; without the knowledge of God and of our final ends, it would be neither possible nor useful."

Like the intelligence from which it flows, an impossibility or a nuisance, a dream or a nightmare.

With those prelumenaries out of the way, let's complete our dive into Norris Clarke's The Philosophical Approach to God, specifically, to the last chapter, which delves into exactly how God is related to the world. 

For in the classical view, it is as if we are related to God, but God isn't truly related to us, since the latter implies relativity, and relativity implies mutability. As I've mentioned before, I have no problem with this -- I can't even think about God in any other way -- but apparently it's a Big Problem for theologians who are way above my praygrade. 

Although I don't consider myself to be one, Clarke credits "process thinkers" with the conception of God as 

profoundly involved and personally responsive to the ongoing events of His creation, in particular to the conscious life of created persons as expressed in the mutuality, the mutual giving and receiving, proper to interpersonal relations (emphases mine).

Not to belabor the point, but I don't see how we can have it both ways, i.e., that God is immutability itself, from all eternity, and that "what happens in the world makes a real difference to the conscious life of God."

I've heard sophisticated people defend the doctrine of immutability and absolute foreknowledge of God by comparing it to a mother who tells a child not to eat a cookie, knowing full well that the moment she leaves the kitchen, the child will "choose" to reach up to the counter and pull the cookie out of the jar.

But this isn't an adequate analogy if the parent knew from all eternity that the child would inevitably eat the cookie -- and indeed, created the child to eat it. Either we're free or we're not free; I don't see any wiggle room.

Is there really no contingency this world? And if not, then how is the world distinct from God's own necessity? If we deny contingency, then the world seems to merge with, and be indistinguishable from, necessary being, and how is this different from a monistic pantheism?

Just asking.

Granted, I'm a simple man, but there seems to be a simple way out. Clarke speaks for me:

our metaphysics of God must certainly allow us to say that in some real and genuine way God is affected positively by what we do, that He receives love from us and experiences joy precisely because of our responses.

Does it not say somewhere that there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner repenting than ninety-nine who don't need to? How does that work, exactly, if heaven knew all along that the sinner would repent? "Joy" doesn't seem compatible with a jaded I knew it all along.

Back to the easy way out of this conundrum -- easy for me, anyway. Schuon often discusses it in the context of God's infinitude, but I'll save that for a subsequent post. Let's first review how Clarke deals with the question, because I think there's some overlap. He speaks of a "relational consciousness" in God, which nevertheless

does not involve change, increase or decrease, in the Infinite Plenitude of God's intrinsic inner being and perfection -- what St. Thomas would call the "absolute" (non-relative) aspect of His perfection. 

At the same time, "To receive love as a person"

is not at all an imperfection, but precisely a dimension of the perfection of personal being as lovingly responsive.... 

And 

if we examine the matter more fully, we realize that God's "receiving" from us, being delighted at our response to His love, is really His original delight in sharing with us in His eternal Now His own original power of loving and infinite goodness which has come back to Him in return.  

An image floats into my head: God has set before us two cookies, one carrying the false promise to transform us into gods, the other actually accomplishing what it symbolizes. Perhaps he really doesn't know which one we'll choose, but he will be delighted if it's the latter. 

I'll conclude with this passage:

As to what God's timeless knowledge of our changing world is like, we have no clear idea and should be more willing... to leave this as a mystery, not prematurely closing off any metaphysical options....

The mode of the divine presence is left entirely mysterious. In other words, it is impossible for us ever to say in our language when God knows anything. Any translation from the all-inclusive Now of God into any of our exclusive "nows" or "whens" is irremediably equivocal.  

Only God knows.

God Knows

God is freedom as such, whereas we only participate in this freedom -- identical to how we are conscious of truth, beauty, and goodness, without ever being the source of these transcendentals. If we were the source of these, then... well, for starters, man would not be such a mystery to himself. 

Supposing you're not a mystery to yourself, I can't think of many good excuses. Most likely, you're just living in a mind-forged reality tunnel, or worse, assimilated into the Matrix created by everyone and no one, prick by prick. Either way, you are existing in a state of ontological contraction in order fit into your shrunken counter-world.

Our mystery is at once an absence and a presence. Schuon:

Whether we like it or not, we live surrounded by mysteries, which logically and existentially draw us toward transcendence.

For -- you will have noticed --

One of the keys to understanding our true nature and our ultimate destiny is the fact that the things of this world are never proportionate to the actual range of our intelligence. Our intelligence is made for the Absolute, or else it is nothing.

Either/or: if our intelligence isn't made for, and conformed to, the Absolute, then it's not even intelligence: "To claim that knowledge as such can only be relative amounts to saying that human ignorance is absolute." The absolute relativity of postmodernity confines us to one of those reality tunnels or matrices alluded to above. 

Thus, "the world scatters us, and the ego compresses us," such that "forgetfulness of God becomes a habit." Man "ceases to be himself; the soul is ensnared by the periphery, it is as if deprived of its center."

I don't know about you, but I hate it when that happens. For "The greatest calamity is the loss of the center and the abandon of the soul to the caprices of the periphery." Genesis 3 All Over Again. 

Bad news / good news: "It is a fact that man cannot find happiness within his own limits; his very nature condemns him to surpass himself, and in surpassing himself, to free himself."

More bad news / good news: 

On the one hand, one has to resign oneself to being where one is, and on the other hand, one has to turn this place into a center through the Remembrance of God; for wherever God is evoked, wherever He is manifested, there is the Center.

Echoing what was said in the first paragraph about freedom, "This freedom would be meaningless without an end prefigured in the Absolute; without the knowledge of God and of our final ends, it would be neither possible nor useful."

Like the intelligence from which it flows, an impossibility or a nuisance, a dream or a nightmare.

With those prelumenaries out of the way, let's complete our dive into Norris Clarke's The Philosophical Approach to God, specifically, to the last chapter, which delves into exactly how God is related to the world. 

For in the classical view, it is as if we are related to God, but God isn't truly related to us, since the latter implies relativity, and relativity implies mutability. As I've mentioned before, I have no problem with this -- I can't even think about God in any other way -- but apparently it's a Big Problem for theologians who are way above my praygrade. 

Although I don't consider myself to be one, Clarke credits "process thinkers" with the conception of God as 

profoundly involved and personally responsive to the ongoing events of His creation, in particular to the conscious life of created persons as expressed in the mutuality, the mutual giving and receiving, proper to interpersonal relations (emphases mine).

Not to belabor the point, but I don't see how we can have it both ways, i.e., that God is immutability itself, from all eternity, and that "what happens in the world makes a real difference to the conscious life of God."

I've heard sophisticated people defend the doctrine of immutability and absolute foreknowledge of God by comparing it to a mother who tells a child not to eat a cookie, knowing full well that the moment she leaves the kitchen, the child will "choose" to reach up to the counter and pull the cookie out of the jar.

But this isn't an adequate analogy if the parent knew from all eternity that the child would inevitably eat the cookie -- and indeed, created the child to eat it. Either we're free or we're not free; I don't see any wiggle room.

Is there really no contingency this world? And if not, then how is the world distinct from God's own necessity? If we deny contingency, then the world seems to merge with, and be indistinguishable from, necessary being, and how is this different from a monistic pantheism?

Just asking.

Granted, I'm a simple man, but there seems to be a simple way out. Clarke speaks for me:

our metaphysics of God must certainly allow us to say that in some real and genuine way God is affected positively by what we do, that He receives love from us and experiences joy precisely because of our responses.

Does it not say somewhere that there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner repenting than ninety-nine who don't need to? How does that work, exactly, if heaven knew all along that the sinner would repent? "Joy" doesn't seem compatible with a jaded I knew it all along.

Back to the easy way out of this conundrum -- easy for me, anyway. Schuon often discusses it in the context of God's infinitude, but I'll save that for a subsequent post. Let's first review how Clarke deals with the question, because I think there's some overlap. He speaks of a "relational consciousness" in God, which nevertheless

does not involve change, increase or decrease, in the Infinite Plenitude of God's intrinsic inner being and perfection -- what St. Thomas would call the "absolute" (non-relative) aspect of His perfection. 

At the same time, "To receive love as a person"

is not at all an imperfection, but precisely a dimension of the perfection of personal being as lovingly responsive.... 

And 

if we examine the matter more fully, we realize that God's "receiving" from us, being delighted at our response to His love, is really His original delight in sharing with us in His eternal Now His own original power of loving and infinite goodness which has come back to Him in return.  

An image floats into my head: God has set before us two cookies, one carrying the false promise to transform us into gods, the other actually accomplishing what it symbolizes. Perhaps he really doesn't know which one we'll choose, but he will be delighted if it's the latter. 

I'll conclude with this passage:

As to what God's timeless knowledge of our changing world is like, we have no clear idea and should be more willing... to leave this as a mystery, not prematurely closing off any metaphysical options....

The mode of the divine presence is left entirely mysterious. In other words, it is impossible for us ever to say in our language when God knows anything. Any translation from the all-inclusive Now of God into any of our exclusive "nows" or "whens" is irremediably equivocal.  

Only God knows.

Looking at Freedom Face to Farce

A reader asks if we would be so kind as to "explore further the paradoxical fusion of determinism and freedom" in human beings. This is of course a Big Question, as it is fundamentally linked to Everything. Indeed, to say or even think the word "freedom" is to have situated oneself totally outside any model of reality. 

Wait what? You heard me: people tend to either take freedom for granted or make it go away by denying it altogether (a la scientism or Marxism), but its presence changes everything. I suppose we could throw in a third ideology -- existentialism -- but this simultaneously affirms freedom while utterly negating its meaning and significance, so it's a nonsartrer.

I first became aware of the ontologically explosive nature of freedom in a passage from a book by Stanley Jaki called Means to Message: A Treatise on Truth. The book is a meditation on various fundamentals of existence such as objects, change, causality, mind, history, and purpose. 

Obviously, any complete metaphysic -- better, metaphysic, full stop -- must account for each of these in an intellectually satisfying way: no dodging, spinning, reducing, explaining away, our going wobbly at key junctures. Chapter 4 is on the category of Free Will, right between Science and Purpose (and to champion the obvious, neither science nor purpose are conceivable in the absence of free will).

Now, by way of context, when I first read this book I was a psychoanalytically informed psychologist, and in all my training, we didn't talk much about freedom. There was plenty about causation -- in particular, unconscious causation -- but not much discussion about what was supposed to happen once we were (allegedly) liberated from this pathological causation. It leaves the question: okay, I'm free from my neurotic conditioning, now what? Why even be free? What are we supposed to do with it?

I know: let's do some science! But according to science, free will isn't possible. Or, supposing we are free, there is no conceivable scientific explanation. Shouldn't we be a little more curious about this, if not frankly alarmed?

A side-thought just trickled into my head: ever notice how the same people who insist that sexuality is fixed from birth want to shape it from kindergarten? Big Groomer, like Big Homo, wants to have it both ways. 

Anyway, some passages from the book:

in the final analysis, the elemental registering of free will almost exhausts whatever can be said about its reality. Everything else is embellishment, very useful and informative as it may be, because it is irrelevant unless achieved and articulated freely. 

It's as if the registering of free will encloses us in a tautology, except it's the opposite: it liberates us from absurcularity, for the intimation of free will "belies mere material existence," and here we are, existing immaterially and thinking about it (which amount to the same thing): "All arguments against free will are so many proofs of it," nor does the most determined determinist argue deterministically.

Now, everyone believes in miracles, for there are no less than three: existence, experience, intelligence; or objects, subjects, and the flow of intelligibility between them: the universe never stops speaking, nor do we ever stop hearing and understanding it in diverse modes and on various levels. Free will is subjectivity itself, for the latter is at a right angle to mere material existence, ultimately leading all the way up to its nonlocal source. Bottom line:

far more grippingly than one's immediate grasp of reality does one's registering of the reality of one's free will bring one face to face with that realm of metaphysical reality which hangs in mid-air unless suspended from that Ultimate Reality, best called God, the Creator. 

I'd actually like to draw back from that conclusion somewhat, and stop with Ultimate Reality. We'll eventually get to Creator, but let's first marinate in this question of how ultimate reality must be in order for free beings to be here in it (and therefore simultaneously out of it). Not to belabor the point, but it's an exceedingly queer situation.  

Remember when Helen Keller suddenly grasped the significance of water? It literally changed everything, ushering her into a new cosmos transcending the material prison to which she had been confined. The recognition of freedom should do something similar to us. But I suppose this is where Genesis 3 comes in. Adam and Eve (AKA we) were free, but chose badly. Our freedom, it seems, is somehow compromised near the source. We'll no doubt return to this conundrum. 

Come to think of it, Genesis 3 speaks to the intrinsic bond between freedom and responsibility. In short, freedom has a vector and a telos, so we appreciate right away that it can be misused. Indeed, if it can't misused, then it's not freedom, now is it? So in order to have freedom we must have the possibility -- even inevitability -- of its misuse. Nevertheless, woe to those who misuse it. 

But this too (i.e., woeful consequences for misuse) must be considered a gift in the overall scheme of things, because otherwise freedom is reduced to meaninglessness: if our acts don't matter, then neither does freedom. The point is, without freedom there is no ought, only is, and is is not guilty by reason of inevitability (and not meritorious for the same reason).  

So, "Freedom is a mystery on the natural level in the sense that it cannot be reduced to anything else. It is a primary datum, a supreme, most immediately known reality." 

But a true mystery on the natural level is not to be equated with mere ignorance -- as if the accumulation of natural knowledge will eventually eliminate the mystery. No, this is one of those Primordial Mysteries that point beyond themselves, above and beyond the material. 

To what? Let's stipulate that we are free. This being the case, we are free to create stuff, like machines and works of art. But are we free to create freedom? Obviously not. We can create robots, computers, and NPC progressives, but we cannot conjure freedom. Jaki concludes his chapter by suggesting that only what (whom) we call the Creator could 

create something, an act of free will, which is both fully created and in that sense "physically," that is, fully determined, and yet genuinely free at the same time.

Thus,

The mystery of free will ceases to appear a contradiction in terms, or a wholly unmanageable conundrum only when seen in the context of the infinite power and goodness of God. He created man to be free so that man's service may have that merit which only a freely performed act can have. 

Now that is a heavy responsibility. No wonder humans reject it. (We're not done with this subject, so To Be Continued.)

Looking at Freedom Face to Farce

A reader asks if we would be so kind as to "explore further the paradoxical fusion of determinism and freedom" in human beings. This is of course a Big Question, as it is fundamentally linked to Everything. Indeed, to say or even think the word "freedom" is to have situated oneself totally outside any model of reality. 

Wait what? You heard me: people tend to either take freedom for granted or make it go away by denying it altogether (a la scientism or Marxism), but its presence changes everything. I suppose we could throw in a third ideology -- existentialism -- but this simultaneously affirms freedom while utterly negating its meaning and significance, so it's a nonsartrer.

I first became aware of the ontologically explosive nature of freedom in a passage from a book by Stanley Jaki called Means to Message: A Treatise on Truth. The book is a meditation on various fundamentals of existence such as objects, change, causality, mind, history, and purpose. 

Obviously, any complete metaphysic -- better, metaphysic, full stop -- must account for each of these in an intellectually satisfying way: no dodging, spinning, reducing, explaining away, our going wobbly at key junctures. Chapter 4 is on the category of Free Will, right between Science and Purpose (and to champion the obvious, neither science nor purpose are conceivable in the absence of free will).

Now, by way of context, when I first read this book I was a psychoanalytically informed psychologist, and in all my training, we didn't talk much about freedom. There was plenty about causation -- in particular, unconscious causation -- but not much discussion about what was supposed to happen once we were (allegedly) liberated from this pathological causation. It leaves the question: okay, I'm free from my neurotic conditioning, now what? Why even be free? What are we supposed to do with it?

I know: let's do some science! But according to science, free will isn't possible. Or, supposing we are free, there is no conceivable scientific explanation. Shouldn't we be a little more curious about this, if not frankly alarmed?

A side-thought just trickled into my head: ever notice how the same people who insist that sexuality is fixed from birth want to shape it from kindergarten? Big Groomer, like Big Homo, wants to have it both ways. 

Anyway, some passages from the book:

in the final analysis, the elemental registering of free will almost exhausts whatever can be said about its reality. Everything else is embellishment, very useful and informative as it may be, because it is irrelevant unless achieved and articulated freely. 

It's as if the registering of free will encloses us in a tautology, except it's the opposite: it liberates us from absurcularity, for the intimation of free will "belies mere material existence," and here we are, existing immaterially and thinking about it (which amount to the same thing): "All arguments against free will are so many proofs of it," nor does the most determined determinist argue deterministically.

Now, everyone believes in miracles, for there are no less than three: existence, experience, intelligence; or objects, subjects, and the flow of intelligibility between them: the universe never stops speaking, nor do we ever stop hearing and understanding it in diverse modes and on various levels. Free will is subjectivity itself, for the latter is at a right angle to mere material existence, ultimately leading all the way up to its nonlocal source. Bottom line:

far more grippingly than one's immediate grasp of reality does one's registering of the reality of one's free will bring one face to face with that realm of metaphysical reality which hangs in mid-air unless suspended from that Ultimate Reality, best called God, the Creator. 

I'd actually like to draw back from that conclusion somewhat, and stop with Ultimate Reality. We'll eventually get to Creator, but let's first marinate in this question of how ultimate reality must be in order for free beings to be here in it (and therefore simultaneously out of it). Not to belabor the point, but it's an exceedingly queer situation.  

Remember when Helen Keller suddenly grasped the significance of water? It literally changed everything, ushering her into a new cosmos transcending the material prison to which she had been confined. The recognition of freedom should do something similar to us. But I suppose this is where Genesis 3 comes in. Adam and Eve (AKA we) were free, but chose badly. Our freedom, it seems, is somehow compromised near the source. We'll no doubt return to this conundrum. 

Come to think of it, Genesis 3 speaks to the intrinsic bond between freedom and responsibility. In short, freedom has a vector and a telos, so we appreciate right away that it can be misused. Indeed, if it can't misused, then it's not freedom, now is it? So in order to have freedom we must have the possibility -- even inevitability -- of its misuse. Nevertheless, woe to those who misuse it. 

But this too (i.e., woeful consequences for misuse) must be considered a gift in the overall scheme of things, because otherwise freedom is reduced to meaninglessness: if our acts don't matter, then neither does freedom. The point is, without freedom there is no ought, only is, and is is not guilty by reason of inevitability (and not meritorious for the same reason).  

So, "Freedom is a mystery on the natural level in the sense that it cannot be reduced to anything else. It is a primary datum, a supreme, most immediately known reality." 

But a true mystery on the natural level is not to be equated with mere ignorance -- as if the accumulation of natural knowledge will eventually eliminate the mystery. No, this is one of those Primordial Mysteries that point beyond themselves, above and beyond the material. 

To what? Let's stipulate that we are free. This being the case, we are free to create stuff, like machines and works of art. But are we free to create freedom? Obviously not. We can create robots, computers, and NPC progressives, but we cannot conjure freedom. Jaki concludes his chapter by suggesting that only what (whom) we call the Creator could 

create something, an act of free will, which is both fully created and in that sense "physically," that is, fully determined, and yet genuinely free at the same time.

Thus,

The mystery of free will ceases to appear a contradiction in terms, or a wholly unmanageable conundrum only when seen in the context of the infinite power and goodness of God. He created man to be free so that man's service may have that merit which only a freely performed act can have. 

Now that is a heavy responsibility. No wonder humans reject it. (We're not done with this subject, so To Be Continued.)

Infinitude: Good, Bad, or Indifferent?

In one sense, "infinite" is simply not finite, and therefore a wholly negative definition. It is also apophatic, in the sense that we know what finite things are, but again, all we can say about the infinite that it's not one of those.

Jumping ahead a bit, Schuon always deploys the infinite in a positive manner: in brief, one might say that infinitude is the first consequence or entailment of the Absolute. One can conceive of infinitude without the Absolute -- a kind of absolute chaos, I suppose -- but I can't conceive of Father Absolute without Mother Infinitude by his side. 

With those preliminary inanities out of the way, here are some passages touching on the subject, from Norris Clarke's The Philosophical Approach to God. He begins by asking whether the divine perfection is "truly infinite, and it what respects?"

As far as the traditional Christian position is concerned, the doctrine of the positive infinity of the divine perfection has been solidly established and universally recognized since the fourth century.

Prior to this -- in both scripture and in the writings of the early fathers -- "the term 'infinite' itself occurs nowhere explicitly." 

This is partly for cultural reasons, since the early fathers sought to reconcile Christianity with the best philosophical thinking available, and the Infinite "had not yet worked its way into either ordinary or philosophical vocabulary as a positive concept." That is,

In classical Greek thought, including both Plato and Aristotle, perfection was habitually identified with the finished, the well-defined or determinate -- i.e., the finite or limited -- typified by intelligible form.

Is it possible that, over two-thousand years later, we are still burdened by this devaluation of infinitude? Well, for these thinkers,

The infinite was identified with the indeterminate, the unfinished, the chaotic, the unintelligible, typified by unformed matter.  

This strikes me as straight-up misogyny, since, as we know, matter is cognate with mater, maternal, matrix (i.e., womb), and more. Mamamaya!

Now that we're on the subject, I remember a book by Alan Watts (Nature, Man and Woman), in which he traces all this to "the Sanskrit root ma- (matr-), from which, in Sanskrit itself, come both mata (mother) and maya (the phenomenal world of nature)." I don't know if that's just the LSD talking, but it's too good to check. 

The deeper -- and unarguable, in my opinion -- point is that male and female go all the way up and down in this cosmos. Don't even get me started with the centrality of Mary, not to mention Sophia-Wisdom. Or the feminine nature of the soul in relation to God. Rather, let's focus! Clarke:

It is only with Plotinus and Neoplatonism, as foreshadowed by Philo Judaeus, that the notion of a positive infinity, indicating an excess of perfection above all form and not below it, is finally worked out with clear conceptual and metaphysical precision (emboldenment mine).

Now, the first error we need to bat away is the equation of infinitude with some mere quantitative dimension -- as if we're merely talking about an infinite number of intelligible possibilities. Rather, there is a residual of infinitude in every possibility, as indicated by the fact that, for example, no one will ever get to the bottom of a single grain of sand, let alone a living or thinking being. 

Come to think of it, we have less comprehension of anything than we do everything, by which I mean that science comes up against an inevitable and impassable Wall of Unintelligibility (e.g., "what came before the Big Bang," or "where does mathematics come from?), whereas metaphysics penetrates far more deeply into the Mystery.  

Now, as I've mentioned before, I suspect there is an important link between Infinitude and our freedom, since, in a manner of speaking, the Infinite must be God's own freedom, AKA Infinite Possibility.

I suppose people don't like this idea, since it implies mutability in God. But in my opinion, we have to deny any negative connotation, and affirm a kind of eminent perfection in it. No, God's perfection does not and cannot surpass itself, but that doesn't mean it's totally static. I mean, maybe it's static, but I just can't relate to that, nor it to me.

And before you dismiss my position as sentimental nonsense, here comes Clarke to bail me out:

Here is where the Christian theological notion of God as Trinity of Persons takes on a sharp philosophical relevance. For it illustrates how God's own inner life is already rich in infinite self-expression by the Father's total gift of His own being to the Son and the procession of the Holy Spirit from both as a mutual act of love.

Words like "static," "immutable," and "changeless" don't come to mind to describe this metacosmic hoedown. For it is "purely out of the joy of giving that this divine inner life can pour over to share itself with creatures." 

And now we're in a better position to understand Schuon when he writes that 

To say Absolute, is to say Infinite; Infinitude is an intrinsic aspect of the Absolute. It is from this “dimension” of Infinitude that the world necessarily springs forth; the world exists because the Absolute, being such, implies Infinitude.  

Except perhaps that word necessarily, since Christian doctrine is quite clear on creation being a divine gift, not any kind of compulsory emanation. 

But I think we can clear this up by suggesting that the Creator cannot not create, otherwise the pronoun is contradictory, but that any particular creation is totally gratuitous. It's a gift, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it except acknowledge, accept, regift, and pay it forward to others in our own limited but nevertheless theomorphic way.

We'll conclude with a couple of aphorisms to ponder:

The free act is only conceivable in a created universe. In the universe that results from a free act. 

In any proposition about man its paradoxical fusion of determinism and freedom must emerge (Dávila).

Infinitude: Good, Bad, or Indifferent?

In one sense, "infinite" is simply not finite, and therefore a wholly negative definition. It is also apophatic, in the sense that we know what finite things are, but again, all we can say about the infinite that it's not one of those.

Jumping ahead a bit, Schuon always deploys the infinite in a positive manner: in brief, one might say that infinitude is the first consequence or entailment of the Absolute. One can conceive of infinitude without the Absolute -- a kind of absolute chaos, I suppose -- but I can't conceive of Father Absolute without Mother Infinitude by his side. 

With those preliminary inanities out of the way, here are some passages touching on the subject, from Norris Clarke's The Philosophical Approach to God. He begins by asking whether the divine perfection is "truly infinite, and it what respects?"

As far as the traditional Christian position is concerned, the doctrine of the positive infinity of the divine perfection has been solidly established and universally recognized since the fourth century.

Prior to this -- in both scripture and in the writings of the early fathers -- "the term 'infinite' itself occurs nowhere explicitly." 

This is partly for cultural reasons, since the early fathers sought to reconcile Christianity with the best philosophical thinking available, and the Infinite "had not yet worked its way into either ordinary or philosophical vocabulary as a positive concept." That is,

In classical Greek thought, including both Plato and Aristotle, perfection was habitually identified with the finished, the well-defined or determinate -- i.e., the finite or limited -- typified by intelligible form.

Is it possible that, over two-thousand years later, we are still burdened by this devaluation of infinitude? Well, for these thinkers,

The infinite was identified with the indeterminate, the unfinished, the chaotic, the unintelligible, typified by unformed matter.  

This strikes me as straight-up misogyny, since, as we know, matter is cognate with mater, maternal, matrix (i.e., womb), and more. Mamamaya!

Now that we're on the subject, I remember a book by Alan Watts (Nature, Man and Woman), in which he traces all this to "the Sanskrit root ma- (matr-), from which, in Sanskrit itself, come both mata (mother) and maya (the phenomenal world of nature)." I don't know if that's just the LSD talking, but it's too good to check. 

The deeper -- and unarguable, in my opinion -- point is that male and female go all the way up and down in this cosmos. Don't even get me started with the centrality of Mary, not to mention Sophia-Wisdom. Or the feminine nature of the soul in relation to God. Rather, let's focus! Clarke:

It is only with Plotinus and Neoplatonism, as foreshadowed by Philo Judaeus, that the notion of a positive infinity, indicating an excess of perfection above all form and not below it, is finally worked out with clear conceptual and metaphysical precision (emboldenment mine).

Now, the first error we need to bat away is the equation of infinitude with some mere quantitative dimension -- as if we're merely talking about an infinite number of intelligible possibilities. Rather, there is a residual of infinitude in every possibility, as indicated by the fact that, for example, no one will ever get to the bottom of a single grain of sand, let alone a living or thinking being. 

Come to think of it, we have less comprehension of anything than we do everything, by which I mean that science comes up against an inevitable and impassable Wall of Unintelligibility (e.g., "what came before the Big Bang," or "where does mathematics come from?), whereas metaphysics penetrates far more deeply into the Mystery.  

Now, as I've mentioned before, I suspect there is an important link between Infinitude and our freedom, since, in a manner of speaking, the Infinite must be God's own freedom, AKA Infinite Possibility.

I suppose people don't like this idea, since it implies mutability in God. But in my opinion, we have to deny any negative connotation, and affirm a kind of eminent perfection in it. No, God's perfection does not and cannot surpass itself, but that doesn't mean it's totally static. I mean, maybe it's static, but I just can't relate to that, nor it to me.

And before you dismiss my position as sentimental nonsense, here comes Clarke to bail me out:

Here is where the Christian theological notion of God as Trinity of Persons takes on a sharp philosophical relevance. For it illustrates how God's own inner life is already rich in infinite self-expression by the Father's total gift of His own being to the Son and the procession of the Holy Spirit from both as a mutual act of love.

Words like "static," "immutable," and "changeless" don't come to mind to describe this metacosmic hoedown. For it is "purely out of the joy of giving that this divine inner life can pour over to share itself with creatures." 

And now we're in a better position to understand Schuon when he writes that 

To say Absolute, is to say Infinite; Infinitude is an intrinsic aspect of the Absolute. It is from this “dimension” of Infinitude that the world necessarily springs forth; the world exists because the Absolute, being such, implies Infinitude.  

Except perhaps that word necessarily, since Christian doctrine is quite clear on creation being a divine gift, not any kind of compulsory emanation. 

But I think we can clear this up by suggesting that the Creator cannot not create, otherwise the pronoun is contradictory, but that any particular creation is totally gratuitous. It's a gift, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it except acknowledge, accept, regift, and pay it forward to others in our own limited but nevertheless theomorphic way.

We'll conclude with a couple of aphorisms to ponder:

The free act is only conceivable in a created universe. In the universe that results from a free act. 

In any proposition about man its paradoxical fusion of determinism and freedom must emerge (Dávila).

The Broken Circle & Your Eternal Birthday

Just some timelessly timely passages from Balthasar's Heart of the World, presented mostly without comment, although rearranged and strung together in such a way that they reveal a story, or perhaps even the story:

Prisons of finitude! Like every other being, man is born of many prisons. Soul, body, thought, intuition, endeavor; everything about him has a limit, is itself tangible limitation...

From the grilled window of the senses each person looks out to the alien things which he will never be. Even if his spirit could fly through the spaces of the world like a bird, he himself will never be this space, and the furrow which he traces in the air vanishes immediately and leaves no lasting impression. 

How far it is from one being to his closest neighbor! No one can tear down his own dungeon; no one knows who inhabits the next cell.

The mere fact of existing as an individual constitutes renunciation. The limpid mirror has been shattered, the infinite image has been shattered over the face of the world, the world has become a heap of fragments.

                                                                 ***

They were dead, so thoroughly dead that they thought they were alive.... So much the prey of sin that they had no idea what sin was. So rejected that they took themselves to be among the elect. So doomed to the abyss and the flames that they mistook the abyss for God and the flames for love.

The world was hermetically closed, closed the cycle of human life, ascending from the womb and bent on returning to the womb. Closed, too, the society of men, self-sufficient and self-satisfied.... Closed his religion, and reduced to a circle of observations and rites, prayer-formulas and sacrifices.... Closed and well-armored was the world against God from all sides.  

                                                                ***

Man wants to soar up, but the Word wants to descend. Thus will the two meet half-way, in the middle, in the place of the Mediator. But they will cross like swords cross; their wills are opposed to one another.

He beamed into the gloom, but the darkness turned away.... God came into the world, but a bristling barrier of spears and shields was his welcome. 

It was a menacing void, a chasm fitted with teeth. The light came into the darkness, but the darkness had no eye for the light: it had only jaws.

                                                       ***

And now that God's Word saw that his descent could entail nothing but his own death and ruination -- that his light must sink down into the gloom -- he accepted the battle and the declaration of war.   

And he devised the unfathomable ruse: he would plunge, like Jonas, into the monster's belly and thus penetrate to death's innermost lair; he would experience the farthest dungeon of sin's mania and drink the cup down to the dregs; he would offer his brow to man's incalculable craze for power and violence; in his own futile mission, he would demonstrate the futility of the world.... 

                                                             *** 

Suddenly all of them standing around the gallows know it: he is gone.... There is nothing more but nothingness itself. The world is dead. Love is dead. God is dead. Everything that was, was a dream dreamt by no one. The present is all past. The future is nothing. The hand has disappeared from the clock's face....

Chaos. Beyond heaven and hell. Shapeless nothingness behind the bounds of creation.

                                                             ***

But look: What is this light glimmer that wavers and begins to take form in the endless void? It has neither content nor contour. A nameless thing, more solitary than God, it emerges out of pure emptiness. It is no one. It is anterior to everything. Is it the beginning?

A wellspring in the chaos. It leaps out of pure nothingness, it leaps out of itself.... It is a beginning without parallel, as if Life were arising from Death.

Just as the first creation arose anew out of sheer nothingness, so, too, this second world -- still unborn, still caught up in its first rising -- will have its sole origin in this wound, which is never to close again. 

                                                            ***

No one is witness to the birth of a world.

All of your past is like a dream which one can no longer recall precisely, and the entire old world hangs within the new space like a picture in its frame.

And so you stare into the void. For in fact: the grave is empty, you are yourself empty.... You stare ahead of you, and behind your back stands your Life! It calls to you, you turn around and cannot recognize it. 

                                                   *** 

Here the old man is replaced by the new. Here the world dies and another world rises. Here the two eons intersect. Here every ending becomes a beginning...

Bind yourself to me so irrevocably that I will be able to descend to hell with you; and then I will bind you to myself so irrevocably that, with me, you will be able to ascend to very heaven. Empty yourself out into me so completely that I can fill you with myself.

In a thunderclap I am the new creation. I am given back to myself....

                                                            *** 

And today is your Last Day (your youngest day), the newest, most childlike of days. No other day will ever be as young for you as this today, when Eternal Life has called you by name.

This Now when our two names shall have met is my birthday in eternity, and no time shall ever cease this Now. Here is where the starting point has been set. Here is creation and a new beginning.... The rigid envelope which enclosed me from the outside and preserved my emptiness now shatters to fragments...

For at last everything we can comprehend lies pitifully beneath us. And our spirit does not desire to to contain, but to be contained in you...

The Broken Circle & Your Eternal Birthday

Just some timelessly timely passages from Balthasar's Heart of the World, presented mostly without comment, although rearranged and strung together in such a way that they reveal a story, or perhaps even the story:

Prisons of finitude! Like every other being, man is born of many prisons. Soul, body, thought, intuition, endeavor; everything about him has a limit, is itself tangible limitation...

From the grilled window of the senses each person looks out to the alien things which he will never be. Even if his spirit could fly through the spaces of the world like a bird, he himself will never be this space, and the furrow which he traces in the air vanishes immediately and leaves no lasting impression. 

How far it is from one being to his closest neighbor! No one can tear down his own dungeon; no one knows who inhabits the next cell.

The mere fact of existing as an individual constitutes renunciation. The limpid mirror has been shattered, the infinite image has been shattered over the face of the world, the world has become a heap of fragments.

                                                                 ***

They were dead, so thoroughly dead that they thought they were alive.... So much the prey of sin that they had no idea what sin was. So rejected that they took themselves to be among the elect. So doomed to the abyss and the flames that they mistook the abyss for God and the flames for love.

The world was hermetically closed, closed the cycle of human life, ascending from the womb and bent on returning to the womb. Closed, too, the society of men, self-sufficient and self-satisfied.... Closed his religion, and reduced to a circle of observations and rites, prayer-formulas and sacrifices.... Closed and well-armored was the world against God from all sides.  

                                                                ***

Man wants to soar up, but the Word wants to descend. Thus will the two meet half-way, in the middle, in the place of the Mediator. But they will cross like swords cross; their wills are opposed to one another.

He beamed into the gloom, but the darkness turned away.... God came into the world, but a bristling barrier of spears and shields was his welcome. 

It was a menacing void, a chasm fitted with teeth. The light came into the darkness, but the darkness had no eye for the light: it had only jaws.

                                                       ***

And now that God's Word saw that his descent could entail nothing but his own death and ruination -- that his light must sink down into the gloom -- he accepted the battle and the declaration of war.   

And he devised the unfathomable ruse: he would plunge, like Jonas, into the monster's belly and thus penetrate to death's innermost lair; he would experience the farthest dungeon of sin's mania and drink the cup down to the dregs; he would offer his brow to man's incalculable craze for power and violence; in his own futile mission, he would demonstrate the futility of the world.... 

                                                             *** 

Suddenly all of them standing around the gallows know it: he is gone.... There is nothing more but nothingness itself. The world is dead. Love is dead. God is dead. Everything that was, was a dream dreamt by no one. The present is all past. The future is nothing. The hand has disappeared from the clock's face....

Chaos. Beyond heaven and hell. Shapeless nothingness behind the bounds of creation.

                                                             ***

But look: What is this light glimmer that wavers and begins to take form in the endless void? It has neither content nor contour. A nameless thing, more solitary than God, it emerges out of pure emptiness. It is no one. It is anterior to everything. Is it the beginning?

A wellspring in the chaos. It leaps out of pure nothingness, it leaps out of itself.... It is a beginning without parallel, as if Life were arising from Death.

Just as the first creation arose anew out of sheer nothingness, so, too, this second world -- still unborn, still caught up in its first rising -- will have its sole origin in this wound, which is never to close again. 

                                                            ***

No one is witness to the birth of a world.

All of your past is like a dream which one can no longer recall precisely, and the entire old world hangs within the new space like a picture in its frame.

And so you stare into the void. For in fact: the grave is empty, you are yourself empty.... You stare ahead of you, and behind your back stands your Life! It calls to you, you turn around and cannot recognize it. 

                                                   *** 

Here the old man is replaced by the new. Here the world dies and another world rises. Here the two eons intersect. Here every ending becomes a beginning...

Bind yourself to me so irrevocably that I will be able to descend to hell with you; and then I will bind you to myself so irrevocably that, with me, you will be able to ascend to very heaven. Empty yourself out into me so completely that I can fill you with myself.

In a thunderclap I am the new creation. I am given back to myself....

                                                            *** 

And today is your Last Day (your youngest day), the newest, most childlike of days. No other day will ever be as young for you as this today, when Eternal Life has called you by name.

This Now when our two names shall have met is my birthday in eternity, and no time shall ever cease this Now. Here is where the starting point has been set. Here is creation and a new beginning.... The rigid envelope which enclosed me from the outside and preserved my emptiness now shatters to fragments...

For at last everything we can comprehend lies pitifully beneath us. And our spirit does not desire to to contain, but to be contained in you...

All There is to Know About All There Is

Just some passages I like from W. Norris Clarke's The Philosophical Approach to God, presented with or without comment. The point is, sometimes there's a man -- I won't say a Raccoon, because what's a Raccoon? -- but sometimes there's a man who, well, he fits right in here with the restauvus cosmic misfits:

As we reflect on the activities of our intellectual knowing power, we come to recognize it as an inexhaustible dynamism of inquiry, ever searching to lay hold more deeply and widely on the universe of reality. It is impossible to restrict its horizon of inquiry to any limited area of reality, to any goal short of all that there is to know about all that there is (emphasis mine).

This same idea is expressed in another book I recently read, The Two Cities: A History of Christian Politics. First, 

realism means that our reasoning about the world around us is a participation in the reason that is actually embedded in that world.

What's the alternative? That we are intelligent, but that our intelligence reveals nothing essential about the world? 

Yes, that is the alternative: it's called nominalism, and not only is it alive and well, it has been kicking ass in various forms and iterations for several centuries. Nevertheless, what cannot go on will not go on.

As to its appeal, nominalism affirms that no natures or essences exist, which could hardly be more convenient if one wants to pretend men can be women, or that homosexuals can marry, or that we can't even know what a "woman" is, because for the nominalist there is no such thing as human (or any other) nature:

Mankind is not being prompted through his reason to steadily fulfill his nature. Rather, he is moving through the world in total freedom. There is no natural law... that emerges from within human nature itself and which provides a guide to how people ought to behave.

Superstition is a perennial temptation for fallen man, and in our day and age this superstition goes under the rubric of ideology. Every ideology is a pseudo-religion that is superimposed upon reality in order to provide a host of benefits, including a faux sense of meaning, and with it, a diminution of existential anxiety. 

The ideology is also an inexpensive signal of "intelligence" (despite being stupid), redemption-innocence (despite its depravity), and "sanity" (despite being insane; it's really just conformity, so a kind of "quantitative sanity" or safety in numbers). 

For that matter, ideology also signals virtue and caring despite being narcissistically self-enclosed, and pretends to be skeptical while being childishly credulous. 

Conversely, (orthodox, which is to say, realist) Christianity

proposes a world in which the material and temporal are united with the spiritual and eternal, in which the particular is real and solid and yet finds its intelligibility and full realization in the universal. The drive of modernity was to undo this profoundly realist, and yet ultimately mysterious and incarnational worldview.

Modern ideologies emerging from the Enlightenment amount to the imposition of a material flatland by intellectual flatheads:

It is a world that is itself without mystery, without inherent symbols or sacramental implications. It is the merely material and the merely temporal...

Ideologies are catechisms of pseudo-control and pseudo-mastery to tame and ultimately disable the intellect, allowing it maintain its slumber:   

They are attempts at categorizing the things within it so that the world can be seen to function within our thought, without remainder, with nothing left over. They are machines of thought... (emphasis mine).

In case you haven't noticed. And because they are machines, they are dead on arrival, and moreover, communicate this deadness to the sensitive soul, who will spontaneously rebel against them. (We see this happening all over the country, for example, with parents fighting back against progressive groomer ideology.) 

Bottom line:

Ideologies are religious systems for the faithless, for people who deny mystery and refuse humility.

Conservatism, whatever else it may be, should be at antipodes to ideology, since there is no philosophical system rich enough to model reality. Every ideology is a model of the world, stripped of complexity, richness, vertical depth (and height), and sundry unknown (and unKnowable) unknowns. Ideology is the precise opposite of the Cosmic Person who renders intelligence and intelligibility possible. 

Back to Clarke. The process of knowing all there is to know about all there is

continues indefinitely in ever-expanding and ever-deepening circles. As we reflect on the significance of this inexhaustible and unquenchable drive toward the fullness of all there is to know, we realize that the only adequate goal of our dynamism of knowing is the totality of all being.

Now, what -- or who -- could this be? -- this a priori present-absence that ceaselessly draws us into its vortex? One possibility is that

somewhere hidden within this unlimited horizon of being there exists an actually infinite Plenitude of Being, in which all other beings participate yet of which they are but imperfect images.

I'll buy that. And "If I accept and listen to this radical innate pull of my nature as intellectual being,"

I will affirm with conviction the existence of the ultimate Fullness and Center of all being, the lodestar that draws my intelligence ever onward..., the mystery of inexhaustible Light, a Light that with my present, body-obscured vision I cannot directly penetrate or master with my own powers, but that renders all else intelligible (Clarke).