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𝑰𝒏𝒇𝒊𝒏𝒊𝒕𝒚, 𝑮𝒐𝒅, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑭𝒊𝒏𝒊𝒕𝒆-𝒏𝒆𝒔𝒔
Anyone truly seeking after God understands the impossibility of trying to define and explain God. Via Positiva (“Cataphatic Way”), is perhaps the most useful and usual starting point for the seeker, it starts with gratitude, reverence and joy. It asserts that we can make positive statements about God, that while they are finite statements about an infinite being and thus essentially untrue, they can point the way to God and be indicative of God. Statements such as “God is Good” while finite and actually untrue in a sense that God is MORE than Good, it is also true in a sense that we use the language we have as best we can to point to God. Although the language itself is restrictive, we must use it to point to where we want to see/be/understand/perceive.
Ex: God is Love, God is Light, God is Perfect.
Another way that we seek after God and try to understand God is through Via Negativa (“Apophatic Way”). Via Negativa supposes that human language, knowledge and understanding are not capable of perceiving God, and uses negative statements to describe what God is not. It helps to keep God as the mystery He is to us, as we are finite and He is infinite, we cannot apply human attributes to Him and be accurate in our descriptions. In this way, it helps to keep God as a mysterious entity, that helps to establish we can never fully understand and comprehend. Even the greatest of Saints, Monks, and Hermits, would agree that even when they are extremely close with God, they still are lacking in their ability to conceive of God fully.
Ex: God is not evil, God is not human, God does not have a body.
Is there any way to perfectly understand God? I would say, resoundingly, no. Some people will say their Scriptures are the way to know God (Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, etc). However, I would posit that much like the two ways described above, this method of understanding God also falls short for a variety of reasons. The biggest reason is that a majority of the time, people that are using Sola Scriptura (“Only Scripture”) to understand God, are only using logic, reason, countless hours of page-flipping, studying and literal interpretations. This does not get us any closer to understanding God (and definitely not closer to God), as God is not contained in the bounds of these criteria. God created physics, He does not exist inside it. God is the Ground of Being, that all Creation sprouts from, but is not bound by the Creation. Even those that aren’t interpreting their Scriptures literally, and are rather interpreting them metaphorically, allegorically, symbolically, metaphysically or mystically, are still going to miss that God is BEYOND all of our ability to understand - and the only way to become closer to God, and to know Him better, is to experience God. Although, it does seem as though there are stages to understanding, and that the more you move along the continuum of understanding, the more you realize you don’t understand (while simultaneously understanding more).
It seems as though these stages begin in a literal stage, and as we move along the continuum throughout life, we move into symbolic understanding, then metaphysical, and finally, mystical. While it may seem counter-intuitive, or even paradoxical, the “next” stage does not rule out the stage before it. So one can believe in literal interpretations and be steeped in mystical understanding. When one progresses to a certain space of growth, they begin to have the ability to hold paradoxes. Seemingly opposing truths, are both true, and both false, at the same time. They also do not cancel each other out, or mean that one person is “more right” than another.
𝐈𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐆𝐨𝐝 𝐞𝐱𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐬. But at an infinite level. Something completely unknowable by man.
This is why it is impossible for man to fully comprehend God. Yet through contemplation, we can get a taste of the infinite for our finite selves. A taste of Heaven, here, now.
Links:
Spiral Dynamics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_Dynamics
For further explanation on the stages for the worlds biggest religion, see below!
Below Written By Aham Svarupa :
THE FIVE CHRISTIANITIES OF INTEGRAL AWAKENING
In effect, there are at least five different Christianities running along a spectrum of spiritual development, depending on your level of consciousness:
1. At the the most primitive, magical level, there is what I call "Jesusolatry," which is just the outright, idolatrous worship of Jesus, using his blood and body as a the chief fetish in the magical operation of sympathetic-contagious atonement, also known as "penal substitutionary" redemption. This is the most exoteric and primal expression of Christianity.
2. At the mythical-tribal level there is "Christendom": the cultural-civilizational manifestation of the sum total of all orthodox narratives about Jesus Christ, most of which are found in the New Testament and in the works of Fathers of the Catholic Church in Late Antiquity. This is a nearly total exoteric type of Christianity that we see most heavily promoted by the mainline churches and denominations of Christendom like Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and most liberal Protestants and Evangelical groups.
3. A Christianity as a logial-ethical system that is more akin to a philosophy than a religion emerges from the rational level consciousness, which downplays the magical and mythical discourses about Jesus and focuses rather on the moral and ethical aspects of his teaching, as well as the ethically-focused Christian teachers who followed in his footsteps.
4. At the integral level of consciousness there is the "Christway." This expression of Christianity cumulatively synthesizes and integrates the wisdom of all three levels before it by effectively including all of their intelligence and insight, yet discarding or transcending their unnecessary facets and cultural accretions. The Christway is also a proto-nondual way of seeing the wisdom of Christ that leads up to, but does not yet fully embody, the non-duality of the highest transcendent level.
5. At the transcendent level we have Christwisdom: a pure distillation of the sapiential non-dual Gnosis of Jesus, as well as of some (though certainly not all) of the authentic Christwise teachings of his most astute followers. Very few evolve to this level of understanding, though more and more transcendent Christians have been emerging in the world, especially since around 2012 when we entered the final phase of global human transformation that some call "The Great Transition."
Anyone truly seeking after God understands the impossibility of trying to define and explain God. Via Positiva (“Cataphatic Way”), is perhaps the most useful and usual starting point for the seeker, it starts with gratitude, reverence and joy. It asserts that we can make positive statements about God, that while they are finite statements about an infinite being and thus essentially untrue, they can point the way to God and be indicative of God. Statements such as “God is Good” while finite and actually untrue in a sense that God is MORE than Good, it is also true in a sense that we use the language we have as best we can to point to God. Although the language itself is restrictive, we must use it to point to where we want to see/be/understand/perceive.
Ex: God is Love, God is Light, God is Perfect.
Another way that we seek after God and try to understand God is through Via Negativa (“Apophatic Way”). Via Negativa supposes that human language, knowledge and understanding are not capable of perceiving God, and uses negative statements to describe what God is not. It helps to keep God as the mystery He is to us, as we are finite and He is infinite, we cannot apply human attributes to Him and be accurate in our descriptions. In this way, it helps to keep God as a mysterious entity, that helps to establish we can never fully understand and comprehend. Even the greatest of Saints, Monks, and Hermits, would agree that even when they are extremely close with God, they still are lacking in their ability to conceive of God fully.
Ex: God is not evil, God is not human, God does not have a body.
Is there any way to perfectly understand God? I would say, resoundingly, no. Some people will say their Scriptures are the way to know God (Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, etc). However, I would posit that much like the two ways described above, this method of understanding God also falls short for a variety of reasons. The biggest reason is that a majority of the time, people that are using Sola Scriptura (“Only Scripture”) to understand God, are only using logic, reason, countless hours of page-flipping, studying and literal interpretations. This does not get us any closer to understanding God (and definitely not closer to God), as God is not contained in the bounds of these criteria. God created physics, He does not exist inside it. God is the Ground of Being, that all Creation sprouts from, but is not bound by the Creation. Even those that aren’t interpreting their Scriptures literally, and are rather interpreting them metaphorically, allegorically, symbolically, metaphysically or mystically, are still going to miss that God is BEYOND all of our ability to understand - and the only way to become closer to God, and to know Him better, is to experience God. Although, it does seem as though there are stages to understanding, and that the more you move along the continuum of understanding, the more you realize you don’t understand (while simultaneously understanding more).
It seems as though these stages begin in a literal stage, and as we move along the continuum throughout life, we move into symbolic understanding, then metaphysical, and finally, mystical. While it may seem counter-intuitive, or even paradoxical, the “next” stage does not rule out the stage before it. So one can believe in literal interpretations and be steeped in mystical understanding. When one progresses to a certain space of growth, they begin to have the ability to hold paradoxes. Seemingly opposing truths, are both true, and both false, at the same time. They also do not cancel each other out, or mean that one person is “more right” than another.
𝐈𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐆𝐨𝐝 𝐞𝐱𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐬. But at an infinite level. Something completely unknowable by man.
This is why it is impossible for man to fully comprehend God. Yet through contemplation, we can get a taste of the infinite for our finite selves. A taste of Heaven, here, now.
Links:
Spiral Dynamics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_Dynamics
For further explanation on the stages for the worlds biggest religion, see below!
Below Written By Aham Svarupa :
THE FIVE CHRISTIANITIES OF INTEGRAL AWAKENING
In effect, there are at least five different Christianities running along a spectrum of spiritual development, depending on your level of consciousness:
1. At the the most primitive, magical level, there is what I call "Jesusolatry," which is just the outright, idolatrous worship of Jesus, using his blood and body as a the chief fetish in the magical operation of sympathetic-contagious atonement, also known as "penal substitutionary" redemption. This is the most exoteric and primal expression of Christianity.
2. At the mythical-tribal level there is "Christendom": the cultural-civilizational manifestation of the sum total of all orthodox narratives about Jesus Christ, most of which are found in the New Testament and in the works of Fathers of the Catholic Church in Late Antiquity. This is a nearly total exoteric type of Christianity that we see most heavily promoted by the mainline churches and denominations of Christendom like Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and most liberal Protestants and Evangelical groups.
3. A Christianity as a logial-ethical system that is more akin to a philosophy than a religion emerges from the rational level consciousness, which downplays the magical and mythical discourses about Jesus and focuses rather on the moral and ethical aspects of his teaching, as well as the ethically-focused Christian teachers who followed in his footsteps.
4. At the integral level of consciousness there is the "Christway." This expression of Christianity cumulatively synthesizes and integrates the wisdom of all three levels before it by effectively including all of their intelligence and insight, yet discarding or transcending their unnecessary facets and cultural accretions. The Christway is also a proto-nondual way of seeing the wisdom of Christ that leads up to, but does not yet fully embody, the non-duality of the highest transcendent level.
5. At the transcendent level we have Christwisdom: a pure distillation of the sapiential non-dual Gnosis of Jesus, as well as of some (though certainly not all) of the authentic Christwise teachings of his most astute followers. Very few evolve to this level of understanding, though more and more transcendent Christians have been emerging in the world, especially since around 2012 when we entered the final phase of global human transformation that some call "The Great Transition."
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