Philosophers and theologians, mystics and saints are unanimous in giving
us this advice: “Realize that in his deepest mystery God remains
unknowable. Negations about him are often more correct than assertions. Rid
your mind of silly prejudices. Images say more about him than intellectual
notions. You come closest to God in a kind of unknowing knowing.” In
short, their advice comes to the following.
Always remember that God is far beyond what you can say, think or imagine. He cannot be contained in your human concepts. Lao Tzu stated: “The Tao that can be put into words is not the eternal Tao.” Al-Ghazali taught that “it is impossible for anyone to understand God except God”. Thomas Aquinas agrees: “The ultimate reach of our knowledge of God consists in realizing that we do not know him. For then we grasp that what God is surpasses all we understand of him.” (1) You will never be able to say you know God as he really is.
In practice this means that you are often on safer ground denying imperfections about him than in making positive assertions. In the ancient Indian Scriptures this is known as: “Neti-neti”; “He is not this, he is not that” Do not think it is useless to follow this path of negation. It will help you revere God to recall from time to time that he is not bound by such limitations as place, size, time, energy or range of vision.
In particular rid your mind of silly prejudices. He is just as much a mother as a father. He cannot really be happy one moment and angry the next; all his actions are one for all eternity. He is not more present high in the sky than anywhere else. Though for ever the same he is more act than object, more truly infinite dynamism than static royalty seated on a throne. Do not cheapen your concept of God. Purify your ideas constantly. Shake them loose.
Images, if they are understood to be just that and no more, can tell you more about God than intellectual notions. Compare this to your knowledge of ordinary people. You have seen their features. You have heard their voice. You have touched them and observed their behaviour in various circumstances. From these images you build up a characterization of their personalities. You know them as individuals; yet you could never express such knowledge in precise words. So it will be with God. You know him as the inner creator and the judge within you. You see glimpses of him in different experiences of life. You hear stories about him, and parables; you reflect on traditional titles. All these are images that help you get to know him quite distinctly, but never precisely or exhaustively.
When you get really close and intimate to another person, you do not need to say much. Wordless communication begins to bind you in an unspeakable depth of love. This also applies to the way you know God—all the more so because he resides within you; because he is a deep well from which your life springs forth in silence. Knowing God in this mystical way is called “unknowing knowing” since it is reached by stripping the mind of words, ideas and images. Ruysbroeck describes it in these terms:
Pure not-knowing is the light in which one can see God. Those who experience this not-knowing feel as if they are in the desert even though God’s light is there. Pure not-knowing surpasses human understanding but does not suppress it. . . It is in this unconditional not-knowing that one sees God, but without comprehending what one sees, for what is seen transcends all things. (2)
A good summary of the above advice may be seen in the following poem drawn up by a Christian monk in the sixth century. Read it slowly and meditatively to purify your notion of God. It is amazing how this statement of God’s “otherness”, if properly understood, expresses at the same time, paradoxically, the deepest grounds for his immanence. I especially commend the last paragraph to your prayerful consideration. (3)
The cause of all things
embraces all
and is above all,
is not without being or without life.He does not lack reason or intelligence.
Yet,
he is not an object.
He has no form or shape,
no quality, no quantity, no weight.
He is not restricted to any place.
He cannot be seen
. He cannot be touched.
Our sense cannot perceive him,
our mind cannot grasp him.
He is not swayed by needs or drives or inner emotions.
Things or events that take place in our world can never upset him.
He needs no light.
He suffers neither change
nor corruption nor division.
He lacks nothing
and remains always the same.
He is neither soul nor intellect.
He does not imagine, consider, argue or understand.
He cannot be expressed in words
or conceived in thoughts.
He does not fall into any category of number or order.
He possesses no greatness or smallness
no equality or inequality
no similarity or dissimilarity.
He does not stand, or move, nor is he addressed.
He does not yield power,
neither is he power itself
nor is he light.
He does not live
nor is he life itself.
He may not be identified with being,
nor with eternity or time.
He is not subject to the reach of the mind.
He is not knowledge,
or truth,
or kingship,
or wisdom.
He is not the one, or oneness;
not Godhead or goodness.
He is not even spirit
in the way we understand it,
or sonship or fatherhood.
He is not anything else known to us
or to any other being.
He has nothing in common with things that exist
or things that do not exist.
Nothing that exists
knows him as he really is.
Nor does he know things that exist
through a knowledge
existing outside himself.
Reason cannot reach him, or know him.
He is neither darkness nor light,
neither falsehood nor truth
All statements affirmed about him
or denied about him
are equally wrong.
For although we can make positive or negative statements
about all things below him,
We can neither affirm;
nor deny him himself
because the all-perfect and unique cause of all things
is beyond all affirmation.Moreover, by the simple pre-eminence
of his absolute nature,
he falls outside the scope
of any negation.
He is free from every limitation and beyond them all.
The higher we rise in contemplation the more words fail.
Words cannot express pure mind.
When we enter the darkness that lies beyond our grasp
we are forced, not merely to say little,
but rather to maintain an absolute silence,
a silence of thought
as well as of words. . .
As we move up from below
to that which is higher
in the order of being,
our power of speech decreases,
until,
when we reach the top,
we find ourselves totally speechless.
We are then overcome
by him who is wholly ineffable.
1. Thomas Aquinas, De potentia VII, 5, ad 14; see also In Boetiae de Trinitate, 7, 2, ad 1.
2. Ruysbroeck, The Book of the Twelve Beguines, B.II, 3- 4; in Werken, Het Kompas, Mechelen 1932, pp. 21-2.
3. The text is from the so- called Pseudo-Dennis The Areopagite, Mystical Theology, ch. 4 and 5. I made my own free translation of it and rearranged the order of the paragraphs slightly. For the original, see “Sancti Dionysii Areopagitae”, Opera Omnia, ed. B. Corderius, Zatta, Venice 1755, pp. 543-88.