55 ... Return One day, a novice entered reverie during Evening Prayer. He rose from his seat and went out the door towards the woods, apparently in Bliss. St. Benedict watched developments and recognized the symptoms. As the boy was entering the woods, the Saint picked up a large rock and smacked it sharply on his head. The lad shrieked in pain and then in terror as he recognized his surroundings and Companionship. He thanked the Sage for waking him up and setting him Godward. He recognized that he had been in the thrall of the most pernicious idol, the Church.

56 ... Return Both Francis of Assisi and Ignatius of Loyola were faced Godward by mortal illness following defeat in battle. Both had set out upon a soldier's life as response to what they sincerely felt was their spiritual calling, namely, to destroy wickedness. Both took defeat as signal evidence of Divine Displeasure with their grasp of life's purpose, with their sense of vocation and with their very persons. Despair dark and dismal, the awareness of utter failure, exacerbated their mortal bodily wounds. What to do?

Turn Godward.

57 ... Return Turning Godward appears to be a facile, known and common thing. However, we do not grasp its meaning and do not really understand it. Our books, clergy and other teachers trivialize it by speaking as if about it when really they are doing nothing of the kind.

Those entitled to be heard on the subject are those who have experience of it.

58 ... Return There is an image, popularized by exegetes of Shultz's Peanuts, of the Hound of Heaven ripping by and relieving one of everything held dear and essential so that life must in a really felt way be restarted, or dissipate forlornly.

The experience so indicated is common enough that reference to it is not lost on a critical mass of the population.

Just where in the teleology of human nature does this experience occur? We might think to identify it with the Hand of a Living Master, with the commencement of sadhana (spiritual discipline). That moment, however, involves a subtle presence, a gentle hand, an impression interiorly and sublimely produced, as a thief in the night, or a snake in the grass. While, the Hound of Heaven is an image of external ravage, more than a little threatening, brazenly ripping away the accouterments of custom and comfort, not subtle at all, more a plenary enemy than a fostering friend.

59 ... Return The Hound of Heaven is an image of the first primal experience (passage) that a Spirit undergoes: Turning Godward. Other descriptions of this experience are possible, but this one is a good one in the sense that it indicates key aspects of the fact.

Turning Godward is anything but a voluntary act. It is not a choice. It is not a strategy examined and selected from among a range of options.

In a very distant sense, it is a right but not one that is exercise-able by volition. Turning Godward is a right the right to exercise which has to be earned by the undergoing of itself!

The prerequisite for undergoing this passage is undergoing it. The genesis of its genesis is a tautology. In other words, initiation of this passage, Turning Godward, is passive for who and what we think we are this side of it. It happens to us, or so it seems.

We do not and cannot choose to Turn Godward. He decides. We are hooked or not, as pleases Him.

60 ... Return The entire universe is feminine in nature. God is the only male principle. She is Illusion in which He envelops Himself to enact the Eternal Duet.

61 ... Return There are several feelings one has while Turning Godward. One is the ineluctability of it. Another is the lack of coercion or violation of one's will and wishes. Another is that to everyone and everything gone before, one is quite effectively dead and an obituary would be appropriate. And finally, one feels not at all the same person one was before, and one is aware that one's destiny has been transformed fundamentally -- one unknown to another -- and that one is literally 'in the lap of the gods (God).'

62 ... Return Each of these feelings is experienced interiorly. Examination of them requires sight of the interior realms, where they are. Intuition is the vision required. It alone scans, sieves, plumbs and prioritizes the meta-causal phenomena, the interior realms, which are the loci of these feelings and the wellsprings of Life.

The existence of these feelings is not believed by individuals who deny the existence of intuition or discount its capacity as an instrument of cognition.

63 ... Return I would like to highlight the first two feelings mentioned: ineluctability and lack of coercion. Obviously, we have here a formulation of one of the classical antinomies (paradoxes): Divine Omnipotence and human capacity in functional (ontological) and structural (cosmological) proximity.

Some discussion is indicated.

64 ... Return Ordinarily, we formulate this antinomy as, Immutable Divine Prerogative meets incontrovertible human freedom, immovable object meets irresistible force. The postulates, suppositions, and conclusions of this formulation are so well known that recounting them is unnecessary.

No one is ever happy with the outcome of this ordinary formulation of the antinomy, and many regard as fool, knave or worse any who dares present it as the considered result of sapiential inquiry.

The point is: the ordinary formulation of this antinomy, paradox, is ham-handed, and no wonder its exegetes are taken for bores or boors!

65 ... Return Ham-handed formulations are unsatisfactory formulations. They are composed by individuals who lack experience of their subject or literary skill requisite to its exposition, or both. Today, most exegetes of this antinomy are of the last type. A few have experience but insufficient skill. An example is Reinhold Niebuhr, who is a great man even when not in favor at fickle academe and ecclesia.

It was Niebuhr who wrote: 'Man's capacity for good makes democracy possible. Man's capacity for evil makes democracy necessary.'

There is never a conflict between Divine Will and human will. Really, there is not a distinction here.

66 ... Return In the gross aspect, human beings have the same freedom of volition, will, that a staked animal does: they can operate in a circle whose radius is the length of the tether. Animals have the same type of freedom of volition, will, that human beings have. The difference is that the tether on human beings is longer than the one on animals. Both are tethered.

Also, the tether is of Divine manufacture, as is the area of operation. So, the freedom of volition, will, a human being or animal has is merely a sub-set of Divine Will.

67 ... Return Really, use of the word freedom in connection with the subject of human volition is a non sequitur. The sense of the word cannot be produced from the facts of the case.

Divine Will -- a term that, in its own right, and for another reason, is a non sequitur -- has no second. Whatever freedom man has has been parceled out by Divine Prerogative and should be taken taxonomically as aspect of Divine Omnipotence.

68 ... Return The uniqueness of human beings vis-a-vis the biosphere is their capacity for self- consciousness, or, what Teilhard terms reflexion. Freedom of will does not distinguish humans. Fleas have that, less of it than humans do, but they have it. However, only the human phylum examines itself.

Reflexion is a capacity that yields promise, in evidence of which we have culture, and danger, to prevent which we have philosophy and religion.

Other-than-human individuals of the biosphere do not need philosophy and religion because they do not stray from their nature. Only human beings traduce themselves. On the other hand, humanity is the element of the biosphere that emerges in a noosphere.

69 ... Return Now, the operation of Divine Omnipotence does not, cannot violate human nature, including volition. Divine Omnipotence has no second to violate. This fact is experienced by persons who are Turning Godward. It is more deeply felt by them as time goes on and especially so after they undergo the second primal experience (passage), which is called Crucifixion.

The Arrow plunging repeatedly into Theresa's heart was not felt by her as a violation of her being. Exactly the opposite was true: 'Sometimes -- Oh! Forgive me for saying this! -- I feel that His Majesty and I are the same!'

The 'Oh! Forgive me ...!' had in view the tribunal of the Inquisition, which approved Theresa, not adepts, who understand this language (i.e., '... His Majesty and I are the same!').

Later, when she hit her stride, Theresa, a poor nun in Renaissance/Inquisitional Spain, rebuked a Lords Bishop for 'trying to obstruct the Holy Spirit' in the form of a foundation of Discalced (shoeless, meaning, poor) Carmelites.

Theresa accused the bishop of apostasy. Denouncing her mission was denouncing God and the Faith, which is the definition of apostasy. The courage required to deliver such rebukes is appreciated only by those capable of doing likewise.

70 ... Return Divine Omnipotence does not, cannot violate human nature, including volition.

This fact is hardly visible from outside the experience of Turning Godward. Its invisibility accounts for the presence in popular and professional philosophy of the antinomy comprising Divine omnipotence and human capacity.

71 ... Return An antinomy is a conclusion of an attenuated inquiry. Attenuation of inquiry is caused by an unrecognized [because of laziness] lack of experience or by a deliberately induced [through laziness] want of literary skill.

An antinomy (paradox) should not be arrived at. In the present case, we should not posit a distinction between Divine Will and human will, or, Divine Omnipotence and human capacity. We should not posit either a functional (ontological) or a structural (cosmological) disharmony between God and man. We should not do this even as a moot case, which is what all antinomies really are.

72 ... Return God is a magnet. Man is iron filings. Between these apparent two there is most tendentious affinity, covering both the ontological (Feminine, operations) and the cosmological (Masculine, control) aspects. Divine Omnipotence and human freedom are facets of the same thing.

Salvation is never an intrusion. It is a coming home. Turning Godward is not a violation of Self. It is the first substantial fulfillment of Self.

This phenomenon, fact, cannot be measured or understood from a point of view outside itself.

73 ... Return Now, if our tone sounds increasingly negative as we go along, please understand that it has to be so.

An explanation: as the Goal is approached, as one travels through positives, undergoing three primal experiences (passages) and emerging through the last of them into the nameless beyond, the less can one say what things are and the more must one say what they are not.

This phenomenon is a species of philosophical inquiry. It is, also, a literary form. It is the highest, best and most accurate epistemology. Called via negativa in Europe and neti in India, its source in Europe is the great Sephardic Rabbi, Moses ben Maimon, 1135 - 1204.

74 ... Return Maimonides is a founder of 13th Century European spirituality. He drove the Christian as well as the Sephardic Renaissance. He established the spiritual excellence of Spain, and, through his co-religionist Spinoza and certain German scholars, he revitalized the cultural bond between Europe, North Africa, the Near East, Persia and India. European and Semitic culture is a species of Vedic spirituality.

75 ... Return The via negativa is necessary both as a tool of inquiry and as a literary form because Truth is beyond the reach of both thought and grammar, which is thought in hard-copy. Words roughly indicate, they cannot define and can only bleakly describe, Reality. This unavoidable and intransigent fact makes the via negativa necessary both as a tool of inquiry and as a literary form.

We cannot say what Truth or Reality is.
We can say only what It is not.
Or, we can say only that it is not only ....

76 ... Return When approaching Truth, we have to be careful with syntax. Semantics is a concern but not the main one. The validity, which really means usefulness, of a statement is determined by the subtlety of its syntax. The more subtle the syntax is, the better.

The reason for this is:

	the syntax that is used is going to obscure the intent of the communication it bears;  this
	is unavoidable;

	but the more subtle the syntax is, the less obscuring it does;

	therefore, the aim should be to obscure the intent of a communication as little as
	possible, rather than any other option, by using the most subtle syntax available.

A valid statement is one that is useful in the sense that it obscures the thing it aims at as little as possible. An invalid statement is one that is not useful in the sense that, to some extent, it needlessly obscures the thing it aims at, or, it is not made with care sufficient to wring it as much as is possible of obscurantist tendencies.

The most subtle syntax available is Rabbi Maimonides' via negativa, the Vedanthic neti.

77 ... Return Instead of saying, '_____ is not _____ .' we say, '_____ is not only _____ but also _____, and not only that but also _____, ....', etc.

In other words, the via negativa gets us to be inclusive by being negative about attenuated cognition.

78 ... Return We tend to be lazy and say, '_____ is not _____ ,', implying impassable boundaries around both _____ and _____ .

First, we attenuate our own cognition, through laziness. Then, we posit as truth the results of our attenuated inquiry. Mere thoughts we take as necessary conclusions. These act as [artificial] boundaries against both semantical and syntactical operations. Then, as boundaries, our thoughts, now taken for truth, invest both the desire and the capacity for further inquiry, thus confirming inertia.

These boundaries, indirect results of our own attenuated inquiry and articles of our own manufacture, act as veils that occlude our vision. They prevent the intuition from seeing and the intellect from discriminating. They are to the human cognitive apparatus as viruses are to a computer, imported, except that we are both the hacker and the computer: we make them and give them to ourselves.

79 ... Return These veils are not on the Truth. They are on our intuition. They do not obstruct the Truth. They occlude our vision.

So now we're in an epistemological pickle, and there's no getting out, except by shaking off laziness, waking up and continuing with inquiry.

80 ... Return Inquiry, if it is not attenuated, gradually reveals the Truth. It does this by stripping away these veils, veils we made and put in place, that hide the Truth from our intuition. As the veils are stripped off, as the grip on error taken for truth relaxes, inner vision, intuition, begins to operate again and Truth comes into view, in and for Itself, revealed by the penetrating purity of unencumbered intuition.

81 ... Return This is important. Truth is not wrestled out of a box it petulantly inhabits against our efforts to pry it loose. Truth is closer to us than our own skin is. It is Kin, alone is Kin.

Truth is revealed
not by a gaining
but by a losing,

not by instilling enlightenment
but by removing endarkenment,

not by acquisition of good qualities
but by renunciation of downward-dragging tendencies.

The Goal is reached not by accumulation of positives
but by dispersal of negatives.

Again, the via negativa.

Revelation is Truth presented in and for Itself
by the penetrating purity of Sages.