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Q: Can the Infinite God– and all things besides–really be known?

All Eastern religions say adamantly that God is both knowable and unknowable. We must not forget that the Greek word for God is Theos–“The Absolutely Other.” God is the ultimate Alien.

In our view God is unknowable, inconceivable, unseeable. We hold that it is impossible to even make a statement about God–not even that He exists, because He is totally beyond our ideas of existence. We only know the relative, whereas God is the Absolute. Even to attribute any characteristics or qualities to God in His pure being is considered erroneous in Eastern religion. This is called apophatic theology–that is, we enumerate what we cannot say about God.

In Hinduism this approach is called neti neti, which means “not this, not that.” The idea is that when we have negated anything we might say about God, then we are left with what God is. And it is beyond all words. So we both can and cannot know God. This sounds like some kind of Zen koan, but it is not. Let me give an example from our external life. Can we, standing on the shore, see the Atlantic Ocean–in the sense of seeing the whole ocean? Of course not. We can only see a part since it is so vast. So we never see it. That is, we cannot encompass it within the scope of our sight. This helps us to understand what is meant by our incapacity for knowing God. It is a matter of the limited scope of our consciousness.

Our purpose of existence

We can know something of God, “the hem of His garment” so to speak, but in the sense of knowing God as He is in His totality, it is impossible. But we can enter into union with God–be drawn into His Being–and transcend all relative existence. This is the whole purpose for our our being here. We are intended to evolve and expand our consciousness to the point where, by entering into union with God, we can indeed see the “all” of Him. Or more precisely, we can evolve to the point where we can see God with His own eye of infinity. That is, He will share His vision with us. This is glorious.

Without doubt the instruments of knowledge we presently have–the sensory mind and the intellect–cannot embrace an infinite vision because of their inherent limitation. In the Upanishads God is defined as “That from which the mind and the senses turn back.” Saint Thomas Aquinas used a very good expression about approaching God in our present condition: sensum defectui. “The senses fail.” There is also the implication in the Latin that the senses fall back or fall away in that endeavor.

But we have more to us than the mind and the senses. We have much higher faculties whose existence we have not even guessed. And they can be evolved to a condition in which they will not turn back or fail.

More Questions and Answers:

• Gauging Progress in Meditation
• Dreams and Communications with the Dead
• How to Choose Your Spiritual Name
• Reincarnation: Choosing Our Costumes in the Drama of Life

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