We are all engaged in a deeper and deeper process of apophatic implosion. From negative theology to negative atheology and beyond to absolute emptiness.
First: God is declared to be beyond all name, form, category and definition. It is only accurate to say what He is not.
Second: God himself as "God" is viewed as merely a being of Being itself. It is Being which is the focus of all apophatics -- God carries too much cultural, historical, ethical and ontological baggage.
Third: But Being in itself is still trapped by the category of existence. Being must also be placed under erasure and disappear into Nothingness.
Fourth: Nothingness, however, is itself categorized under the sign of negation and the lingering sign of transcendence which has clouded the process from the start. Nothingness must also be crossed out and all must be considered nothing.
Fifth: But as Nothingness is fully negated all forms and metaphors become possible again, although now they are all consciously empty of themselves. Metaphysics reappears as a respectable art but again as poetry, not as Truth. The sacred and the profane dissolve into one another. And God happily doubles, redoubles and exponentially multiplies her names and forms which are all sweet nothing.
Here is a parable we stole from the father of psychology, William James...
ReplyDeleteA renowned philosopher was visiting the Tek-Gnostics temple. While he was admiring the abbey and surrounding grounds, he was granted an audience with the abbey’s headmaster, Sensei. After paying his respects, the philosopher asked the Holy Man the nature of the world, to which the old man replied…
"Oh, the world is a great big ball that sits on the great flat back of the Great World Turtle!"
The philosopher, who was prone to bouts of logic, thought a moment and then asked… "What does the turtle stand on?"
To this, Sensei replied… "Why on the back of an even larger turtle of course!"
Then the philosopher asked… "And what, pray tell, does this turtle stand on?"
The rascally old sage, taking pity on the philosopher, shook his head and sweetly smiled, saying:
"It's no use, my son; it is turtles… turtles… turtles… all the way out!"
Yertle lives! Yes, a stack of toroidal tortoises in ascent and descent forever.
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