INFINITY OF INFINITIES: BEYOND BEING AND BEING
In the previous post I briefly explained the concept of the "Five Presences". Here I continue with an indepth look at the first two of those "levels", which together comprise two "levels" of reality in God in relation to us. Get your thinking caps on because this is going to be a wild ride.
I
BEYOND BEING
Then one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, perceiving that He had answered them well, asked Him, "Which is the first commandment of all?" Jesus answered him, "The first of all the commandments is: 'Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one
Mark 12:28-29
Say: He, Allah, is One. Allah is He on Whom all (beings and things) depend. He does not beget, nor is He begotten. And none is like Him.
Surah Al-Ikhlas [112:1-4]
For there must be something simple before all things, and this must be other than all the things which come after it, existing by itself, not mixed with the things which derive from it, and all the same able to be present in a different way to these other things, being really one, and not a different being and then one; it is false even to say of it that it is one, and there is “no concept or knowledge” of it; it is indeed also said to be “beyond being” For if it is not to be simple, outside all coincidence and composition, it could not be a principle and it is the most self-sufficient, because it is simple and the first of all: for that which is not the first needs that which is before it, and what is not simple is in need of its simple components so that it can come into existence from them.
Plotinus (V.4.1.5–15) [1]
It is pretty much clear who or what we are talking about here. This is God, immutable and simple, incomparable and hidden, for “no man hath seen God at any time: the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” (John 1:18). He is the centre of our first image and the outermost part of our second. The first corresponding to His absolute nature, the second to his infinite nature. This is the “uncaused cause” of classical theism and the “Father” of Christian devotion, from whom Son and Spirit are begotten and spirated. Schuon’s preferred name is “Atma”, meaning “Self”. Atma is the Divine Self, the irreducible “I”. There is the individual subjectivity, and there is the Divine “Subjectivity”. That is, there is that “I” that is the infinite consciousness that we all participate in, and there’s the particular individual with a story, an “ego”. “I and my Father are one” Jesus says, that is, they are equivalent from the vantage of immanence. The Son disappears in His reflection of the Father, and all that remains is God, for “He who has seen me, has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Christ also says before Abraham was, “I AM”. This “I” is only “realized” through the “Intellect”, another name for the Logos understood in its transparency to God, that is, “Christ”. The ultimate aim of salvation is conforming to this divine subjectivity to whom all things are transparent and from whom Divine light pours, for “to the pure all things are pure” (Titus 1:15), and “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8), that is, they shall “become God”, or rather, realize they are “nothing” and only God is, for only God knows God, and we are the little sparks of the knowledge God has of Himself, if we were only to realize it, and we will realize it, in the eschaton.
There is a looming contradiction when we speak of conceptions of “Beyond Being”. Christians speak of Father begetting and spirating, Muslims maintain Allah doesn’t beget and is not begotten. There is this opposition of Unitarian with Trinitarian ideas about God. I cannot give you a detailed history, but there is a popular idea that if one is right, the other is wrong, or that one is more “true” than the other. I say these are different ways of viewing the same absolute reality. I am going to makes some statements that may offend my fellow Christians, and maybe the Muslims that read this.
On the Christian side, the relation between Father and his other two hypostases is not as simple as it is often taught. In fact, when you think well about what it means for the Father to beget the Son and spirate spirit, freely I might add, it brings up uncomfortable thoughts that seem to challenge the Godhood of the other two hypostases, but in fact conserves them in the only way possible. Schuon, Cutsinger, and a lot of eastern orthodox hold to what is called the “Monarchy of the Father”, that is the primacy of the father in the Godhead (Although Schuon’s position, him not being a Christian, is more complicated, as we’ll see when I discuss God as “Being”). The Father alone (as hinted in the Nicene creed and specified in the Athanasian creed) is unbegotten and uncreated. The Son is begotten but uncreated, the Spirit is spirated but uncreated. There is a strange paradox here. The other two persons are “caused”, that is they depend on the Father for their being (and it really is illogical to argue otherwise), and at the same time they are “uncreated”. If “uncreated” implied “uncaused”, then only the Father is uncreated. But, if “uncreated” means “preceeding creation”, that is, residing in the eternity before “manifestation” (Schuon’s word for creation and its “differentiated” nature, referring to its numerous parts and pieces imperfectly reflecting united divinity), then the other hypostases are uncreated. The relationship is asymmetric, and hierarchical, which makes Christians wary, since we believe the Son and Spirit to be “fully God”. Now, I have written on this before, but it is better to explain with different words. The “equality” of the persons on this level is in relation to creation (or “manifestation”) itself, and not a sort of “numerical” equality where there are Three “Gods” (which we Christians deny anyway). The Son is “fully God” because He is united with the Father (who is God proper), by the Father’s free “begetting”, the same being true of the Spirit’s “spiration”. You could say the Son is fully God “by grace”, if we are using that word analogically. Yes the Father cannot be without His Son, but that is precisely because He is free. Just as God must create because He is free, He must beget and spirate because He is free; the latter logically, and eternally preceding the former. In this way, the Son (in relation to us, and not to the Father) is “fully God”. However, the Son worships the Father, and not vice-versa. There is a hierarchy, yet “equality” from two different “points of view”, and it is the hierarchical point of view that Islam works with.
On the Muslim side, they take the hierarchical idea to its logical conclusion, that is; ultimately, in the “strictest” sense, only “Allah” (The Father) is “uncreated”, taking “uncreated” to mean “uncaused”. He cannot “beget” another “uncreated” entity because that is a contradiction (that is, if we take uncreated to mean uncaused) because this “uncaused” entity is exactly “caused”. If the Christian side takes all that is in the eternity preceding creation to be God (Father, Son, Spirit, or, Beyond being and Being, if we are using our Five presences hierarchy), Islam is stricter in assigning “God” only to the absolutely “uncaused” reality, who we call “Father”, and anything else (in its distinction from the uncaused God) is assigned the term “created” (i.e. “caused”), and this leads to the next level:
II
BEING
Absolute Substance extends Itself, through relativization, under the aspects of Radiance and Reverberation; that is to say, It is accompanied—at a lesser degree of reality—by two forms of emanation, one that is dynamic, continuous, and radiating, and the other static, discontinuous, and formative. If there were not, apart from Substance, the Radiance and Reverberation to extend It by means of relativization, the world would not be.
Frithjof Schuon [2]
We believe… in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds (aeons, or “ages”), light of light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; by whom all things were made
The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed
According to a teaching (hadith) of the Prophet, ‘the first of all things Allah created (that is to say: the first unmanifested Reality in the Divine tendency to manifestation, or the first Divine self-determination with a view to creation) is the Pen (Qalam) which He created of Light (Nur)
Frithjof Schuon [3]
Those who are perceptive will remember the Nicene proclamation of Christ as “Light of Light”. You would also remember that Christ is the one who inscribes himself on our hearts, like a pen. It would also do us good to remember Christ as “Life”, which can be manifest as the “Tree of Life” (Genesis 2:9) or “Book of life” (Revelation 3:5), who is also the “palm of God” on which we’re inscribed:
According to another teaching ‘there is near to Allah a tablet one side of which is of red rubies and the other of green emerald, and its Pens are of light [3]
This pen of light is first, before the world, before time, that is, “eternal” (The Nicene creed says “before all worlds”). It is the Pen (Christ) that God (Father) “writes” with, calling the world into existence using his “ink” (Spirit): Another, more complete image, is provided by the first quote, where Schuon speaks of Absolute Substance (Father), extending itself through Radiance (Spirit) and Reverberation (Son):
There is a primary duality, which is the Substance, and—principially within It but in fact outside its absolute Reality—there is Relativity or Mâyâ; now Mâyâ comprises the two aspects just mentioned, Radiance and Reverberation: the “Holy Spirit” and the “Son” are actualized in and through Mâyâ. Expressed in geometric terms, the Substance is the center, Radiance is the cluster of the radii, and Reverberation, or the Image, is the circle; Existence, or the “Virgin”, is the surface which enables this unfolding. [2]
The primary duality mentioned is also seen in the Palamite distinction between the “Essence” and “Energies”, corresponding to Schuon’s “Atma” and “Maya”. Schuon calls this Maya the “relatively absolute”, that is: relative to us, it is absolute; but relative to Atma, it is relative, as seen in the previous section on “Beyond Being”. Maya then corresponds to the closest circle to the Centre in our first image. I think Plotinus himself says something similar concerning "The One", even if he isn't as clear as Schuon:
In each and every thing there is an activity of the essence and there is an activity from the essence and that which is of the essence is each thing itself, while the activity from the essence derives from the first one, and must in everything be a consequence of it, different from the thing itself: as in fire there is a heat which is the content of its essence and another which comes into being from that primary heat when fire exercises the activity which is native to its essence in abiding unchanged as fire. So it is also in the higher world; and much more so there, while it [the One] abides in its own proper way of life, the activity generated from the perfection in it and its coexistent activity acquires existence since it comes from a great power, the greatest indeed of all, and arrives at being and essence, for that [the One] is beyond being. That is the productive power of all, and its product is already all things.
(V.4.2.28–39) [4]
This is the principle that makes creation possible, and Schuon calls it “Relativity in Divinis”, while Platonists understand it as the "Diffusiveness of the Good". It is both Trinitarian and Unitarian, and it is here that things get weird. It is here we find what Schuon calls the “Horizontal Trinity”, the conception of the Trinity as “Being, Consciousness, Bliss”.
Let me say it this way: As the Substance (Father) knows itself through its Reverberation (Son) birthed by Radiance (Spirit), so then Being (Father) knows itself though Consciousness (Son) in Bliss (Spirit). What is “Son” in relation to Beyond Being, is “Father” in relation to its Self-knowledge. If this is confusing, this is because we often don’t see beyond this level. The emphasis on the “equality” of the persons in theology tends to obscure the Trinity of the creeds, that is, of Substance, Radiance, and Reverberation. This level, the level of “Being”, is the level of “equality” of the persons in that we are not considering “Being” as separate from “Beyond being” as before. Instead we are “viewing” reality from the level of Being, which is united to Beyond Being and hence is, for all intents and purposes in this point of view, “Father”. The “consciousness” God as “Being” has of itself is in itself a “return”, this “self-knowledge” is a “turning upon itself”, and if it is towards itself, it is also towards “Beyond Being” to which it is united, and it therefore coincides with “Reverberation” or “Image”, who is designated “Son”; “Consciousness” is the "image" of being. In our first model of concentric circles, it is the circle spinning on its axis, and it also means, for all intents and purposes, that the centre also “spins”, being the origin of the spinning circle itself, even if, like the circle, there is no difference between it spinning and being stationary. They’re united in their relative “motions” as Trinity:
But there is another interpretation of the Trinity, horizontal this time, and conforming to another real aspect of the mystery: God is the Absolute, He is the single Essence, while the three Persons are the first Relativities in the sense that on a plane that is already relative they actualize the indivisible characteristics of the Essence. This interpretation is also irrefutable and Scriptural, in the sense that there are Scriptural expressions which can be explained only with its help; and it is this interpretation that justifies the affirmation that the Divine Persons are equal, while being necessarily unequal in a different context. And what makes it possible to concede that they are equal to the single Essence is precisely the fact that the Essence comprises, principially, synthetically and without differentiation, the three Qualities or Powers that are called "Persons" a posteriori on the plane of diversifying Relativity; from this standpoint it is evident that each "Person" is the Essence in a total and direct sense; the relative, on pain of being impossible, has its root in the Absolute, of which it is a dimension that is either intrinsic or extrinsic according to whether it is considered in its pure possibility or as a projection. [5]
This strange dimension of God that we call “Being”, that Schuon prefers to call “Maya”, also means “Illusion”. If you want to understand why Schuon considers an aspect of God to be in effect “not very real”, I want you, the Trinitarians especially, to think about what it means to say Christ is the “Image of God”. An image is not as real as what it images, and that analogy has to hold for Christ if calling him “Image of God” is to mean anything. This feeds into how we described Son and Spirit earlier. The Son is “reverberation” or “image”, the Spirit is “Radiance”, both are “relative to the Father”, both are “illusion”, that ultimately disappear into the Father in relation to us, who is the “One God” that they participate in. You don’t see the light, you see the light source. Even in the reflection; in a perfect reflection, you don’t see that which reflects, but that which is reflected. Both the light and the mirror disappear in the sight of the source of light and image. This reflection in its turn reflects the Trinitarian structure of its relation to the source. The reflection in its turn acts as source, your eyes act as reflector, and the light bridging the two. This is the understanding of “Being” (Original reflection), “Consciousness” (eye that reflects and sees image) and “Bliss” (The completion and satisfaction of this “sight” or knowledge), the “Horizontal” Trinity.
It is important to note that although “Being” is below “Beyond Being”, it is also very much “inaccessible”. It is still God we are talking about. Even as “Being”, He is ineffable in relation to creation. This distinction between Divine Atma and Maya is a distinction in God, or “in divinis”. No one can see the Logos in His Divine Nature, because He participates in the Aseity of the Father. The Spirit is still the Lord and Giver of life. The difference is that, as Maya, God (The Son) is the Personal Creator, who can, through Revelations, in Scripture, “Avataras” or “incarnations”, and (personal) revelatory visions, relate with men. This is in contrast to God as Atma, where the Father is “Impersonal”, that is, “Impartial” and non-individual “Self”. It is for this reason that Christians understand that the Father cannot be incarnated, for the only way to know Him, or for Him to “know us”, is through the Son.
It is from here that creation, or “Manifestation”, in all its fragmentation and complexity, can spring forth. The differentiation that is “in principle” in Divine Maya is manifest in creaturely Maya:
In order to be as clear as possible, it is necessary to insist on the following principle: there is no possible relationship between the Absolute as such and relativity; for such a relationship to exist, there must be something relative in the Absolute and something absolute in the relative. In other words: if one admits that the world is distinct from God, one must also admit that this distinction is prefigured in God Himself, which means that His unity of Essence—which is never in question—comprises degrees; not to admit this polarization in divinis is to leave the existence of the world without a cause, or it is to admit that there are two distinct realities and thus two “Gods”, namely, God and the world. For either one of two things: either the world is explained starting from God, in which case there is in God prefiguration and creative act, and thus relativity; or else there is in God no relativity, in which case the world is unexplainable and becomes thereby godlike. We shall once again emphasize that Divine Relativity, the cause of the world, fulfills the role of the Absolute in relation to the world; in this sense, theologians are right to uphold, as the case may be, the absoluteness of all that is divine; absoluteness is then, for them, synonymous with Divinity. [2]
This sliding scale of relativity that starts in God himself begins in creation as “Heaven”, which, being the “closest” to God, is itself “absolute” in relation to the lower levels. This “Celestial” world is the beginning of creation, its centre and circumference, the home of the “Triple Manifestation”, whom we glimpse in the book of Revelation, and in Daniel, and is the place where God “dips” into his creation, where you see the personification of the “Pen created of Light”, also called the “Nous” or “Intellect”.
Gerson, L. P., Boys-Stones, G., Dillon, J. M., King, R. A. H., Smith, A., & Wilberding, J. (2018). Plotinus: The Enneads.
Schuon, F. Form and Substance in the Religions.
Schuon, F. Dimensions of Islam.
Gerson, L. P. (1999). Plotinus (The Arguments of the Philosophers).
Schuon, F., & Nasr, S. H. (2005). The Essential Frithjof Schuon.