My dear brother Ambarsaria ji peacesignkaur
Thank you very much for your reply!
I am overjoyed that you like my citations and can relate to them!
Anything by Father Eckhart or Saint Catherine touches me at a deep level.
Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa was a very deep person. He spoke about the possibility of alien life 600 years ago, proposed a heliocentric universe 200 years before Galileo and nearly became Pope (missed out by two votes I think!).
As a result, he is often very cryptic and paradoxical. He's not the easiest thinker to get to grips with (I struggle a lot - and I'm familiar with his writings!). Hopefully I can help you, if not please do explain to me what qualms you have with him.
His whole idea is basically this: God is unknowable and incomprehensible in Essence. We cannot approach God through concepts, and we cannot expect to find the "Face" of God because God is utterly without Form. God can, however, be "seen" in every face - in every person. To see another human being, and to see yourself, is in Cusa's understanding to see God because man is made in His Image. Therefore, Cusa suggests that we must look within ourselves and in "mystic silence" go into a state of "darkness", where we realize that we can never fully "comprehend" God. We approach what Cusas called a state of "Learned Ignorance" (yes - he's utterly PARADOXICAL!).
We arrive at the knowledge of the reality (God), and hence of unity and the infinite, only by means of a third activity of the spirit, the faculty of intellect, which is supra-rational understanding, mystical intuition. This faculty, overcoming all differences and multiplicity, presents the reality (God) as perfect unity, in which all differences are reconciled in the infinite life, the "coincidence of opposites." The principle of coincidence is for Nicholas of Cusa a new one on which logic must be based in order to arrive at the knowledge of reality.
Hence the title of Nicholas' work De Docta ignorantia, which indicates the limitation of human understanding (reason) as opposed to the knowledge of God that is free of all such limitation (supra-rational).
It was Cusa who actually came up with the idea of God as being, the "Absolute". The word "absolute" derives from the Latin absolutum and it first occurs as a noun in the writings of Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, who, in his De docta ignorantia ( On Learned Ignorance, 1440), used absolutum to refer to God, as the being which is not conditioned by, limited by or comparable to anything else. It was Nicholas of Cusa (often called Cusanus) who actually coined the word "Absolute" and used it in referece to the Divine. It has since become one of the most common ways to refer to God in his incomprehensibility.
Read this extract:
Quote:
His central issue, as discussed in his main work, De Docta Ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance), was the problem of the knowledge of God or of the Absolute Infinite. Nicholas held that the Absolute Infinite cannot be conceived by finite thought. Hence, in theology, only negations can be assumed as true. Although positive theological statements are inevitable in order to think about God, they are inadequate. Paradoxically, one can reach the incomprehensible God only by knowing his incomprehensibility. This is the meaning of the term “learned ignorance.” In the end, both negative and positive theology must be dissolved into inexpressibility; God is ineffable beyond all affirmations and negations. More exactly, human beings cannot touch God through knowledge at all, but at the very most only by our yearning for Him.
Nicholas of Cusa calls infinity “absolute,” as it must be understood in a full and unrestrained sense. Hence, the sphere of an independent and self-sufficient finite cannot exist beside it, otherwise infinity itself would actually be finite and restricted. “There cannot be an opposite to the ineffable Infinite,” says Nicholas. “It is also not the whole, to whom a part could be opposed, nor can it be a part… The Infinite is above all that.” (De Visione Dei, VIII[1]) Above all opposites, the Infinite—God—is beyond all multitude as well. Thus, Nicholas calls Him the “Absolute Unity and Oneness,” which is prior to all and includes all. In this sense, he speaks of God as the “coincidence of opposites.” Everything is enveloped in God and developed in the universe. “You, O God, are the antithesis of opposites, because you are infinite; and because you are infinite, you are infinity. In infinity, the antithesis of opposites is without antithesis… Infinity does not tolerate any otherness beside itself; for, as it is infinity, nothing is external to it. The Absolute Infinite includes all and encompasses all.” (De Visione Dei, VIII)
I hope that helps! peacesignkaur
