It is difficult for us to conceive a beatific vision of mental quiet, of
full knowledge and not of gradual apprehension, as in any way different
from a kind of Nirvana, a spiritual diffusion, a dissipation of energy
in the essence of God, a return to unconsciousness induced by the
absence of shock, of difference--in a word, of activity.
May it not be that the very condition which makes our eternal union with
God thinkable destroys our longing? What difference is there between
being absorbed by God and absorbing Him in ourself? Is it the stream
that is lost in the sea or the sea that is lost in the stream? It is all
the same.
Our fundamental feeling is our longing not to lose the sense of the
continuity of our consciousness, not to break the concatenation of our
memories, the feeling of our own personal concrete identity, even though
we may be gradually being absorbed in God, enriching Him. Who at eighty
years of age remembers the child that he was at eight, conscious though
he may be of the unbroken chain connecting the two? And it may be said
that the problem for feeling resolves itself into the question as to
whether there is a God, whether there is a human finality to the
Universe. But what is finality? For just as it is always possible to ask
the why of every why, so it is also always possible to ask the wherefore
of every wherefore. Supposing that there is a God, then wherefore God?
For Himself, it will be said.
Pages:
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334