Let us return to the Pauline apocatastasis.
Is it not possible that in becoming all in all God completes Himself,
becomes at last fully God, an infinite consciousness embracing all
consciousnesses? And what is an infinite consciousness? Since
consciousness supposes limitation, or rather since consciousness is
consciousness of limitation, of distinction, does it not thereby exclude
infinitude? What value has the notion of infinitude applied to
consciousness? What is a consciousness that is all consciousness,
without anything outside it that is not consciousness? In such a case,
of what is consciousness the consciousness? Of its content? Or may it
not rather be that, starting from chaos, from absolute unconsciousness,
in the eternity of the past, we continually approach the apocatastasis
or final apotheosis without ever reaching it?
May not this apocatastasis, this return of all things to God, be rather
an ideal term to which we unceasingly approach--some of us with fleeter
step than others--but which we are destined never to reach? May not the
absolute and perfect eternal happiness be an eternal hope, which would
die if it were to be realized? Is it possible to be happy without hope?
And there is no place for hope when once possession has been realized,
for hope, desire, is killed by possession. May it not be, I say, that
all souls grow without ceasing, some in a greater measure than others,
but all having to pass some time through the same degree of growth,
whatever that degree may be, and yet without ever arriving at the
infinite, at God, to whom they continually approach? Is not eternal
happiness an eternal hope, with its eternal nucleus of sorrow in order
that happiness shall not be swallowed up in nothingness?
Follow more questions to which there is no answer.
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