Intimacy & the Godhead: Being Unveiled
What is it to know Being in the Other? Is it the study of
treatises and tractates? Is it wholly conceptual or is there an element of the personal in these encounters? Augustine
once called humans “The Great Deep”- Grande
Profundum. It is in the abyss of the human heart that we are able to
perceive the depth of Being in other humans as well as Other entities. Ralph Harper equated it to intimacy when he wrote, “mystics
draw analogies between the feeling of the presence of God and the feeling of
the presence of another person, particularly in the dark.”[1]
It is in the dark of the abyss as well as the moments of intimacy that occur in
the dark that we become consumed and wholly possessed in the Being of another. This
is how we know true presence.
And it is these experiences that assimilate us into the
godhead as well. It is the pure unitive state of being at-one and entangled in
union that we know the deity. Sufism understands this perfectly well in its request:
‘O God If I love you for fear of
hell, burn me in hell. If I love you for hope of heaven, deny me heaven. If I
love you for yourself alone, give me yourself.’[2]
Presence of the divine is no different in experience than
presence conjured in intimacy. Yes, perhaps there are conceptual discrepancies,
unless of course you worship your loved one and negate any inconsistency
whatsoever. And maybe that’s the point. Perhaps all along religion and its appellations
of the sacred were meant to be experienced in the dark. In the ‘deep’ there is
no need for prayer or faith because we know
the presence of Deity.
Dante the Poet is fully aware that the noble art of poetry is not designed to describe the horrors of this dreadful abode. Poetry is not usually devoted to harsh and grating and vulgar sounds. Thus, he invokes the Muses of Poetry to help describe horrors in poetic terms.At times only the poet can describe the horror that is the Presence of the divine,
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