Is The Ineffable an empty concept?

[Mastriani]

All commentary; verbal, written or digitally transmitted; by this poster is expressly a matter of personal opinion, individual belief, personal experience, and is not intended to purport necessity of change(s), implied/perceived, to other posters; physical, mental or emotional. Any attempt to treat this post in a manner contradictory to what has been thusly stated is erroneous, and is the fault, entirely, of the reader of said post.

Mastriani, if our BEST expressions lack the ability to define a “determinate totality” then that is OUR determinate totality and to US that is all that god: can be, will be, is… Also, this is not about being or knowing… it is about understanding. We do not need to be formless to appreciate formlessness. We do not need to be a flower to appreciate a flower. There is benefit in appreciation of a thing which we cannot be and cannot fully define.

You’re right … to YOU that is the determinate totality. To YOU only. Not to me, tentative, Bob, Mr. Jerry, Mr. Kroptokin, lady Bessy, the angelic one, the hobo on the train, the street drifter, the bus driver, the hooker, the crackhead, the , the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the …

Certainly, not to the ineffable. YOU cannot LIMIT that which is GREATER than YOU. You can certainly try, but alas, it is the historical human failure.

Apparently everyone is missing tentative’s statement about “God”:

If knowing the totality of “God” was as simple as words, then it would have been summarily accomplished long ages upon aeons ago, and this conversation would never take place … because we would all know, with unerring exactness and certainty, the determinate totality of the ineffable, or “God”.

But we don’t, and can’t within current context. You can appreciate all you want, that is still less than the whole.

[thirst4metal]

Hello F(r)iends,

Mastriani, you don’t need to convince me that we all have a different experience of god or that each person has a different understanding of god due to those experiences. Each person will have their “determinate totality” but that does not prevent us from sharing, expressing our experiences with god and in doing so we gain a knew understanding and appreciation of god.

Our collective limit is the limit of everything that can be expressed…
Anything beyond that limit might as well not exist and is useless.
There is no need to discuss what is beyond and we cannot even be aware of whatever is beyond. I just happen to think that our limits of understanding are very near limitless… In this way, if god exists, we can discuss, express, and conceptualize god.

God is limited to the limits of the collective understanding of mankind.
Anything beyond is not god to us…

-Thirst

[Bob]

Hi Ucc.,
I’m in a bit late on this one but I feel it is important and I appreciate you approaching the question.

Suppose I have a very special dog. Unlike most dogs, which tend to have a definite form, a certain number of legs, and so on, my dog doesn’t have any qualities I can name. The only thing I know about him is what he is not- that is to say, he is not limited by any human conception of dogness, he is not in a particular place, and does not bark in a particular language that only certain dogs can understand. Add to this that my dog is invisible, and unbound by all physical limitations like location and time.
My question is, why does this dog matter?

I think that you have actually given the reasons in what you have written. There are enough examples in there to show that your “dog” (I like the pun) doesn’t really matter any more than a rabbit called Harvey.

What I think you are missing is the fact that the mystic experiences God as defying expression or description - He is “indefinable”, “indescribable”, “ineffable”, “inexpressible”, and His name is “unspeakable”. Does this kind of negation mean that God is not existent? No, but that He is not a part of our polarised view of the world, but encompasses everything. Alaha (Aramaic) is the word for God and unity or wholeness. In God we achieve that unity or wholeness, which we can’t find elsewhere. However, our language is not able to formulate – other in negatives – how that wholeness is other than no-thing.

It is the “irrational” right side of the brain that has to help us here, which can address symbols and holistic ideas intuitively, poetically, because the left side of the brain can’t fathom God out with logic and language. We need both aspects in life – despite the fact that the “leaders” of our society stimulate the left side of the brain much more. This is one of the problems of the Theologian, who doesn’t want to see his discipline set amongst the Arts rather than the Sciences.

Shalom

[Uccisore]

Bob-

The terms you use to refer to God, indefinable, indescribable, and so on. I can see those used as terms of endearment that aren’t literal. For example, I can say that a mountain is ‘incomprehensibly’ heavy. But of course, a geologist could tell me how heavy it was.

What I think you are missing is the fact that the mystic experiences God as defying expression or description -

  I'm still hung up on this. If the mystic experiences God in any way at all, then they have the beginnings of a [i]description[/i] of God. God must in some way resemble their experience, or at the very least, be capable of generating the experience they had. It they did not think so, they would have to admit there was no reason to suppose God was the cause of the experience in the first place, right? Did you see my analogy of the fox tracks? I still think it's apt. :slight_smile: 
  Consider memory. Memory of an experience is not the experience itself (as we all learn to our dissappointment sooner or later). If you remember an experience of God, what you're doing is saying "My experience of God was [i]like this[/i]." Now, I can take your word for it (grudgingly) that there's no way to put these experiences into words. However, all the important bits are there- comparing God to something else, thinking of it in terms of whatever else you know. All that's left it to put a label on it, it seems.

[omar]

Hello Uccisore:

— Can’t say I have. What’s it like?
O- Delicious. Ever had Vino di Mandorla? Very sweet. But why did you choose Maine as your home? Only bears and deers should be allowed there…

— You’re certainly right. What I would content is that if someone here has spoken about the ineffable (if you’ll permit the expression) enough that we are clued that they believe in it, it’s not really ineffable at all.
O- But then again, if I was to believe in something I can’t quite understand, why not be unengaging? Leave a little room for doubt eh? But here is the thing, of that of which one cannot speak, then one must be silent. If what I believe in is indeed Ineffable, then i should not even pretend to describe it or talk of it. If someone HAS SPOKEN, then perhaps what they hold as ineffable is anything but.
The validity of the mystic experience is lost once he tries to describe it to the world.

— It seems we agree then, but are coming at it from opposite directions. Yes, I agree with you that something truly ineffable wouldn’t be like a stomach cramp or anything else. Likewise, I believe that it’s impossible for a human to experience anything ineffable, and so, I believe references to God as the ineffable are in error.
O- I think that experiences about “God”, Love or some other emotion (and perhaps that is all “God” refers itself to) are not beyond language, but that language cannot give you my private experience identically. a woman might describe to what is “like” to have a baby, but as a man, I really will not know, only imagine based on the strenght of the allegory.
When we talk about God a similar thing occurs. Is God, in your opinion an equal experience for us all? Is God an objective concept, I guess is what I mean? If It is a subjective concept, a private thing, then no matter how much agreement we reach, what that experience is in-itself is, by definition, beyond transferability and if we decide to agree on God, or what God is for us, then the original impression is lost and dropped and replaced by a facsimile that may obscure what in fact God, or something like it, objectively is.
It is like Beauty. We might look at a work of art and agree that it is “beautiful”, but while we use the same word, my interpretation of it might coincide instead with your conception of “pretty”. I feel this with my wife when we go shopping.

That is so beautiful, don’t you think honey?

Yeah…I guess…

— We may not have agreement on what is beautiful, but that doesn’t keep us from agreeing on what beautiful is, if you follow me.
O- No I don’t follow. If have no agreement, but we have an agreement?

— Even if we find completely different things beautiful, the word can still have meaning and foster concensus if our reaction to the various things we call beautiful is consistant and similar enough to be compared.
O- Can that be said about even one single religion?

— So- I know what beauty is without need of you, because I experience things as beautiful.
O- You experience what is beautiful…to you and not what is beautiful in itself. In fact there is no beauty outside of our subjective judgment. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, not in the thing beheld.

— I know that you experience beauty, because you have the same reaction as I do to various things- even if not to the same things.
O- No you don’t know that. The outward reaction is no measure of equvalence. A child may shed tears like a grown up, but what brings a man to tears is a worse pain than what brings the child to tears. You only know that I have presented a reaction, but you cannot say that it is the same sensation within that has caused that presentation. I may be a shallow person that cannot appreciate the work of art at the same level you do, or a liar, who agrees so as not to appear dumb or socially incompetent or out of step. All you have is an outward action, an effect, due to who-knows-what cause.

— Fortunately, we are all humans, and beauty comes in degrees, so there is overlap- we will find things that we both find beautiful, it’s inevitable.
O- Ahh, that is a hope, that since I am a man no man can be truly a strager to me. But how could you prove a thing like that? Perhaps my doubts are exagerated, but they are not absured and so cannot be ruled out and remain with us.

— I don’t think God operates like this much at all, as an aside.
O- God works in mysterious ways…

[Dan1 (Dan~)]

@Dan~

Even if it isn’t interchangeable, a person can still say when and where the experience occured, and what effects it had, thus hinting towards it and making it a bit easier to be found by others.
=)

@Mastriani

All commentary; verbal, written or digitally transmitted; by this poster is expressly a matter of personal opinion, individual belief, personal experience, and is not intended to purport necessity of change(s), implied/perceived, to other posters; physical, mental or emotional. Any attempt to treat this post in a manner contradictory to what has been thusly stated is erroneous, and is the fault, entirely, of the reader of said post.

Dan,

Or you could just be obfuscating the path of another with words that either have no meaning in their experience, or are wholly confusing, or wholly erroneous through the perception of an inexperienced person/mind???

[size=150]I was right–in what I said.

Ineffable experience:
Brain produces chemical reaction during comprehension/experience, brain also produces “thought” & “word”.

The “ineffable” is not “ineffable” because to experience is to know, at least in part, and then what is known can be expressed, at least in part.[/size]

[Uccisore]

Omar

Delicious. Ever had Vino di Mandorla? Very sweet. But why did you choose Maine as your home? Only bears and deers should be allowed there…

Maine? Well, I wouldn’t say I chose it, exactly…but I’m here because it’s quiet, out of the way, even isolated you might say. Bear and deer make fine company, and if so many people want to retire here, it can’t be all bad.

If what I believe in is indeed Ineffable, then i should not even pretend to describe it or talk of it. If someone HAS SPOKEN, then perhaps what they hold as ineffable is anything but.

That would be my speculation. I feel like I know more about the Ineffable than I ought to, considering it’s alleged mysteriousness and inexpressibility. Also, religions seem to have no trouble talking about God, and I can’t fathom how the Ineffable God could be so utterly different that we can’t speak of it, and yet similar enough that’s it’s fair to apply the ‘G’ word.

I think that experiences about “God”, Love or some other emotion (and perhaps that is all “God” refers itself to) are not beyond language, but that language cannot give you my private experience identically.

I agree with this, but I also think this is true of all mundane things (dogs, ears of corn), and see no reason to make an especially big deal of this when talking about spiritual matters.

Is God, in your opinion an equal experience for us all? Is God an objective concept, I guess is what I mean?

What I think is that God is an objective object (there is a particular way He is). The experiences people have of Him, however, seem to be varied and not 100% reliable. I don't think we all experience Him equally. Does this answer your question?
 Yes, I think there is a risk in losing sight of God through the limitations of our experience. But, I think that's the benefit of religion. God has given us revelation, which is sort of an anchor that keeps our interpretation from drifting too far. One of the key precepts of all monotheisms, as far as I can tell, is that we could never know God if He didn't want us to. 

No I don’t follow. If have no agreement, but we have an agreement?

What I mean is, you know what I mean when I say “That is beautiful”, because you know what it’s like to find things beautiful yourself. That we feel this way about different things is a seperate matter. But it seems you would disagree with this?

Can that be said about even one single religion?

I don’t follow your question, though I sense it’s important. Can you come at it again?

[omar]

Hi Ucc.

Do you like to hunt deer? I admit, if I was into that type of sport, I would definitely call ME my home. But the 3 feet worth of snow in one hour? Now that is just not for humans, even when we are inside cozy 4x4. I saw all that white and I thought, “If the car breaks down, I am losing at least the pinky-toe.”
But what a beautiful sight, all them trees dressed in white…

— Also, religions seem to have no trouble talking about God, and I can’t fathom how the Ineffable God could be so utterly different that we can’t speak of it, and yet similar enough that’s it’s fair to apply the ‘G’ word.
O- we also have “Y” words and “N” words (yes and no), but we must allow that the reason we have these concepts in common, these ideas, is not because some public object has inform our ideas but that our common human needs have.

— I agree with this, but I also think this is true of all mundane things (dogs, ears of corn), and see no reason to make an especially big deal of this when talking about spiritual matters.
O- I would make a big deal because of the degree involved. Suppose we look at an object. You say: “Cat”. I say: “Corn”. We still would have the possibility to agree based on a re-direction into the observable; that is I would show you that that object is indeed “Corn” and that a “Cat” is something else, just like with a child. “No, no, that is not a corn. This is a corn. That which you have there is a cat”.
We have all these objects right before us and all we need is to agree on the name each should have. The name we choose is not consequential to the actual object and so we do not linger on the conflict and it is quickly resolved.
But the same cannot be said about articles of the mind, such as beauty, justice, love, good, bad etc. the emotional attachment we hold, and which hold us, does not allow for detached comparassion. we have no-thing to compare. We only share here ideas and ideas are so imprecise.
Because our subjects lack an actual (it is only supposed) objectivity, like a chair, the ideas we exchange can manipulate, for better or worse, the Article in our minds (the concept).
This is why orthodoxy arose, less the concept God would have become so many diverse ideas that it would have applied to almost any-thing, and negatively, to no-thing.
If Muslims, Jews and Christians, further speak of the “G” word is also because of the syncretism, perfectly evident in the Koran, and NT.

— What I think is that God is an objective object (there is a particular way He is). The experiences people have of Him, however, seem to be varied and not 100% reliable. I don’t think we all experience Him equally. Does this answer your question?
O- Raises more questions actually. You say that you think God is an objective object. Would you also say that he is a public object? But if God is as public and objective as the Moon and the Sun, why should the experiences people have of It seem varied? Why, for example, were Erasmus and Luther at odds with one another?

— But, I think that’s the benefit of religion.
O- Yes. Religion’s first duty is to bring unity and order to the chaos of multiple interpretations. A religion is a religion by creating a monopoly on acceptable interpretations. Historically, when a member of a religion wishes to go beyond those limits, or set new limits, he or she inevitably creates for him/herself a new religion in which again, another monopoly is sought.

— God has given us revelation, which is sort of an anchor that keeps our interpretation from drifting too far.
O- This is a declaration of faith. It was not a single revelation. there were many versions of christianity and one eventually won. as it was it was survival of the fittest…or easiest.

— What I mean is, you know what I mean when I say “That is beautiful”, because you know what it’s like to find things beautiful yourself. That we feel this way about different things is a seperate matter. But it seems you would disagree with this?
O- Not to be difficult but yes. Beauty is tied up with so many things. Not only can my definition, my appreciation for beauty differ from others but also within myself, so that how I feel emotionally at a certain moment will influence my opinion about what is beauty. Ever feel in love with a girl? Boy, during those initial days or weeks you swear up and down that she is beautiful and gorgeous. then you break up badly and all of the sudden that beauty you felt she had quickly fades. Why? because her beauty was never an actual object for you but tied to your sentiments.
Sometimes I will buy a CD for a particular song. I listen to the whole CD waiting for that song to come up, and the other songs just pass me by. Then, after several other times, I listen to it, and a song I heard before thousands of times suddenly strikes me as beautiful. The reverse becomes true as well. the song I bought the CD for, after listening to it for so long and so often, it becomes a bad song.
I guess we could say that we can change and so do our opinions on things.

— I don’t follow your question, though I sense it’s important. Can you come at it again?
You had said:
“Even if we find completely different things beautiful, the word can still have meaning and foster concensus if our reaction to the various things we call beautiful is consistant and similar enough to be compared.”
O- Can we be sure that our reactions, as a humanity, towards God, as an idea, have been constant and similar enough to warrant a unity of meaning? Within Judaism and Christianity, for example we see an evolution of God as a concept. The God of Deuteronomy is not like Christ. One heresy developed just because of that clear assumption. It is the fact that we have “heresies” that belies our hope at having said continuity. Even in our day, I would say that the Christianity held by some like Nick A, esoteric Christianity, lacks a consistancy and similarity to what was described by Augustine, Ignatious, James, Polycarp, certainly Tertullian and Luther, based on what I have read so far.
Christianity is like James Bond. One name goes for several different actors who have taken on the role. Likewise, Christianity’s “God” is a figure, the name of a character in a play, that can have it’s lines changed without ever becoming a different character. As such, “God” need be no more objective that “Superman” or “Dracula”…

[my_real_name]

EDIT

[Bob]

Hi Ucc.,

The terms you use to refer to God, indefinable, indescribable, and so on. I can see those used as terms of endearment that aren’t literal. For example, I can say that a mountain is ‘incomprehensibly’ heavy. But of course, a geologist could tell me how heavy it was.

Yes, but if your want to compare physical entities with the God who called to Moses “out of the midst of the bush”, or the God who “looks forth from heaven upon the children of men”, we then have a problem. God is not a physical manifestation, except when he is in men of the spirit – although even then the man is visible, not the spirit.

We have in the past agreed that we must not take every word of the Bible literally, but understand what is meant. When Christ says, “I and the Father are one” the Unity is implicated although the union is not visible – except indirectly in the composure and wisdom of Christ. In modern terms, we could talk of the unity of “I” meaning my awareness, and “the Father” meaning what we experience as the collective unknown and source of intuition, important dreams and visions, being “one” i.e. without the subconscious as an intermediary step. That is what being submerged in the Ineffable could be described as.

The fact that this experience is also combined with the expression of promise, confirmation and benevolence strengthens the experience of the “fatherly” - although the ancients could have accepted the connotation to the “motherly”. The one who says, “I have overcome the world” has conquered, overcome or prevailed over the disunity of the general state of humankind. The fear that accompanies such disunity, seeing good and evil in the polarity of life without being able to keep both in focus in order to promote the one and avoid the other, weighs us down. To overcome means to bear or suffer them both calmly.

The more we polarise our efforts, the less we achieve. The more we run off to the left or the right, the more we lose our balance. The more we lose our balance the sicker we become, because we need the unity and the wholeness of life “in God”. In fact, our illnesses are only symptomatic of imbalance and lacking of wholeness and the attempts of the soul to regain that balance. The “One” that God is, is ineffable by the measure of the duality of our brains and consequently of our experience of life, especially from the perspective of our left half, and can only be circumscribed or in a way paraphrased using the right side of the brain.

If the mystic experiences God in any way at all, then they have the beginnings of a description of God. God must in some way resemble their experience, or at the very least, be capable of generating the experience they had. It they did not think so, they would have to admit there was no reason to suppose God was the cause of the experience in the first place, right?

I think you are right that there is something left behind during such an experience, but a “description” would be saying too much. It is more of an impression like the “shining face” of Moses. As with incurvature (mirror-image) left by an imprint, the mental picture left behind must be circumscribed, because for a description you would have to have apprehended or seized God – which we can’t do. The nearest description of such an attempt is Jacob at Peniel.

Did you see my analogy of the fox tracks? I still think it’s apt…

…If I find tracks in the snow outside my house, and upon reflection form the belief that they were made by a fox, I cannot turn around and say that I know nothing at all about this fox- at the very least, I am committed to the claim that it has four feet of a certain size, that it has enough weight to depress the snow just so, the number of toes it has, many other things as well. If I deny those things, then I deny the very reason why the tracks suggested ‘fox’ in the first place.

These tracks too are impressions. They are however impressions left behind by a physical entity that you can seize or apprehend. You can study the entity itself and are not just left with the tracks. With the experience of God, we have a lasting impression, perhaps even the “wrenched hip” of Jacob, but we are left waiting – perhaps for a long time – for such an impression to be made again.

Consider memory. Memory of an experience is not the experience itself (as we all learn to our dissappointment sooner or later). If you remember an experience of God, what you’re doing is saying “My experience of God was like this.” Now, I can take your word for it (grudgingly) that there’s no way to put these experiences into words. However, all the important bits are there- comparing God to something else, thinking of it in terms of whatever else you know. All that’s left it to put a label on it, it seems.

Indeed, but this argument turns on you. All scripture is memory – inspired memory perhaps, but memory. It is not the experience itself and you must ask yourself whether you can trust the images that are transported here too. I find that they are trustworthy, providing they are not taken literally. I also find that it is completely understandable that metaphor, allegory, myth, satire, poetry and whatever other literary forms may be used are vehicles for the message.

Shalom

[Bob]

Hi Ucc.,

The terms you use to refer to God, indefinable, indescribable, and so on. I can see those used as terms of endearment that aren’t literal. For example, I can say that a mountain is ‘incomprehensibly’ heavy. But of course, a geologist could tell me how heavy it was.

Yes, but if you want to compare physical entities with the God who called to Moses “out of the midst of the bush”, or the God who “looks forth from heaven upon the children of men”, we then have a problem. God is not a physical manifestation, except when he is in men of the spirit – although even then the man is visible, not the spirit.

We have in the past agreed that we must not take every word of the Bible literally, but understand what is meant. When Christ says, “I and the Father are one” the Unity is implicated although the union is not visible – except indirectly in the composure and wisdom of Christ. In modern terms, we could talk of the unity of “I” meaning my awareness, and “the Father” meaning what we experience as the collective unknown and source of intuition, important dreams and visions, being “one” i.e. without the subconscious as an intermediary step. That is what being submerged in the Ineffable could be described as.

The fact that this experience is also combined with the expression of promise, confirmation and benevolence strengthens the experience of the “fatherly” - although the ancients could have accepted the connotation to the “motherly”. The one who says, “I have overcome the world” has conquered, overcome or prevailed over the disunity of the general state of humankind. The fear that accompanies such disunity, seeing good and evil in the polarity of life without being able to keep both in focus in order to promote the one and avoid the other, weighs us down. To overcome means to bear or suffer them both calmly.

The more we polarise our efforts, the less we achieve. The more we run off to the left or the right, the more we lose our balance. The more we lose our balance the sicker we become, because we need the unity and the wholeness of life “in God”. In fact, our illnesses are only symptomatic of imbalance and lacking of wholeness and the attempts of the soul to regain that balance. The “One” that God is, is ineffable by the measure of the duality of our brains and consequently of our experience of life, especially from the perspective of our left half, and can only be circumscribed or in a way paraphrased using the right side of the brain.

If the mystic experiences God in any way at all, then they have the beginnings of a description of God. God must in some way resemble their experience, or at the very least, be capable of generating the experience they had. It they did not think so, they would have to admit there was no reason to suppose God was the cause of the experience in the first place, right?

I think you are right that there is something left behind during such an experience, but a “description” would be saying too much. It is more of an impression like the “shining face” of Moses. As with incurvature (mirror-image) left by an imprint, the mental picture left behind must be circumscribed, because for a description you would have to have apprehended or seized God – which we can’t do. The nearest description of such an attempt is Jacob at Peniel.

Did you see my analogy of the fox tracks? I still think it’s apt…

…If I find tracks in the snow outside my house, and upon reflection form the belief that they were made by a fox, I cannot turn around and say that I know nothing at all about this fox- at the very least, I am committed to the claim that it has four feet of a certain size, that it has enough weight to depress the snow just so, the number of toes it has, many other things as well. If I deny those things, then I deny the very reason why the tracks suggested ‘fox’ in the first place.

These tracks too are impressions. They are however impressions left behind by a physical entity that you can seize or apprehend. You can study the entity itself and are not just left with the tracks. With the experience of God, we have a lasting impression, perhaps even the “wrenched hip” of Jacob, but we are left waiting – perhaps for a long time – for such an impression to be made again.

Consider memory. Memory of an experience is not the experience itself (as we all learn to our dissappointment sooner or later). If you remember an experience of God, what you’re doing is saying “My experience of God was like this.” Now, I can take your word for it (grudgingly) that there’s no way to put these experiences into words. However, all the important bits are there- comparing God to something else, thinking of it in terms of whatever else you know. All that’s left it to put a label on it, it seems.

Indeed, but this argument turns on you. All scripture is memory – inspired memory perhaps, but memory. It is not the experience itself and you must ask yourself whether you can trust the images that are transported here too. I find that they are trustworthy, providing they are not taken literally. I also find that it is completely understandable that metaphor, allegory, myth, satire, poetry and whatever other literary forms may be used are vehicles for the message.

Shalom

[tentative]

Perhaps now is a good time to explain my personal pre-occupation with the concept of “ineffable”. It isn’t that I have no impression of God. I have had many experiences that have left me in awe, humble before, and sensing being in the presence of all that is… Perhaps it is my reverence for the pure spirituality of these experiences that causes me to not accept the proclaimed knowing of God and all his attributes.

I could easily fill pages with “God is like…”, but my experiences are such that words aren’t even a close approximation in conveying the heart/mind understanding of those experiences. Now it is quite possible that it is simply a matter of my poor skills with words, but I see others struggle with the same thing. If we took all the words written over the ages of “God is like…”. Then how can we possibly not “know” that which is God? For me, the answer is obvious. Whatever God is, is beyond words, and in that comes the term ‘ineffable’.

In this forum, I would hope that we have more questions than answers. Perhaps we could find ways of not telling God, who, how, and what he is or isn’t. As I understand it, there is only on Pontiff, and we should perhaps leave the pontificating where it belongs.

[Uccisore]

Bob

I think you are right that there is something left behind during such an experience, but a “description” would be saying too much. It is more of an impression like the “shining face” of Moses. As with incurvature (mirror-image) left by an imprint, the mental picture left behind must be circumscribed, because for a description you would have to have apprehended or seized God – which we can’t do. The nearest description of such an attempt is Jacob at Peniel.

Two things:
Firstly, isn’t this a matter of degree? You’ll have no trouble getting an acknowledgement from me that discussing or describing God is difficult- quite a bit more difficult than many other subjects. One only needs to read a book on theology, then read a book on planting potatos, to see a marked difference. But I see no reason to say these difficulties are absolute- that we simply can’t know, can’t describe, and so on. There are far too many people who take themselves to be doing so.
Secondly, it seems we both believe in the concept of Revelation- the whole point of religion is that man is insuffecient to accomplish these things, and that God has come down and revealed Himself. Any sort of ‘relationship’ themed religion would go on to say that the revelations continue on a personal level. The problems you, Omar, and Tentative describe are the problems of someone relying on natural theology alone, it seems to me (which is why theism without religion is so easy to defeat, I think). A Deist might have to concede that they can know nothing at all of God, but why us?

These tracks too are impressions. They are however impressions left behind by a physical entity that you can seize or apprehend.

Ahh, but I can sieze and apprehend impressions in my mind [i]even more clearly[/i] than the physical. The impression that God makes upon me with these experiences is just as telling as a fox-track. Did the experience make me calm, agitated, fearful or joyous? Did it come suddenly, or after meditation or petition? There's many ways one can reflect on their own experiences, just as validly as they can on a physical object before them. And again, if we say "This happy, fearful, sudden experience was an experience of God", we are claiming something about God- in fact, we must have already have claimed something about Him- in order to justly attach him to the experiences. 

Indeed, but this argument turns on you. All scripture is memory – inspired memory perhaps, but memory. It is not the experience itself and you must ask yourself whether you can trust the images that are transported here too. I find that they are trustworthy, providing they are not taken literally.

I don’t see how this turns on me, it seems to play right into what I want to say. Yes, I find memory to be a generally reliable and trustworthy system of representation that is why I say that if we can remember experiences of God, we are processing them in a representational way, which has with it all the ‘difficult’ parts of putting something into language.

[Uccisore]

Omar:

Do you like to hunt deer? I admit, if I was into that type of sport, I would definitely call ME my home. But the 3 feet worth of snow in one hour? Now that is just not for humans, even when we are inside cozy 4x4. I saw all that white and I thought, “If the car breaks down, I am losing at least the pinky-toe.”

To be honest, I find cold weather to be a focus. The idea that it could kill you in a couple hours if you don’t take it into consideration, and treat it carefully, kinda tethers me to reality in a way. Plus, it is beautiful, and I do like driving on icy roads. But no, you won’t find me hunting or fishing. I hike, I camp, I like to explore the wrecks of old farm houses and such that you find here and there.

we also have “Y” words and “N” words (yes and no), but we must allow that the reason we have these concepts in common, these ideas, is not because some public object has inform our ideas but that our common human needs have.

Well, “yes” and “no” are completely different than God- those are purely linquistic tools, they aren’t alleged objects with their own alleged qualities. If you say “God, to me, is like this,” you have implied to me that, whatever else you say, your God is also like mine in ways you may or may not have mentioned- or else you ought not have used the word.

But the same cannot be said about articles of the mind, such as beauty, justice, love, good, bad etc. the emotional attachment we hold, and which hold us, does not allow for detached comparassion. we have no-thing to compare. We only share here ideas and ideas are so imprecise

.

So I guess the question is, is God like a cat, or is God like beauty? It would be easy to say that in general we experience Him like we experience beauty, and let that be the end of it. However, the entire thrust of most religious experiences, as I understand them, is that they put man in contact with something outside or beyond himself. This puts God in the realm of cats, if the experiences are at all reliable. If they aren’t, if we’re going to assume that all religious experiences amount to an ‘undigested bit of beef, or blot of mustard’, then there’s no point in even talking about all this.

This is why orthodoxy arose, less the concept God would have become so many diverse ideas that it would have applied to almost any-thing, and negatively, to no-thing.

I agree with this, and the answer is same for the theist as the atheist- Either or man or God gave us orthodoxy to keep our imperfect interpretations of religious experience from letting us drift to far off the mark.

You say that you think God is an objective object. Would you also say that he is a public object? But if God is as public and objective as the Moon and the Sun, why should the experiences people have of It seem varied?

I believe that God is a public object, yes, but that is a matter of religion- it's not something I can deduce from his objectivity. Most objective objects are also public, the only exception I can think of are minds, but then, God is very much like a mind. I can do better with your next question. 
God has no physical form, but he has a Mind, and if you'll permit, mind lends itself to personality.  Acceptance of God's personhood resolves a great many questions about theology to me. This is one of them. The reason why the experiences people have of God are varied is that persons are not forced to follow easily predictable patterns of behavior, like the Moon and Sun are. God has [i]aims[/i], I believe, and without straying too far into open-theism, I would say that since contigent events change, God's actions can change as well. In other words, you experience God differently than I do because it suits His aims that it should be so. 
If God were like a heavenly body that must rise in the east and set in the west, we'd all have the same experiences of Him. 

Why, for example, were Erasmus and Luther at odds with one another?

For the same reason that our opinions of a president or an author will vary greatly, while our opinions of the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere will vary little.

This is a declaration of faith. It was not a single revelation. there were many versions of christianity and one eventually won. as it was it was survival of the fittest…or easiest.

A winner has been declared? Why wasn’t I informed of this? (:

Can we be sure that our reactions, as a humanity, towards God, as an idea, have been constant and similar enough to warrant a unity of meaning?

No, I think it's the opposite. I do not think our reactions towards God, taken as a whole, have been that constant or similar at all. I think you would need to narrow down these reactions to a very small thread (not just Christianity, but smaller, not just one demonination, but probably smaller still) to find something that consistant. 

But I also don’t have a very high opinion of sociology. What the masses have done as a trend matters very little- that Nick_A, Dan~ and me are likely to have very different things to say about God is not a crisis, so long as what Jesus, Augustine, and so on said is preserved for us to study. That is why it is well and good that religion is always tied to heirarchy, scholastics, and Institution. The primary function of all these things is as a preservative.

Likewise, Christianity’s “God” is a figure, the name of a character in a play, that can have it’s lines changed without ever becoming a different character. As such, “God” need be no more objective that “Superman” or “Dracula”…

Well, there’s no doubt at all that God has been treated in exactly that way by numerous works of fiction (not all of which admit to being fiction). But then, so has most any historical figure.
[/quote]

[Nick_A]

JT writes

As I understand it, there is only on Pontiff, and we should perhaps leave the pontificating where it belongs.

Now if you could just remember that.

[Bob]

Hi Ucc.,

Firstly, isn’t this a matter of degree? You’ll have no trouble getting an acknowledgement from me that discussing or describing God is difficult- quite a bit more difficult than many other subjects. One only needs to read a book on theology, then read a book on planting potatos, to see a marked difference. But I see no reason to say these difficulties are absolute- that we simply can’t know, can’t describe, and so on. There are far too many people who take themselves to be doing so.

It isn’t so much a question of absolutes. We can’t know God in His entirety because we perceive only in part, whereas He is the whole. Therefore, we get impressions that help us but they may easily be different to the impressions other people get and above all, they may be interpreted with a different cultural understanding. Of course there are many people witnessing, but those who do so sola scriptura are generally speculating on the words of another.

The experiences not only of contemporary Christian Mystics, but Mystics of all religions and throughout history point to the same basic insight: the Ineffable is beyond our comprehension and leaves important impressions on witnesses, but a description is not possible.

Secondly, it seems we both believe in the concept of Revelation- the whole point of religion is that man is insuffecient to accomplish these things, and that God has come down and revealed Himself. Any sort of ‘relationship’ themed religion would go on to say that the revelations continue on a personal level. The problems you, Omar, and Tentative describe are the problems of someone relying on natural theology alone, it seems to me (which is why theism without religion is so easy to defeat, I think). A Deist might have to concede that they can know nothing at all of God, but why us?

The revelation of God reveals the ongoing requirement of Mankind to become whole again and overcome the polarity that is portrayed in the Eden myth. The discovery of Abraham, of Isaac and Jacob is progressively that God is not restricted like the gods of stone, which in fact portrays the progress of the Fathers perception. The revelation of God effects the awakening of mankind.

In the Exodus the most repeated phrase about God is, “…Jhvh thy Elohim is giving to thee…” or “Jhvh thy Elohim has been with thee; thou hast not lacked anything” which is more an appeal than a description of Revelation. Of course there are a number of incidents, when God is described:

Num 23:19 El is not a man -who lies …
Deu 4:24 for Jhvh thy Elohim is a fire consuming - a zealous El.
Deu 4:31 for a merciful Elohim is Jehovah thy El
Deu 6:4 Shema, O Israel, Jhvh our Elohim is one Jhvh; Deu 16:22 see that thou dost not raise up to thee any standing image which Jhvh thy Elohim is hating. 2Sa 22:2-3 and he saith: Jhvh is my high rock and my strong place, and a deliverer to me, the Elohim of my refuge - I will confide in Him; my shield, and the strength of my liberty, My high tower, and my retreat! My defender, from violence Thou dost defend me!
Job 36:26 Lo, El is mighty, And we know Him not, and of the number of His years there is no searching.
Ecc 5:2 Cause not thy mouth to be rash, and let not thy heart hasten to bring out a word before Elohim, for Elohim is in the heavens, and thou on the ground, therefore let thy words be few.

Of course the New Testament provides more information:

Joh 4:24 Theos is Pneuma
Rom 1:19 inasmuch as the gnostos of Theos is shining among them, Theos did show it to them himself
Jam 1:13-14 Let no one relate, having being tempted -`I have been tempted away from God,’ for God is not temptable by worthlessness, and Himself doth tempt no one, but each one is tempted, being led away and enticed by his own longing
1Jo 1:5 And this is the message that we have heard from Him, and announce to you, that God is light, and darkness in Him is not at all;
1Jo 4:8 he who is not loving did not know God, because God is love.

I find that the revelation I have quoted doesn’t have a particularly clear description of God, more a definition of the relationship of Mankind with God.

…I can sieze and apprehend impressions in my mind even more clearly than the physical. The impression that God makes upon me with these experiences is just as telling as a fox-track. Did the experience make me calm, agitated, fearful or joyous? Did it come suddenly, or after meditation or petition? There’s many ways one can reflect on their own experiences, just as validly as they can on a physical object before them. And again, if we say “This happy, fearful, sudden experience was an experience of God”, we are claiming something about God- in fact, we must have already have claimed something about Him- in order to justly attach him to the experiences.

You may well “seize and apprehend impressions” but memories are not the experience itself. Like a German theologian once said, “do we hold truth in our hands like a stone, or is it not more like the bright beam of a star at night that gradually fades with the new day, leaving us to yearn its return?” I find that the outstanding experiences I have had were not like the inspiration that follows petitioning or even meditation, but occurred between two moments leaving me helplessly acknowledging my or our need and seeing a Way open up. Once I was simply silenced. I have seldom experienced anything ecstatic, except a long time ago, but rather a quiet strengthening and assuredness.

I do however find that the metaphorical descriptions of the acknowledged Mystics give me words or a means to circumscribe experiences – but they help me. Would they help you?

Shalom

[Dan1 (Dan~)]

• Unborn reality is always subjective.
• Born and existent reality is always objective.
• What exists and can give birth at the same time–is both objective and subjective.
• The human mind-body is both subjective and objective.

I think only the origin of the unborn is ineffible, because what is born is reality; expressable.

Ever since I had that dream about the skunks it’s changed me; those damned sexy skunks!

DAMNED SEXY SKUNKS!

[size=75]Damned sexy skunks, damned sexy skunks, damned sexy skunks, damned sexy skunks, damned sexy skunks, damned sexy skunks, damned sexy skunks, damned sexy skunks, damned sexy skunks, damned sexy skunks, damned sexy skunks, damned sexy skunks, damned sexy skunks, damned sexy skunks, damned sexy skunks![/size]

[Mastriani]

All commentary; verbal, written or digitally transmitted; by this poster is expressly a matter of personal opinion, individual belief, personal experience, and is not intended to purport necessity of change(s), implied/perceived, to other posters; physical, mental or emotional. Any attempt to treat this post in a manner contradictory to what has been thusly stated, is erroneous, and is the fault, entirely, of the reader of said post.

If you had seen this first hand, at the crown of the world, would you really be able to adequately explain this, so it would be personally experienced by the listener, in the exact same manner as it was for you?

Plainly, the answer would be no. Therefore, it is ineffable, until they experience it, for themself. It’s just that simple.

[omar]

Hello Ucc:
Nice pic. You?

— To be honest, I find cold weather to be a focus. The idea that it could kill you in a couple hours if you don’t take it into consideration, and treat it carefully, kinda tethers me to reality in a way.
O- That is very true.

— So I guess the question is, is God like a cat, or is God like beauty? It would be easy to say that in general we experience Him like we experience beauty, and let that be the end of it. However, the entire thrust of most religious experiences, as I understand them, is that they put man in contact with something outside or beyond himself.
O- That is the belief but we cannot be sure of it’s reality. If you read the Old Testament you read of a God that is quite physical; almost as a cat. He creates columns of fire; He parts the Sea; He even writes! But as the story goes along we arrive at Psalms, which often reflect the lack of immediate experience. God goes from writing on tablets to speaking through prophets and as we see in Jeremiah, some are not to be trusted. Even the scriptures, writen by the scribes cannot be trusted. So more and more, the greatness of God, his actuality is more and more in the interpretations found in events.
Bad stuff is happening, but it must be God doing them. We were liberated but not even by a fellow Israelite: God was behind that too.
Because of this, today’s religious experience is removed, I think, from that earlier objectivity. We can all see a column of fire and a parted Sea; we can both of us see the mouth of the volcano and hear it’s thunder, but while back then this meant that we both were hearing God, the man of today hears only natural phenomena.
The “experiences” of today have more to do with how we feel about a particular event than an event or thing being irrefutably God.

— This puts God in the realm of cats, if the experiences are at all reliable.
O- Do you read the news about the sightings of the Virgin Mary in bizzare things, as disparate as tree humps, condensation on a cooler’s door or the chemical accent in a type of glass window? How can one actually judge what is or isn’t a genuine religious experience?

— If they aren’t, if we’re going to assume that all religious experiences amount to an ‘undigested bit of beef, or blot of mustard’, then there’s no point in even talking about all this.
O- Not all are, by necessity, but who can judge that? Can God ever stand by us as we stand by a Cat? And if we consider Jesus, this is still no guarantee. Of the twelve men who witness Jesus miracles and talked and heard his wisdom, one “betrayed” him who was one with God. If Jesus returned, how would you know who he was, or that he was whom he claimed to be?
As real as a Cat, and yet no agreement between John and Judas…

— Most objective objects are also public, the only exception I can think of are minds, but then, God is very much like a mind.
O- Great. Now how do we know that a person has a mind? This is the problem of “other minds” and the solutions our minds gave to the problem could have easily lead to “God”.

— The reason why the experiences people have of God are varied is that persons are not forced to follow easily predictable patterns of behavior, like the Moon and Sun are.
O- That a pretty good assertion Ucc. I agree, of course. Personality being one thing, what about moral imperatives? God’s personality may imprint different impressions on different people but such a view is most jewish than Christian. It raises many issues more than settle any. We can disagree about the character, or personality of a common aquaintance but if that person is active, he could inform us of us of his character as it is, his wishes, desires and ideas. Based on this assumption, how come we have various views on just why did Jesus have to die?

— God has aims, I believe, and without straying too far into open-theism, I would say that since contigent events change, God’s actions can change as well.
O- Do events change God or does God change events? If we believe in His omnipotency the goal and action are one and the same. The only contingent we coulkd produce in respect to God is man’s freewill and even that is questionable, as Luther explained.

— A winner has been declared? Why wasn’t I informed of this? (:
O- Nicea, 4th century.

[Dan1 (Dan~)]

@Mastriani

All commentary; verbal, written or digitally transmitted; by this poster is expressly a matter of personal opinion, individual belief, personal experience, and is not intended to purport necessity of change(s), implied/perceived, to other posters; physical, mental or emotional. Any attempt to treat this post in a manner contradictory to what has been thusly stated, is erroneous, and is the fault, entirely, of the reader of said post.

If you had seen this first hand, at the crown of the world, would you really be able to adequately explain this, so it would be personally experienced by the listener, in the exact same manner as it was for you?

Plainly, the answer would be no. Therefore, it is ineffable, until they experience it, for themself. It’s just that simple.

That problem can be fixed by eventual experience recording and thought uploading once technology becomes advanced enough for that to happen.

So, data on brain A can be coppied onto brain B, this the “ineffable” is now completely and fully known by A and B.

But I still do think that words can slightly describe the “ineffable”.