Chapter 9 Veiled Reality: Affirmations of the Apophatic from Physics – The God is No-Thing An Apophatic Assertion: An Introduction for Humankind’s Transpersonal Actualization– revised -. Copyright Rodger Ricketts Psy.D.,2023. All rights reserved.
We have seen that science supports the apophatic assertion that a transcendent reality is beyond the normal range of human perception and conceptualization. Yet, at the same time, the Transcendent is a reality in the human life process. We have also seen that awakening or transcending the ignorance of duality is a common experience of the mystic. I will now highlight how the theoretical physicist Bernard d’Espagnat argues that we cannot directly know the transcendental reality or mind-independent reality: When, in its spirit, quantum theory and Bell’s theorem are used as touchstones, the two main traditional philosophical approaches, realism, and idealism, are found wanting. A more suitable conception seems to be an intermediate one, in which the mere postulated existence of a holistic and hardly knowable Mind Independent Reality is found to have explaining power. […] This model considers Reality as not lying in space and time, indeed being a priori to both, and it involves the view that the great mathematical laws of physics may only let us catch some glimpses on the structures of the Mind-Independent Reality. (On Physics and Philosophy (2006) vol. 41) D’Espagnat calls this model “veiled reality” to suggest that the mind-independent reality, like the transcendental of transcendental idealism, is, for the most part, unconceptualizable. “Veiled reality” refers to a “world” independent of human perception, brain structure, and the language of our minds’ participation in knowledge. D’Espagnat, as well as others, also assert that we are directly involved in this actuality; we exist in it. We are an integral part of the actual. We are “swimming” in it. Reality is not a specific area of the universe that exists separate from our senses. Our limitation is that we have the capacity to delineate only an exceedingly small aspect of it. As the Buddha taught, d’Espagnat explains that sense impressions and sensations are genuine, as are our sense organs. In sight and color, both the photons or waves, as well as the retinal cones are actual and their interactions create our vision. The same is true of our other sensations. This is the middle way of understanding our place in reality. We do not have to seek our participation in it; we are a part of it. However, in our dualistically based ignorance, we normally take our cognitive representations, or pictures of reality, to be reality itself. However, under certain meditative conditions, we can understand how our subject/object dualistic world creates this illusion—the illusion that is our ignorance.
Chapter 2 The God is No-Thing An Apophatic Assertion: An Introduction for Humankind’s Transpersonal Actualization– revised -. Copyright Rodger Ricketts Psy.D.,2023. All rights reserved. Protected by international copyright conventions. No part of this chapter may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, without express permission of the Authorpublisher, except in case of brief quotations with due acknowledgement. Publisher CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Chapter 2
Via Negativa and Via Positiva
In this chapter, I will highlight what more I learned about apophatic theology or apophaticism. Those new readings introduced me to Western and other apophatic writers, resulting in my defining the Buddha’s teachings as an example of an apophatic perspective. There are clear similarities between the Buddha’s writing and those of Angelus Silesius and other apophatic theologists. While there is already some scholarship about this similarity, it is, unfortunately, rarely discussed in mainstream Buddhist or theistic literature. This lack of discussion prompted me to integrate relevant aspects of my previous writings on the Buddha’s teachings with fascinating apophatic perspectives and to highlight what I believe are important parallels. In the past, I read some works of Christian mystics like Meister Eckhart and the book The Cloud of Unknowing, but I was never specifically introduced to the apophatic tradition. This past year, as I read the apophatic works of Angelus Silesius and Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, I realized that the Buddha’s teachings could be correctly considered apophatic. This realization opened a new dimension of comprehension and relevance for me about what I had written in my previous books and essays on the Buddha’s teachings. First, let us understand the differences between cataphatic and apophatic theology or via positiva and via negativa–
An Introduction for Humankind’s Transpersonal Actualization
Revised
Apophatic Considerations about Language
Can Human Language Define the Transcendental?
Using a primarily Buddhist and modern linguistic perspective, I will highlight traditional apophatic considerations about language in this chapter. Apophatic theology teaches that the transcendental is ineffable or ultimately beyond description. Negative theology states that since the human mind cannot grasp the infinity of existence, then all words and concepts will fail to adequately describe it. Therefore, human languages provide, at best, a hint of a description of transcendence. Negative theology espouses the avoidance of making affirmations about “God” so as to prevent placing “God” in a “cage of concepts,” which not only limits humanity’s vision of the transcendental but easily becomes an abstracted, dualism-based ignorance of believing in permanence and separateness. Nevertheless, cataphatic theologians make definitive statements about the nature of God, such as God is omniscient, omnipotent, all-loving, all-good, glorious, all-powerful, great, almighty, and so on. However, in doing so, problems of theodicy and logic arise. For example, if God is all-powerful, can “He” make a mountain which is too heavy for Him to lift? In contrast, negative theology recognizes the limits and failings of human logic to understand the sheer dimension of transcendence. Therefore, in the assumptions of negative theology, it is better to say what transcendence is not rather than to say what it is because this places fewer limits on describing what (X) is. Yet, clearly, negative theology is not a denial. Rather, it is an assertion that whatever transcendental reality may be, when we attempt to capture it in human categories and words, we inevitably fail. Some theologians, like Saint Anselm, the eleventh-century Christian theologian, famously wrote, “God is greater than anything that we can conceive.” He also recognized that since human beings cannot fathom the essence of God, then all descriptions of God are ultimately insufficient, and conceptualization is useless. As the non-dualistic, mystical experience cannot be stated in an abstract understanding, apophatic theology maintains that one can never truly define the transcendent reality in words. In the end, the believer must avoid the dualism of words and concepts to best appreciate and experience the nature of emptiness of non-dualism. An awareness of the transcendental is possible, yet this awareness is not based on cognitive constructions and dualistic logic. Being or (X) is No-Thing, non-dualistic, prior to the subject-object division and, instead, can be intuitively understood. While (X) is conceptually and linguistically unknowable, and transcends all human conceptualization, knowledge through silence, or negation of the definitive, is intuitively possible in the silent and empty mind. As the seventeenth-century German Catholic priest and physician Angelus Silesius wrote, “God is a pure no-thing, concealed in now and here; the less you reach for him, the more he will appear.”
I am happy and proud that this reviewer found my book to be of high value and worthy of high recommendation.
Reviewed in the United States on April 1, 2023
“God is No-Thing; An Apophatic Assertion” by Rodger R Ricketts is an outstanding work on apophaticism and how it relates to various religions or philosophies around the world and across time. At the heart of the discussion is the apophatic nature of “God,” Buddhism as a philosophy, and the clear benefits of an apophatic approach in life, both for the individual and for society. The author backs up his claims and observations about the apophatic way with references to scientific research as well as quotes from celebrated mystic and religious people from across time and from different backgrounds. In addition to providing a large body of proof for the validity and benefits of an apophatic way of knowing God, this book also provides a helpful guide to meditation itself and how to go about it.
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Buddhism, meditation, apophatic philosophy, and working for the betterment of themselves and humanity.
We are all Interconnected even with the Universe 