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More Apophatic Quotes…

23 Sep

God is “incomprehensible and immeasurable, beyond the grasp of the human mind.” “Human minds cannot behold God as He is in Himself” Origen of Alexandria

“He is celebrated by all beings according to the analogy that all things bear to him as their Cause. But the most divine knowledge of God, that in which he is known through unknowing, according to the union that transcends the mind, happens when the mind, turning away from all things, including itself, is united with the dazzling rays, and there and then illuminated in the unsearchable depth of wisdom” “The most Godlike knowledge of God is that which is known by unknowing.” Pseudo Dionysius

theology does “not start by making the assumption of defining God; as St John Damascene remarks, In God we cannot say what he is” “What God actually is always remains hidden from us. And this is the
highest knowledge one can have of God in this life, that we know Him to be above every thought that we are able to think of Him” Thomas Aquinas

“Entering the darkness that surpasses understanding, we shall find ourselves brought, not just to brevity of speech, but to perfect silence and unknowing.” philosopher-monk

“what He is by His essence and nature, this is altogether beyond our comprehension and knowledge” John of Damascus

“He who thinks that God is not comprehended, by him God is comprehended; but he who thinks that God is comprehended knows him not,God is unknown to those who know him and is known to those who do not know him at all.” Kena Upanishads

“The essence of your knowledge of Him, O my brother, is your firm admission that you are completely ignorant of His true essence” Baya ibn Pakudah

“In the contemplation of His essence, our comprehension and knowledge prove insufficient; in the examination of His works, how they necessarily result from His will, our knowledge proved to be ignorance, and in the endeavour to extol Him in words, all our efforts in speech are mere weakness and failure” Maimonides

“From the sayings of some early kabbalists, it is apparent that they are careful not even to ascribe personality to God. Since He is beyond everything—beyond even imagination, thought, or will—nothing can be said of him that is within the grasp of our thought” Gershom Scholem

God is “above and beyond all categories of human thought and imagination, for He is beyond all that they describe of Him” (Q. 6:100b, cited in Nasr 1987:314). He is One Who“cannot be comprehended by vision” (Q. 6:101); “Vision comprehendeth Him not,but He comprehendeth [all] vision.” He is One Incomparable: “There is naught like unto Him” (Q.42:11; cf. 16:60; 32:27). He is supremely “All-High, Transcendent or Exalted” (al-`alíy Q. 4:34; 22:62; 31:30). Qur‘án

‘The Divine Essence (al-dhát al-iláhiyya) cannot be understood by the rational faculty”. “The Divine Essence is transcendent above the cosmos, independent of the worlds” Ibn `Arabá

“none knows Allah with a real knowledge but He Himself; for every known falls necessarily under the sway and within the province of the Knower” Abu Hámid al-Ghazali

“Regard thou the one true God (ḥaqq) as One Who is apart from, and immeasurably exalted above, all created things. The whole universe reflects His glory, while He is Himself independent of, and transcendeth His creatures. This is the true meaning of Divine Unity(tawḥíd)” Baha’

“Immeasurably exalted is His Essence above the descriptions of His creatures… The birds of men’s hearts, however high they soar, can never hope to attain the heights of His unknowable Essence… Far be it from His glory that human pen or tongue should hint at His mystery, or that human heart conceive His Essence” Bahá’u’lláh

“The Formless Way: We look at it and do not see it; it is invisible. We listen to it and do not hear it; it is inaudible. We touch it and do not feel it; it is intangible. These three elude our inquiries and merge into one.” “The unity is said to be the mystery. Mystery of mysteries, the door to all wonders.” Laozi

Apophatic Quotes

21 Sep

“By religious feeling, what I mean altogether independently of anydogma, credo, organization of the Church, Holy Scripture, the hope of personal salvation, etc.—the simple and direct fact of a feeling of the‘eternal.’ This feeling is, in truth, subjective in nature. It is a contact.” Romain Rolland

“‘God’ must be free of properties and is thus unlike anything else, and indescribable.”Moses Maimonides

“an unqualifiable and attribute-less is the nature of ‘God.’”Mulla Rajab

“If you understand, it is not God.” St. Augustine or Augustine of Hippo

“The Tao [the absolute principle underlying the universe] that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao. The
name that can be named is not the eternal name. The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth.”Lao Tzu

“God has no form, no shape, no color, no differences, no race, no religion, no country, no place, no name, neither beginning nor end. God is the grace that lives within all lives.”Bawa Muhaiyaddeen

“You should love [God] as he is a non-God, a non-spirit, a non-person, a non-image, but as he is a pure, unmixed bright ‘One,’ separated from all dualities; and in that One we should eternally sink down, out of something into nothing.” Meister Eckhart

“The name Christ, an unknown significance, just as the title ‘God’ is not a name, but represents the idea, innate in human nature, of an inexpressible reality” Justin Martyr

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Modest Silence…

18 Mar
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Gratitude to the Whole Cosmos

4 Dec
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God Is Greater Than

27 Nov
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True Prayer

25 Nov
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Meditation Is

25 Nov
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Zen Awaken

24 Nov
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Immeasurable…

24 Nov
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Ignorance of…

24 Nov