Quotessence
Home / Books / The Experience of God : Being, Consciousness, Bliss

The Experience of God : Being, Consciousness, Bliss

Book by David Bentley Hart · 2 quotes · Consciousness, God, Philosophy

Filter quotes by topic

AllConsciousnessGodPhilosophyTheologyDavid Bentley HartMysticismPrayerRationalityAtheismConsciousness QuoteConsciousness ScienceContemplationContemplative PrayerDevotionDoubtFaithIntellectMindNegative TheologyPhilosophy Of Mind

The Experience of God : Being, Consciousness, Bliss Quotes

“My principal purpose here is to point out again, yet more insistently, that one cannot meaningfully consider, much less investigate, the reality of God except in a manner appropriate to the kind of reality God has traditionally been understood to be. Contemplative discipline, while not by any means the only proper approach to the mystery of God, is peculiarly suited to (for want of a better word) an 'empirical' exploration of that mystery. If God is the unity of infinite being and infinite consciousness, and the reason for the reciprocal transparency of finite being and finite consciousness each to the other, and the ground of all existence and all knowledge, then the journey toward him must also ultimately be a journey toward the deepest source of the self. As Symeon the New Theologian was fond of observing, he who is beyond the heavens is found in the depths of the heart; there is nowhere to find him, William Law (1686–1761) was wont to say, but where he resides in you; for Ramakrishna (1836–1886), it was a constant refrain that one seeks for God only in seeking what is hidden in one’s heart; (...) The practice of contemplative prayer, therefore, is among the highest expressions of rationality possible, a science of consciousness and of its relation to the being of all things, (...)”

SelfGodRealityPrayerConsciousnessTheologyContemplationMysticismContemplative Prayer
Book:The Experience of God : Being, Consciousness, Bliss
Create image

“(...) all the major theistic traditions insist at some point that our language about God consists mostly in conceptual restrictions and fruitful negations. 'Cataphatic' (or affirmative) theology must always be chastened and corrected by 'apophatic' (or negative) theology. We cannot speak of God in his own nature directly, but only at best analogously, and even then only in such a way that the conceptual content of our analogies consists largely in our knowledge of all the things that God is not. This is the via negativa of Christianity, the lahoot salbi (negative theology) of Islam, Hinduism’s 'neti, neti' ('not this, not this'). (...) And for the contemplatives of various traditions, the negation of all those limited concepts that delude us that God is just another being among beings, within our intellectual grasp, is an indispensable discipline of the mind and will. It prepares the mind for a knowledge of God that comes not from categories of analytic reason, but from—as Maximus says—the intimate embrace of union, in which God shares himself immediately as a gift to the created soul.”

PhilosophyGodTheologyMysticismVia NegativaNegative Theology
Book:The Experience of God : Being, Consciousness, Bliss
Create image