Spiritual Transcendence and Divine Reality: Beyond Space, Time and Change

will lead to different results depending on the intention with which they are performed and the doctrine that supports them. Just as placing one foot behind the other leads to different places depending on the direction taken and the maps consulted, so spiritual techniques lead to different realizations depending on the intention of those who perform them and the doctrine that sustains them. The direction expressed by this principle is unequivocal: the substantial Reality, the fundamental Truth is outside the Universe, beyond space, time and change. Space, time and causality are the three pillars that support Man's consciousness in manifestation; within them the substantial Reality cannot be found. Although it is immanent in the Universe, that is, present and knowable through this presence of it—according to what is stated in the Principle of Unity of Causes or Monotheism—nevertheless in its essence it remains unknowable. God is not the Universe. The experience of the Universal Man is not the knowledge of divine transcendence, but only of its immanence. Man is not God. He is in God and God is in Him, but between the two there exists a relationship of total dependence: God is Creator, Man is creature. In this clear distinction lies the error of many oriental doctrines that suppose a substantial identity between Man and God. By denying the existence of a transcendent God they make impossible the realization of transcendent states of consciousness. Many of these doctrines therefore aim to obtain a state of Universal consciousness and nothing more. Genesis synthesizes in the first verse the fundamental distinction between Divine Reality and created existence: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. In the Hebrew verse one distinguishes Him-the-Trinity, Elohim, on one side and the creation of heaven and earth on the other. The Hebrew particle that identifies the direct object is the particle eth composed of the first and last letter of the Hebrew alphabet (aleph-tau) which emphasizes the idea of something external to the creator subject. God is different from Man and therefore in his essence is unknowable by Man. If the study of the Universe or any affirmative theology can lead to knowledge of God through knowledge of his qualities or attributes manifest in Man, one must however remember, as Dionysius the Areopagite states in Mystical Theology, that God is other and is nothing of what can be seen or understood with human intellect. The last step of theology is therefore apophatic theology, that is, theology that proceeds in approaching the Divine essence through a clear distinction between this and human reality. On one side therefore we will have knowledge of God operated through invocation and meditation of names and symbols, while on the other we will have knowledge of God operated through a denudation of human consciousness. God in fact is completely different from Man and unknowable to him. The possibility of access to the transcendent life of God is a divine grace operated by the Father towards the Son. Truth has no name, there exists no symbol that can contain it, there exists no name that can indicate it, there exists no doctrine that can illustrate it, nor created intellect that can understand it. The wise call it the All because it is all that exists; outside the All there is only the Nothing from which Creation derives through the free and voluntary action of God. Not being of the same divine substance presupposes in fact a creation of Man from something other than the essence of God, a creation from Nothing. This Nothing has given great thoughts to ancient philosophers because in the ordinary way we have of conceiving things in space and time, true Nothing is inconceivable. Even when man at a given moment, even just with his thought, has removed all matter from a place, the place itself nevertheless remains, as well as time. Place and time are realities that always constitute something and that require some form of energy to be created or modified. When consciousness removes space and time from this place, however, there remains intensity or at least the being with which consciousness identifies. Nothing therefore has no extension, has no distinction, has no duration, has no existence, has not even potentiality of existence since it is not the Conscious Power of Him. Nothing does not have, Nothing is not, Nothing cannot be. For Man therefore Nothing is absurd, incomprehensible yet true. THE LIMITS OF THE UNIVERSE "At the base and beyond the Universe of time, space and change, lies the substantial Reality..." The entire Universe of phenomena is enclosed by space, time and change. These are the three fundamental categories of thought that characterize the world of Action and that physics uses as pillars for its philosophical and scientific analysis: space, time and causality. The physical investigation of the twentieth century has indeed investigated the mutual relations between space, time and causality studied in its form of energy. Such investigation has led to finding two fundamental formulas. The first, coming from Einstein's genius, uses light to bind space and time together; the second, fruit of Heisenberg's idealism, seals in three letters energy and time: $$\Delta s \approx c\Delta t$$ $$\Delta E \cdot \Delta t \approx \hbar$$ The first places on the same level two quantities perceived by human consciousness in very different ways and which are space and time. The second binds causality, that is energy, to these quantities. Since everything is mental, similar relations must also apply to Man's consciousness. For example, one notices that the more an individual is concentrated and conscious of himself, that is, the more he manages to shrink his interior space, the more slowly time will pass for him. Conversely, the less conscious he is of himself, the more he will be projected outward and distracted, the more quickly time will pass for him as happens during sleep in which