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The Saint and the Scripture
A wave particle duality
Every religion has a scriptural canon, a collection of sacred texts that contain truths about the divine reality.
In our literalist culture, many people think the intellect discovers the truth in scripture. They treat scripture as a scientific manual containing facts about the natural world.
But the knowledge in scripture goes beyond what we can know with the intellect. Philosophy can give us reasons to think God exists, and tell us the general properties of God. But the intellect doesn’t have the power to discover the details that are important to us personally.
Why does God create this world? What is the purpose of his creation? What is the nature of the divine realm? And what is the method of our salvation?
That sort of knowledge must be revealed by God. The only way to know someone’s mind is if they reveal their mind to you. Otherwise, the knowledge is hidden. And the same applies to knowing the mind of God.
Knowledge of God must be revealed. Knowledge of the transcendental world is beyond the reach of our senses, mind and intellect.
“In this world, there is nothing as sublime and pure as transcendental knowledge. Such knowledge is the mature fruit of all mysticism.” — Bhagavad Gita 4.38
The static and the dynamic
The spiritual world is a dynamic reality. The divine world is alive and conscious; it’s a living, moving, breathing world.
We’re immersed in that divine reality, not as an impartial bystander, but as an active participant. We can either move in harmony with its natural flow, or struggle against the divine tide.
Those of us in the material world can’t detect the movement of the divine. We look out at the world and see an insentient object. The spiritual seeker needs to know how to gain knowledge of the inner nature of the world. How can we connect with the living soul of the cosmos?
Stephen Hawking boldly claimed that physics could reveal the mind of God, but this is hyperbole. Physics can’t reveal anything beyond the objective…
