School is over and other than that I messed up my final exams and paper, the semester was fantastic. I needed this class for its perspectives on life. God always makes for an interesting topic and the mystic’s point of view on the Divine is thought-provoking. 

I used to think that the Supreme Being is an entity we love for what she can do for us. Hence my love for God blossoms when things seemed good and my disbelieve is strong when things appear awful. It never crossed my mind that God must be loved for herself; that God is more than the monster one creates to punish others. That to love God is to be doing oneself a favor. Mysticism allows an individual approach to God and suggests there is a good reason that we do not know what we do not know. 

The mystic believes that God is the answer to that unquenchable thirst that drives our unquenchable desires. It is only God that can satiate, in a way that is never tiring. Neat? They also believe that the Good can be acquired in life––through some real effort. They believe in heaven and hell to be states on earth. And there appears to be a distinction between religion and faith in God. One could argue that from the mystical approach, God is not a religion nor in need of one. I say this because they argue that the contact between God and the human, is the soul. Hence God communicates directly with one.

This semester’s discussion, through the lens of purgatory, introduced the class to Augustine’s three concept of knowing: the corporeal, the imaginative/spiritual, and the intellect. In relation to Dante’s Divine Comedy, hell is corporeal, purgatory is spiritual, and paradise is the intellect. But the notion that the corporeal must perish for the good to be apparent is different in these theories. The corporeal here is  presented also as good. So that there is good even in hell. The medieval concept is that one is made to love and be loved. As Virgil says to the pilgrim:

     Neither Creator nor creature ever, ” he began,
“son, has been without love, whether natural or of the mind, and this you know.
     Natural love is always unerring, but the other
can err with an evil object or with too much or too
little vigor.
      As long as it is directed to the first Good and
moderates its love of lesser goods, it cannot be a
cause of evil pleasure,
     but when it turns aside to evil, or when with
more eagerness or less than is right it runs after
some good, it employs his creature against the
Creator.
     Hence you can comprehend that love must be
the seed in you of every virtue and of every action
that deserves punishment. (Purg. 17.91-105)

The suggestion here is that free will allows that one can choose what/how to love. But that which is one’s true desire, based on one’s original nature is the “first Good,” which is God. However, because one is blind to this understanding, which I suppose is a veil necessary for a veritable free will, one is often drawn to love erroneously the perishable. But as the rest of nature is much closer to its original form, it expresses  more easily the will of “first Good.” So one loves in error by loving perversely, deficiently, or excessively the lesser good and this is the definition of sin. 

This concept interests me greatly. Even if you do not believe in the divine Being, the theory that the nature of a soul is to desire that which is good and is made purposefully for love is a most optimistic concept. It suggests that all that there is, is love. Also the mystic believes that the world is God and all that exists within it is good and made of love and for love. Thus Love is God and one cannot be outside God.

So what of evil? Well there are some interesting theories on the question, but I am very confused on what it all means and I hope to learn more by writing my thesis on the subject. It appears, that which draw us to love is the same as that which draws us to evil:

     The mind, created quick to love, can move
toward everything that is pleasing, as soon as it is
wakened into act by pleasure.
    Your power of apprehension takes from some
real thing an intention and unfolds it within you,
and if, having turned, the mind bends toward it,
that bending is love, that is nature which by
pleasure is first bound in you.
     Then, as fire moves upward because of its form,
which is born to rise to where it may last longer in
its matter,
     so the captured mind enters into desire, which is
a spiritual motion, and it never rests until the
beloved thing causes it to rejoice. (Purg. 18.19-33)

This is a fascinating lens to frame questions about life and God, no? 

—
J. A. Odartey