The Non-Dual Path of Negation

Abstract

The non-dual path—which runs through the undercurrent of all the great traditions and religions at their esoteric and initiatory level—is underpinned by the doctrine of Unity, namely the fact that the ultimate Reality is one. In this respect, negation is neither local nor tied to a positive content (simple negation), nor does it affirm elsewhere the existence of what it denies (presuppositional negation), but it presents itself, in a more original way, as the neutralization of all determination and dualism, i.e., of false assumptions on what there is that prevent us from accessing to that which, being unqualifiable, really is. In order to grasp the meaning of the via negativa as a path of deconstruction and disidentification (Neti-Neti) and of the apparent obscurity of non-knowledge (Agnosia), which is expressed in the lexicon proper to negative theology (silence, abyss, inexpressible, unrepresentable, non-manifest), the questioning about the Being-in-itself must not be separated from that about one’s own Self. This original negativity, which proceeds from the metaphysical ignorance of the truth of the self and the truth of what is (Avidyā), once lifted, opens the way to the subjective apprehension of Reality, i.e., the perspective of transcendental interiority: the Supreme Identity between the Being-in-itself and Oneself.

1. Introduction: Negation and Neutralization1

How can we understand the status of negativity in negative theology, as it encompasses the principle—silence, the abyss, the inexpressible, the unrepresentable, the non-manifested—and the subject relating to it2? What is the relation between the negativity of the principle and negativity as the subjective ordeal of despair and desolation? To this end, we distinguish between negation and neutralization3.

In the first case, negation depends on what it denies, in that it can only deny to the extent that it denies “something”, i.e., it presupposes the representation of the existence it denies. In its classical sense, negation does not constitute the negation of an existence but that of the representation of this existence. What is denied is a determined representation, most often unconscious of itself, and not the pure existence on which the negation bears. In the second case, neutralization is a process of indetermination, i.e., the pure suspension (or “reduction”, Ausschaltung4) of the representation which governs most of our actions and beliefs.

Neutralization does not consist in negating a term—while negation contains a latent affirmation (“it is not here” meaning “it is elsewhere”)—nor does it deny the existence of a positive content (the unicorn for example), but it suspends the negation itself. There is indeed a “positivity” in negation that makes it unfit to deliver what it is all about, for the problem does not lie in this or that representation, but in the general regime of representation, which, as its Latin etymology indicates, refers to the repetition of an absent presence or, Vor-stellung, to “what-is-laid-before-me”. Its dual structure, between the represented and the representing, between the object and the subject, establishes a difference between the two terms. Representation is structurally constituted by Twoness5.

The problem of “God”—that of his existence and nature—which inevitably involves the destiny of the subject (my own existence) and of the world, comes from the occultation of the nature of the questioner6. This absence of reflexivity, of self-thematization, is itself ordered, ultimately, by a “natural attitude” underpinned by an unconscious metaphysical thesis characterized by the duality of a finite and imperfect self, and a perfect and infinite God, conceived as an “absolute Self”, “other” than “me”. As it turns out, the noetic regime of representation, by its dualistic structure7, cannot but apprehend the relation between the finite and the infinite as that of an unsurpassable separation.

The destruction of this appearing separation8—revealed as an “illusion”—coincides with the process of self-transcendence, i.e., of destruction of the ego which hinders the access to that which cannot be objectified and thus neither thought nor experienced, as it is nothing9 and thus cannot be an object for a subject.

While negation is attached to a determined form, neutralization, on the other hand, overcomes the very opposition between subject and object, opening up to the non-duality of the two terms involved. Negation is attached to the form: it is a limitation agent. Neutralization, supra-formal, is an un-limiting process, leading beyond the double representation—determined and dual—of “God” and “me”10.

The essay aims to clarify the difference between negation—dual, relative because representative—and neutralization, shedding light equally on the destruction of the ego-principle, suffering from its apparent duality with the principle, and on the supra-essential void. Neutrality leads us back to the essential obscurity of that which, being nothing determined, neither this nor that, transcends the very duality of the positive and the negative, of fullness and emptiness11—superior negation for it is the freeing act itself by which, beyond any predicative determination, Divinity is freed from “God” and our Self from “myself”.

Starting with the essential and defining relationship of philosophy to the Principle, we encounter the first type of negativity with reason’s self-realization of the supra-conceptual nature of that which, unthinkable, is yet to think. The self-negating lucidity of Reason, the impossibility of determining the absolute, is associated with the dual and determinative nature of the regime of representation which, structured by the “idea of God” and the “idea of myself” as separate existences, stands in the way to That12 which cannot be “object” of knowledge nor known from “outside”. The limitations of representation are revealed by the supra-formal heart of exoteric forms of religion, which point toward the placeless place of interiority.

Secondly, the lifting of the veil of duality marks the step toward the second level of negation, as negation of representation. Because the duality structures the latter, by abolishing the representation, the negation as the latent position is suspended, so it is necessary to call neutralization (ne-uter) the process that suspends the negation as opposed to affirmation as well13. Referring our apparent knowledge to its unknowingness, “non-knowledge” (Agnosia) becomes the methodological principle leading—such is the meaning of methodos—to the knowledge of the absolute.

The neutralization of the idea of God leads to that which, neutral, exceeds all determination and representation. The neutralization of the idea of myself constitutes for the soul the test of its simplification, the process of deconstruction of its egoity, and, consequently, of the very meaning of its identity. A difficult path, though necessary, through the “night of the soul”, which is indeed the night of a soul on its way through its shadow14. The night would not be so thick if the soul were not often reminded of its emptiness: yet it is there, in the Emptiness of its being, that the Being of beings resides, the “God from within”. The path of interiority leads to the absorption, the enstase, of the subject, in the supra-dual identity between “God” and “me”.

Finally, at the third and last stage of neutralization, the “world” itself is brought back to its illusory beingness as an “external” reality. The veil between “me” and “God” having been lifted, their duality suspended, it is now the world that appears as an appearance of duality. So that “exteriority” being revealed as an externalized interiority, the “outside” as the self-expression of an “inside”, there is fundamentally no difference between the Ultimate Reality, Oneself, and Divinity.

Being in oneself refers to the act of returning to ourselves, as in those ordinary moments of life where the consciousness, magnetized by the outside, caught in the fascination for what it aims, turns towards itself in a counter-intentional way15. In the ordinary dual structure of understanding, interiority is often empirically and psychologically referred to as an ‘’inside’’ by opposition to an “outside” which, in the natural attitude, constitutes the hallmark of reality—naturally construed and defined as “external reality”.

However, once outside and inside, in their oppositional logic, no longer make sense, the neutral path opens up a space for what could be formulated in terms of supra-essential identity between the three meanings of the expression “being in oneself”. In its common sense, the formula refers to the process of self-apprehension of consciousness (“go into yourself”) or the result of this process, Self-identity. In its philosophical sense “being in itself” refers to the true “reality”, “things in themselves” (Dinge an sich). In its theological sense, to the Being-in-itself, infinite, and unconditional, namely to the principle, “God”.

In the following non-dual metaphysical perspective, interiority is not to be attributed to “me”, but it is beyond egoity16. It has nothing to do with the order of manifestation, with its finite and determinate forms, but, on the contrary, with the formless itself. Transcendental interiority, beyond the duality of ‘’inside’’ and ‘’outside’’, is that of a We as One17. The sublime subject’s enstase which celebrates, in the form of the world, God’s movement of ecstasy18.

2. The Premise of Negation: The Idea of God

Reason is powerless to grasp that which, No-Thing, cannot be an object of knowledge and description. But this is a peculiar negation: if for the unbeliever the divine non-appearance is the sign of its non-existence, for the mystic on the other hand there is a Subject at the heart of the worldly phenomenality who does not appear, who, overflowing the immanent conditions of manifestation, shines by his absence (Lavaud 2015). The task of the mystic, in this regard, is to say the unspeakable, to experience the inexperienced, and to manifest the unmanifested.

In other words, negation here is neither a latent affirmation, a presuppositional negation, nor a simple negation, i.e., the pure suppression of a positive content such as the one which denies the divine existence, but the paradoxical modus essendi of that which transcends the very opposition between presence and absence, between position and negation19.

Hence the issue raised by the production by reason itself of the idea of God which, though thought of as unconditional, turns out to be conditioned in so far as the very idea of unconditionality is opposed to the conditions of the self that affirms itself “other” than that which we commonly call “God”. Dually structured, the “idea of God” might then be the main obstacle—as related to a profound ignorance of our own self—to the experience and knowledge of that which cannot be so but as Subject20.

2.1. The Positivist Reason

It is a need of Reason, carried by and towards the unconditional, and the destiny of philosophy in general, to relate to the Principle21. Philosophy indeed, in its metaphysical essence, in so far as it is concerned with the foundations of existence and in its approach construes the world by bringing the multiplicity of phenomena back to a prior unity, constitutes a patient meditation of the Principle, terminus a quo of all manifested realities and terminus ad quem, the finality of our existence22.

The One, or the Sun (Plato 2004), is indeed ratio essendi, the condition of possibility of existence—that by which things are—and ratio cognoscendi, the condition of possibility of their intelligibility—that by which things can be understood. Based on the discrimination (viveka)23 between the eternal, the reality, the being on one side and the temporary and the appearance on the other, philosophy is thus inseparable from ‘’theology’’ (de Koninck 2002), not only because it thinks the Supreme, but because it strives to understand what is from the Principle standpoint24.

The ordinary and empirical consciousness, off centered, carried outside itself by living in the glamour of its fascination for this or that being, never ceases to throw itself from object to object, eager for that which can never fulfill it. It lives at the surface of things, in the mode of exteriority as an existential modality of relation to the world and, originally, to oneself25. But it is then to live an inwardly dead life to live without referring to the mystery of existence and to the enigma of our own self.

Philosophical consciousness, on the contrary, as it goes back to itself and frees itself from the grip of the world and of the doxa as well as from the empirical ego with its interests, can be called ‘’transcendental’’. It is no more attached to this or that being, in its determination, but only to the indeterminate Being of beings. Philosophy is open to the absolute because in a certain sense, it is no longer of this world26 and is already possessed by that which it seeks. I aim for the One Sun because I am carried by its rays. The somewhat erotic meaning that Plato attributes to philosophy is defined as a divine “madness”27 which tears away the world, a metaphysical desire which is not the desire of this or that, but the desire of the absolute, inclusive, and yet supremely exclusive of all things, is ultimately founded on the discrimination between goods and the Sovereign Good28.

Hence the attempt, because the Principle constitutes the foundation and the finality of philosophy, to establish its necessary existence, what has been called in the framework of rational theology the “proofs” for God’s existence29, but also the realization of the limits of such a rational attempt as that which, supra-rational, is at the source of rationality, cannot be proved nor reproved. Nor can one discuss that which is thought of as Oneness: to talk about the unique Reality amounts to losing it by the very duality of our own position of exteriority to the subject of the demonstration30.

Such was the meaning of Pascal’s “Night of Fire” (Fletcher 1949), as he recorded it in his 1654 “Memorial”: the vertigo and staggering revelation of the meaningless and doomed attempt of reason to grasp the God of faith. The hidden God, Deus absconditus, is indeed not hidden in the sense that it could be one day brought to light, but it is so qualified as it is a Mystery, obscure in itself, as such foreign to reason. What might be considered an antithesis—historically crystallized in the classical debate between the truths of reason and the truths of faith—is in fact pure annihilation. The reason is not “the other” of God. God is the fire that destroys reason by leading it to its nullity. He is the very ruin of that which tries to seize it.

If the “God of philosophers and scientists”31 obeys a “positivist reason”, which objectifies the unobjectifiable, the incomprehensible, and supremely unknowable God, beyond all reason, makes himself felt in faith, or rather, as will be later explained, in Self-knowledge32. The transition from rational theology to negative theology thus proceeds from the self-realization by reason of its innate insufficiency to grasp That which is excepted from any “positioning”, triggering the movement of ascension from the rational ideation of God to the God beyond any idea.

2.2. The Dual and Determinative Idea of God

Is God absent because hidden or hidden because non-existent? The issue of the mundane existence of evil, the “thorn in the flesh of God”, is at the heart of the theodicy. This neologism, forged by Leibniz from the Greek theos (God) and Diké (justice) questions divine justice, in its double meaning, subjective and objective (von Leibniz 2009). Indeed, on the one hand, the investigation is directed toward the nature of the world (disorder, chaos) and hence the nature of God, and on the other hand this understanding plays a role, i.e., to do justice to God. Either God is not at the origin of evil, but then He is powerless in this regard, or He is responsible for evil, which He allowed, and then He is mean. It is this aporia, that the theodicy seeks to overcome, which leads, in the century of extermination camps, to denial of God’s existence, considering evil as the proof of divine non-existence33.

The fundamental question is of course whether God exists because in the absence of a relationship to transcendence, religion loses its foundation.

There are, of course, three philosophical and existential positions regarding the existence of God. Atheism, a-theos, “without God”, constitutes a negative belief defined by the emptiness of its object34. Philosophical agnosticism stays at the threshold of the unknowable (agnôstos). It does not deny but suspends its judgment as to the existence of God. As Protagoras writes, “I cannot say anything about the gods, whether they are or not. Too many things prevent us from knowing it: first the darkness of the question, then the brevity of human life” (Henry 2022, pp. 213–43). For lack of evidence, it is better to refrain from denying or affirming the existence of God. But while in a sense atheism, depending on what it denies, remains on the horizon of transcendence, the agnostic meanwhile, by lack of apparent radicality, lives radically out of all relation, as such, to transcendence: the question of the principle is removed or suspended. Consequently, it is the whole of philosophy, moved by the question of the foundation, which is excluded, at least in its metaphysical essence. There is finally the belief, an inverted mirror of the first, which lives from the affirmation of the existence of God. One will naturally oppose the atheist, and everyone will have to choose his side.

But does the approach itself make sense? To ask if God exists and to answer in the affirmative or in the negative has little meaning as long as one does not settle the question which God one is talking about, in other words as long as one does not move on to another question, that of knowing who God is—the question of the divine identity involving that of the person who questions it35.

There can be no confrontation without common ground: choosing to take sides for one or the other of the possibilities regarding divine existence leaves the idea of God itself unexamined. If the believer and the atheist are distinguished only by the positivity or negativity of their belief, more fundamentally, they both come together in the irreflexive sharing—the unthoughtful ordinary way of believing or disbelieving—of a determinative and dual conception of God, which lies in the idea of a mutual relationship of separation, under the regime of exteriority, between the creator, the creation and the creature36, between God, the world and myself, according to the common idea of God as the Supreme transcendent Other37. I may be made in his image, but I am not Him38. Finite and imperfect, I can only be exterior and separate from the Perfect and Infinite existence.

2.3. The Supra-Formal Locus of Religion

Religion, which comes from the Latin “religare”, “to relate” and “connect”, is defined by the foundation of two kinds of relation.

On the one hand, the horizontal relation between men, the assemblies—the umma, the ekklesia, and sunagôgê—having as such a social and normative function of gathering and regulation: there are acts and things considered “impure” and other “sacred”, in accordance with the scriptures39.

On the other hand, the vertical relation to the transcendence of the Principle, which is indicated by another possible etymology, “religere”, “to collect” and bring back inside—to “meditate”—indicates the modality of being of one who, beyond the formal and external respect of tradition and authority, refers to religion from within. The subject does not act because he is told to do so and blindly follows the footsteps of the community—he may as well not act, or even act contrary to prescribed rules and customs—but he is the one seeking within the true master. The Sufi tradition calls this way of being the “way of the heart”, fu’âd or lubb in Arabic40, Hridayam in Sanskrit for Vedic thought41, the way that leads to the Centre in its supra-essential identity with the Principle and whose search constitutes the very spiritual essence of religion, which as such unites religions without being reducible to any one of them.

Indeed, there is a discrepancy between the function and forms of religion and the supra-formal essence of any religion, namely between the role that religion plays among men and the multiple forms it takes on the one hand, and what constitutes its heart and as such cannot be confused with the form which expresses it on the other hand. In short, between the exoteric dimension and the esoteric dimension of religion42.

In its exoteric or public dimension religion relates to dogmas, i.e., representations accepted thoughtlessly, by habit or social pressure, a hold-for-truth without proof and objective certainty43. This is where reason lies at the crossroads of politics in its institutional self-constitution (texts, hierarchy, religious authorities)44. Religion in its esoteric or hidden, initiatory dimension, is quite different from that. It is no longer a question of believing, without questioning, but on the contrary of going beyond belief, deeply moved by the desire to know the Principle. In the first case I believe to be reassured and stay in a comfort zone of the mind: comfortable is the position of the one who knows where to go and what to think. In the second case, I leave the comfort of belief: I do not care about the form of religion, as such unilateral and partial, but I look for its universal essence.

Taken in their esoteric dimension, traditions and religions come together: there is a transcendent unity of religions (Schuon 1948), transcendent because this unity cannot be fixed in a form or be the prerogative of a particular form, being precisely supra-formal. Each religion from this angle, determined, constitutes a form of expression and, as such non-exclusive of another form, if it is seized from the inside. If for example, the opposition between monotheism and polytheism is meaningful from the exoteric point of view, from the esoteric point of view it has no real relevance, the multiplicity of the gods depicting the plural expression, under various personal and avatar aspects, of one supra-formal and unrepresentable Principle (Borella 2007). In this way, I could respond to the call of Muslim prayer, participate in the Mystery of the Eucharist, and honor Shiva with a puja, for all forms will henceforth be reacquainted from a deeper source: from a supra-formal standpoint, all forms will appear as the rich diversity of expression of the celebration of the sacredness and divinity of existence. In other words, religion in its spiritual essence looks beyond the idea of God, for it is not a representation but the Absolute itself, the Un-Bound One, that one calls forth from within.45

In this respect, one could distinguish the belief, determined and representative, from the faith, indeterminate and without representation, which consists of abandoning oneself, jumping into the void, and renouncing the idea of God as well as the idea of oneself46. The term “mystic” may well be used, if we mean not the experience of supra-physical phenomena (lights, visions, etc.), always of the order of the object and as such dubitable, but the experience of the subject, beyond the form and the I-ness identification, till the realization of the non-duality between what previously was seen as two different terms.47 So that religion realizes its essence of “religare” by going from belief to Self-knowledge of God—by himself, i.e., by “union” (unio mystica, Yoga48, coincidentia oppositorum49)—in a way contrary to personal development, which we could call impersonal deconstruction.

3. The Way of the Neutral: Beyond the Dualism of Representation

Let us return to the initial question of whether God exists, which now leads us to that of knowing who God is, distinct in that it digs behind the question itself and takes into view the “idea of God”, i.e., the underlying representation which predetermines its enunciation and which, as we highlighted, implies, on the one hand, the objectification or externalization of God, and on the other hand the dualism between “God” and “myself”.

It will therefore be necessary to go from a positive representation of God to the neutralization of the position and its negation, if one wants to “grasp” That which, even negatively and apophatically qualified, remains conditioned by the dual representation that structures the “idea of God”.

The neutralization of the “idea of God” will correspond to the self-transcendence of the one seeking God, so that the way of the Neutral constitutes the ascent to the supra-dual root which, preceding the split between the two terms, “God” and “me”, finally brings them back to their equal illusion.

3.1. The Neutralization of God: The Obscure One

How shall we proceed? Not by construction, or representation, but by radical deconstruction of the idea of God, which separates us from God himself.

Christian mysticism, for example, calls agnosia (l’Aéropagite 1943, p. 68; See Jugrin 2016, pp. 102–15) this process of “de-representation” or deconstruction, namely the un-knowing process which supposes to get rid of all belief and to suspend all “hold-for-true”. We must unlearn, and more fundamentally, come out of “the oblivion of oblivion”, a double ignorance as it is ignorant of itself as such (Chrétien 2014b; Layne 2018, pp. 206–22), and become aware of the radicality of our ignorance as to the nature of what is, in short, to free ourselves from the illusion of knowing, to find That which, being of all beings, nevertheless transcends all being and all knowledge. It is necessary on this via negativa50 to become nobody to find the Fullness in the Nothingness, to get rid of all knowledge to find in the heart of the Unknowingness the true knowledge of which every word indicates the impossible absence.

The transition from negation to neutralization leads to the suspension of the determination of the idea, i.e., to the supra-ideal indeterminacy of that which is not of the order of the determined essence but Supra-essential Nothingness, epekeina tès ousias (Plato 2004, p. 509b1). The process of Metanoia (See Walden 1896)—often translated into the lexicon of repentance—consists of going beyond thought (meta-noesis), that is, beyond the ideation of God, from the representation of God to his unitive presence in the very self-destruction of his concept, from the “positive” relation to God to the neutralization of his idea.

So that Unknowingness reveals the apparent knowledge to its lie, in so far as the absolute unknowingness coincides with the knowledge of the absolute. If metaphysical ignorance51 is an apparent knowledge, agnosia, or absolute unknowingness in the Supreme Darkness52, is its antidote, the unknowingness healing us from our ignorance concerning the nature of what is and of ourselves. This unknowingness not only expresses the relation of the subject to God, namely the impossibility of “knowing” God, but it also indicates, on the side of the being of God, that he is the unknowable. Supra-essential, God precedes all knowledge, prior to the division on which that “knowledge” is based53. If the Ain Soph, infinite, is situated beyond the dual logic and the contradiction, beyond the opposition even between being and not being, that he does not allow himself to be understood or objectified, it is because he is a Subject who calls for a subject stripped from himself. In this matter, twoness is exclusive of God (and Self) Knowledge54.

It is therefore not enough to qualify it as “unknowable” to be freed from the predetermined and dual idea of God55. To throw oneself into the Unknown, and to die there, such is the gift of the absolute to free the self from the weight of its struggles and its sorrows, provided however that the self makes the subjective test of God in the absolute inner tearing, which, beyond the suffering of losing what I was attached to, stems from the self-realization by the “self” of its profound ontological nullity. The tearing is, so to speak, the absolute deflagration of the absolute in me and that which, dissolving any limit, frees me from the self-limitation of the “myself”. The proof of God and the subjective trial, from oneself to Oneself, are but one. Hence the invitation to liberate the Absolute from the “idea of God”—to erase, if necessary, up to His name56.

3.2. The Neutralization of the Ego: The God from Within

The question to be asked now is no longer whether God exists, but who exists. Indeed: only a “me” can believe or not believe in “God”, as Other than Oneself.

The Arabic term Insan defines man as “the one who forgets”57, that is, the one who, in ‘’oblivion of oblivion’’, ignores his true nature. Strange figure of man to be the name of a non-knowledge, not of this or that thing, external to oneself, but indeterminate and interior unknowingness of oneself. Lifting the veil of metaphysical ignorance consists on the one hand in extracting oneself from the “matrix”, i.e., the lived existence when eyes out, it advances while ignoring itself (far from egocentrism, which is always only adoration of the “self” to the extent of its fascination for the “thing”); and on the other hand to lift the fundamental ignorance, which is ignorance of the true nature of things (what is reality) and of oneself (who am I) and whose awareness alone, properly inexplicable because unconditional, opens the way to the search for truth, as no one seeks wisdom who believes himself to be wise (Sheffield 2008, p. 204a).

It will be necessary for the mirror to be washed in order to reflect the light of the Sun, on the universal way of self-purification. Not that we should purify ourselves from any “evil” whatsoever, except to say that “evil” is ignorance itself. The unification of oneself, by self-exaltation towards the One, constitutes then the way of radical destruction, at the root of all the lies, of the radical lie to oneself, i.e., the one who, within the framework of what can be called the dualism of representation, thinks of himself as a separate existence. In other words, the lie is the liar. Death to oneself prepares the advent of God to Oneself. But for the God from within to rise, the “self must die”58.

Desolation and desert—in its return to the Primordial, the purgative way carries with it a necessary, primordial negation. The process of deconstruction of the idea of God coincides indeed with a very specific pathos, which is not caused by the world, but raised as from below, in an abyssal roar, by that which, limitless, undoes all limits. The pathos of the absolute refers so to speak to the suffering of a wave which, experiencing itself as limited and finite, experiences its emptiness, pains which are nevertheless the jolts of an awakening soul. Such is the Way of the Cross, the trial of Life that leads to oneself: despair, suffering, loss of illusions, what St. John of the Cross refers to with the expression of the “dark night of the soul”59. Just as a full cup cannot receive more, so the soul cannot welcome the absolute if it does not empty itself of “me-ness”. Since for the self, the finality and the end coincide in its self-transcendence, the ego is to be simplified and decomplexified, abandoning its attachment to its apparent existence—the “idea of me”—life is revealed as such a process of de-formation and de-finitisation, i.e., of the destruction of my world.

Relieved from egoity, a space opens for the subjective experience—in the sense of the subject, and not according to the scheme of subject-object difference—of God in ‘’me’’, experienced as the most intimate in oneself, interior intimo meo, more intimate than the intimacy of myself60. Interiority is no longer that of a particular “me” but, hyper-interiority, it unfolds as the locus of the universal: where the living God dwells. In other words, what is in me is more intimate and higher than what I consider as myself—what I call “me” is not truly me.

Thus, to experience God is not to experience a transcendent being, external to oneself, but what is most internal to oneself. Indeed, since God is a subject, only a subject emptied from his “me-ness”, having renounced his supposed “me’’, can coincide with the ultimate Subject, and so declare the coincidence between ‘’the eye in which he sees God’’ and ‘’the eye in which God sees” (Eckhart 1979), between his eye and the eye of God. So that no “I” ever experiences God. My face is just a veil behind which lies the unrepresentable face of God. (I) am nothing other than God experiencing Himself through each being– each one being the discrete manifestation of Oneness—in the play of being61, calls, caught up in the condition of incarnation—metaphysical ignorance—“me”. God freed from his idea and the Self from “me-ness” are but One.

3.3. The Neutralization of the World: The Universal Self

In this play of God veiling Himself, a new question arises. The via negativa expresses the absolute transcendence of the divine regarding the worldly conditions of manifestation. But what is this world itself and what is creation the creation of? If in one case the divine negativity indicates its excess on the worldly positivity, what about the status of this world from the point of view of what exceeds it if not more native negativity, of the order of Self-negation?

From this point of view, negation is to be attributed to the world that believes itself to be Other than Him, and to Others that believe themselves to be other than Oneself—which is neither negation of a “being” (for only He is) nor simple negation (for there is indeed a world), but negation of negation, what can be called a non-existent existence or a non-manifested manifestation. To dispel the cosmic glamour of creation, which appears to be Other, such is the aim of Gnosis which ties in a single destiny to the knowledge of Oneself and that of God.

This unitive way leads man out of his co-existent illusion, that is, of the gap between God and “me” on the one hand and between God and the world on the other hand. Far from pantheism which confuses the divine Ipseity with the unreal otherness of the world62, ego as an illusion of separation does not exist any more than the world itself63. Indeed, from the non-dual point of view, it is the negation of God—He does not exist, or He does not manifest Himself—that results from this native negation that we call metaphysical ignorance by which I believe myself separated and isolated. Our eyes veiled the true Sight, our ears the true Hearing. Gnosis, referring to the lifting of this veil—there is only one knowing Subject64—reveals that the sensible, finite, temporal world only appears so in its multiplicity, that it is a relative reality, the plural expression of one Reality, that of the Universal Self (Hari 2018, pp. 61–73).

So immanence is no longer antinomic to transcendence but constitutes its mode of manifestation65. The Absolute—the “Un-bound”66—transcends the opposition between the oneness of the Non-Manifested and multiplicity of the Manifestation: it lies unborn and unproductive in itself, in its Ipseity—as there is nothing which is not It—and at the same time it is for itself as the illusory appearances of “another” than Itself. The world is not the creation of which God would be the supreme cause, but Himself under the self-veiling of multiplicity of existence. He simply manifests Himself in the aspect of “another” than Him67.

Consequently, the path of neutrality sketches an integral metaphysical perspective which, neither plural nor monistic68, neutralizes the unilaterality of every point of view, including that of the only transcendence which, abstaining the Divinity from the unlimited Fullness of its Possibilities, encloses it in an impoverished numerical unity. The divine All-possibility would not be what it is if the possibility of the relative were to miss69.

4. Conclusions: The Sun of Reality

“There is no divinity (or reality, or absolute) apart from the one divinity” (La illâha illa Allâh) (Shaya 1981). If only He is, who am I?

If the wave seems distinct from the ocean, from the point of view of form70, it is in its essence no other than the ocean itself. It is the ocean as it experiences itself through its finite and limited form. But this limit is only of appearance, the separation an illusion: what remains is the infinity of the ocean, the transpersonal and supra-dual identity of the Self and the Principle that expresses the mahāvākya Aham Brahma asmi71, (I) am Brahman, (I) am the Absolute.

“Know what your Self is, that is, your existence; know that deep down you are not you, but you do not know (…). When knowledge comes to you, you will know that you have known Allah by Allah, not by yourself. Let’s take an example: suppose you don’t know your name is Mahmûd, or that you must be called Mahmûd—because the real name and the one who bears it are, in reality, identical. Now you think your name is Muhammad; but after some time of error, you come to know that you are Mahmud and that you have never been Muhammad.”

(Arabi 1977, pp. 18–19)

“What will Your new name be, after the surrender of the ego? There is no name other than Yours. The Vedas praise You, the world glorifies You. The essence of religious teachings, it is Yourself.”

(Onru 2020, p. 68)

The quest itself appears from this angle as an illusion, both that of separation and that of union, which presupposes the union between two distinct realities. Gnosis is not the extinction of existence, because it supposes that things have an existence and then lose it when He alone is, but the extinction of the separatist and dual illusion born of Ignorance. It is the realization that there is no Existence except His—of the one who is the Self to Himself revealed as the Sun of Reality.

From the mystics in search of the Non-Manifest to the atheists who infer the non-existence of God from His apparent non-appearance, it must be said that, ultimately, both are mistaken. The former because they want to join That which alone is, so that their quest defeats what they wanted to do, reinforcing the duality they seek to undo, unknowing they are Who they are searching for. The latter is because they make the worldly illusion a reality and the One Reality an illusion.

But while the first follow the path of the One and prepare themselves for awakening, the latter, on the other hand, in the shadow of the Principle, seem to succumb to hybris by establishing the appearing duality as a self-sufficient reality: ignoring the world as the appearance of the universal Self, it is the Self which is now seen as a mere appearance72. Certainly, who cannot say as Heraclitus “I looked for myself»73—ignoring the Gnothi Seauton-, cannot be taken seriously when he speaks of Reality.

Ignorance is the ultimate negation as a negation of our Self and double negation as it ignores ignorance. But it is the strange beauty of this paradox that the negation of the Absolute, inherent in the relative, exists only to affirm the Absolute.