Into the Un-Known

Not-knowing is our most powerful position, because it opens the door to possibility. Why would it be any different for God?

The statement “God knows everything” is meaningless, or at the very least has been grossly misinterpreted. The rules for creativity are the same for God as they are for us – you have to know nothing before you can know anything – “And darkness was upon the face of the deep.”

Not-knowing creates a space within which all things are possible. Not-knowing breaks down the barriers that keep us imprisoned in the known. The known is a parched desert – nothing grows there. Once a thing is known, it ceases to live. Not-knowing is the key to life. You can’t exist in a state of not-knowing and believe that God knows everything. If God knew everything, everything would cease to be. It is God’s not-knowing that keeps the universe growing and evolving. It is the very thing that generates life.

Reflexion

Consider that our greatest awakening occurs in the space created by not-knowing. Why would it be different for God? We are the microcosm of the macrocosm. What is true for us is true for it. If we believe in statements like “Man, know thyself” and “We are created in God’s image and likeness,” then we have to afford God that which provides the opening within us, namely, not knowing.

Only in a society caught in the glamour of the intellect, a society that values knowledge and information above all else, can you find a concept of God that knows everything. When knowing everything is the highest concept of good, then naturally the god of that society must epitomize that concept. But the mystic knows better. The mystic knows that in order for God to be the creator of all life that there must be that within God which creates the emptiness within which life can occur. Unless the universe holds that space within itself, the whole thing would grind to a halt.

The one thing that is guaranteed to produce movement (life) is a vacuum. When we stand in the place of not-knowing, we effectively create a vacuum in the universal mind, the mind of God. God then rushes in to fill the vacuum that we are.

Surrounded in Royal Purple

In order to understand this concept, we have to think in terms of power, force, and energy. God is not an external entity – God is the living, sentient being in Whom we live. The only thing that keeps us from the experience of God is the belief that we exist as a separate self. This is the lie perpetrated by our own senses. When we turn away from the senses and go into the silence within us, we begin to experience God as a presence. And by that I mean a living power that knows and experiences you to the degree that you know and experience it. God’s love is a two-way street – love begets love, although, “we love because He first loved us.”

Taking the phrase “first loved us” out of the context of space and time, which is what we have to do if we want to know God, “first loved us” means that we exist in a field of love, a conscious energy that is always present and always here. “first loved us” means that we did not create it – it was already here when we arrived. But when we get quiet within ourselves and open up to it, we allow it to occur in the world. This is our place in the scheme of things. As Eric Butterworth put it, “We are an inlet and an outlet of God.”

It is imperative that we stop thinking of God as something external. God is that which keeps the Cosmos in motion, from the very smallest to the infinitely big. It is all one thing. Emerson said, “There is no great and no small to the mind that maketh all.” Size and distance are creations of the mind. They do not exist in Gods reality. If we want to know God, we have to be like God and think the way God thinks. This is not as difficult as it might sound, because again God knows nothing about difficulty, either large or small. We need only ask for help and help is given.

Afterword:

When a spiritual teacher pushes the idea that God knows everything, what he’s really saying is, “I know more than you do.” The assumption is that the teacher is closer to God and therefor naturally knows more of what God knows. This is a well-known tactic to gain power over one’s students. The true teacher, on the other hand, seeks to draw students into the state of not-knowing, so that together the entire community can become one with God in that state. The Buddha of Compassion, Avalokitesvara, vowed not to enter into enlightenment until all sentient beings were saved. And in Hebrews 8 we read, “And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying,’Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.” Not-knowing is the Causeless Cause of the act of creation. It is the organizing principle of all that is. “Of myself, I do nothing.” This is humility.

Avalokitesvara, the Buddha of Compassion