Fact, Feeling, Faith, and Form

Abstract

[What is that, knowing which, we shall know everything?] It is not easy to know “the real, internal constitution” of God’s nature, and perhaps no one has ever known it fully. Perhaps no one has ever known it even partially, although this is doubtful. Beliefs, intimations, surmises, and the like, have often sufficed. No matter, the notion of God should be characterized, it would seem, in so grand a fashion as to contain, in some specific sense, all knowledge of all beings and happenings, here, there, and everywhere, past, present, and future. In particular God’s nature should contain, in a most intimate way, all scientific law, both causal and stochastic, as well as all boundary conditions. Hence implicitly it should contain all factually true statements. But God is not merely the repository of truth, but of value, of beauty, and goodness, as well. Science and value, whatever the shortcomings or defects of our knowledge about them, should be properly fused, it would seem, in any satisfactory characterization of the real internal constitution of God’s nature. Failure to attain this fusion is to rest content with only a partial and hence an inadequate characterization.

Naśyami aham bhū naśyati lόka! Sruyatâm dharma, Bhagawat.