29 October 2021

The One
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"God does not exist: He told me so." Philippe Derckel

Text: Jean Bousquet Image: Edward Licha auf Pixabay CCO

The unknown god

As his name indicates, the unknown god transcends everything, including our logic,
our perceptions, our feelings, our intuition. He resides beyond the perceptible and
intelligible world. Our conceptual tools are unable to define him or reach him. These
rudimentary "bows" that are thought, will, desire, are not powerful enough to shoot
their arrows to the stars where he remains, unfathomable and inaccessible.

How to describe the face of the unknown god? Does he even have a face, a body, a
form? The unknown god can only make himself known to us in inner silence,
emptiness, darkness. We cannot distinguish anything in this darkness; we can only
deposit in it our superficial consciousness eager for sensations and knowledge. When
we are empty and silent, even if only for a moment, there is no longer anyone to
perceive, describe or express anything about emptiness or silence. Thought is then
abolished. Not inert, dead, but cleared of its parasitic memories, of its repetitive
clichés, of its incessant internal monologue, and thus become virgin again, new, alert.
And this "abolished thought" is the very expression of the unknown god; an expression
without words, without images, without "face", simple and alive, direct, overwhelming
with depth and mystery.

The unknown god escapes us definitely; he is without form; and yet, nothing hides him
to the interior glance except our structural incapacity to seize the ungraspable.

The revealed god

The faces of the revealed god are innumerable. In fact, there is nothing perceptible
that is not one of his faces. The whole universe is his body, his face. Every material
atom is a mirror in which this face is reflected. Each encounter, each situation, each
being or each object, are expressions, different mimics of this universal and multiform
face, sometimes smiling, sometimes serene, sometimes serious or severe.

Do we see these faces of the revealed god in every situation we cross, in every
encounter? Or do we only see the grimacing masks with which we dress them: our
impressions, our reactions, our attractions and repulsions? Are we open, attentive? Or
are we blind, withdrawn into our opinions, conceptions and affects?

The faces of the revealed god, with their multiple expressions and facets, constantly
come to call us in our isolation, like winks inviting us to dialogue, to dance, to the
revealing discovery.
The unique god

There is no contradiction between the unknown god and the revealed god, but
simultaneity. They are distinct entities only for the language, for the thought. In fact,
there is only one god; and he is neither “unknown” nor “revealed”, nor even both.
Metaphysical concepts fill us, occupy our inner space, whereas it is only when we are
empty, receptive, that we can welcome the Truth: the Truth about what we are, the
Truth about what the very substance of Life is. The Truth about God? Are Truth and
God distinct?

Our conceptions and categories are only crutches that allow us to limp along the path
to understanding. When this understanding is finally reached, established in us, that is
to say that we stand firmly on our "legs" thanks to the actions we take daily in full
consciousness, on the basis of the understanding we have acquired, then the lightning
Revelation comes to sweep away all our painful efforts and achievements, and to
illuminate our consciousness with a new and renewing light, totally unknown until
then. The crutches, which have become useless, are taken away from us, and our
conceptual architecture, laboriously and skilfully built, shatters. Its ashes scatter
instantly in the powerful breath of the Spirit, which takes its place at the centre of our
consciousness, now free again.