God's Teaching 3

Introduction

Under the guidance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, I return to the dark realms of metaphysics in the attempt to conquer it. Of course, it is not I who will conquer metaphysics but the Holy Spirit, only He can conquer the abstract and immaterial realm of Himself, for "nobody knows the qualities of God except the Spirit of God." I am here as a witness and as a writer of the events of the conquest of metaphysics. However, just as all divinely inspired texts are a cooperation between God and man, this too has the common authorship of me and the Holy Spirit, but with I being the writer of this text.

Inspiration

The trigger of inspiration for this text is the book "An Introduction to the Metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas" and a weird dream I had recently. The particular inspirations are the mentions of material and immaterial in the book, and "Nothing" in the dream. We know that God is the General Nothing, and that He is immaterial. Meanwhile there is much to discuss on the nature of the immaterial and the material, God as Nothing, and the foundations of all things.

What is the object being studied in metaphysics?

The object being studied in metaphysics is that which is most common in all things. That thing is known as being or existence, the 2 words here being treated as synonyms. In the book it is written that the pre-eminent object of metaphysics is God. This is true, but our point of departure must be things known to us, and therefore we cannot approach God directly and instead do this step by step. 

There are 2 realms in this reality, that of the uncreated order and that of the created order. Therefore we have 2 metaphysics, metaphysics of God, or theological metaphysics, and metaphysics of the created order, or worldly metaphysics. Finally, the meeting point of the 2 metaphysics, is simply known as metaphysics, for it is the whole of metaphysics.

Knowledge of Being/Union of Being and Experience

All knowledge comes from the experience. As such from experience of all things, we can attain the knowledge of the essential thing, that is being. In the beginning we have the being of experience, and eventually we arrive at the knowledge of the union of being and experience, thus the two are different aspects of being, but they are inseparable and united forever. How do we obtain the knowledge of union? By divine revelation and the sense of faith.

Of course by our own experience, the only statements we can produce are, "We experience this and we do not experience that." We can not say "There is this and there is not that." For there is no evidence to claim that there is a being separate from experience, that is simply a presumption. A full understanding is that we cannot even claim the being of the self, instead there is the experience of the self. The self is by nature an experience as well, an experience of being which then becomes a being of experience.

For this reason the Spirit once said that being and experience is one, therefore there is no need to mention it separately but as the highest form of it, that is being. Eventually, if all things are stripped away from experience, if there is any attempt to separate experience from being then there shall be no experience and no being. For sure there will be no good for good is wholly experiential instead of existential. There is no being which is good but there is only experiences of goodness, or the good experience, that which we call happiness/eudaimonia.

It is odd to think that we may think of being without experience, but not experience without being. However, a reality without experience is meaningless, in the sense that there is no purpose or good in there. It is to be accepted nonetheless, the union of experience and being, and the inseparability of the two. For this is what the Spirit has revealed to us and we are to accept it in good faith. (The Spirit has said that it is contingently necessary that being and experience are united, meaning it is possible for a reality without experience to be, but it would be an arbitrary and meaningless reality, a reality without purpose and goodness. However, since there is experience in this reality, then the union becomes necessary.)