Michael Zana

Language and Religious Experience

12/17/13

Faith In God

Preface:
When I began my third year at Sarah Lawrence College I believed myself to be an
agnostic or atheist or whatever label I begrudgingly accepted. I didnt believe that God existed,
and I didnt believe in the religious institutions which had told me so. I am still not sure that I
believe per se, but I have been opened in a way where I have begun to accept that I have faith.
Not faith that God exists, but rather faith in God. As I will discuss shortly the experience of God
is the experience of life, although paradoxically no experience of God is possible. The nondualist way of thinking permits knowledge of our essential contingency in which we touch the
divine. Through the process of learning what I have this semester, as well as through the process
of writing this very essay, I can say with confidence that I have gained or opened up to a faith in
God.
The pages that follow describe various contemplations of the divine which can be
understood through a lifetime of spiritual dedication and through the emptying of the self. This is
an iceberg whose surface I have only just barely begun to chip away at. Though I can attempt to
understand these ideas, the full weight of their meaning is inherently lost on me as I have come
nowhere near the level of knowledge and faith attained by the individuals who have written the
texts I shall refer to. I am still at the very beginning of my journey and therefore must remind
myself that there is much that I do not know. Much of the wisdom in these texts can only be fully
embodied through experience; reading these books alone can only take me so far. Though I try
and understand as much as I can from my sources I must admit to myself and to my reader that I
am still at square one. The more I read and understand, the more I realize how little I know. As
one concept begins to make sense, three more are shrouded in obscurity. My hope in writing this
is to discover what I have learned through discussing what I still do not understand. This essay is
not a collection of facts or terms gleaned from sources; this is not a book report. Rather, this
essay is my way of matriculating my wordless and intuitive knowledge into thoughts which I can
reflect on and which hopefully can be understood by others.
Finally, I must add that I dont intend to provide a conclusive definition or approach to
God; rather, as Bernadette Roberts writes, If we have any conception of what God is, certainly it
should be changing and expanding as we ourselves grow and change. This is the very nature of
lifes movement: to expand, to open up and blossom (37).
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Faith In God
Before a discussion of God can take place it is important to distinguish which God we are
referring to. Rather than discussing the differences between conceptions of the divine that each
world religion identifies with I would like to discuss the qualities of God which are present at the
spiritual core of any religion. But before this discussion can take place it is important to
understand which attitudes on God I am not speaking of. By this, I mean that an important
distinction must be made between the mystical and transcendent wisdom which is contained
within the world religions (embodied within the word God), and the self-serving patriarchal
dogmatism which objectifies God into an oedipal figure that provides comfort and security
which has been cemented into many religious institutions over time. To put this in simpler terms,
I would like to make the distinction between honest spirituality and bad faith.
Bad faith is a problem that is common in many religious practices today. Relating to God
as an object that can be known is the first misstep in approaching religion in a mature fashion.
The use of God as a protective figure reveals the self-serving motivations behind many
approaches to religion. In Merton and Freud: Beyond Oedipal Religion, Nelson Thayer describes
Thomas Merton's form of contemplative prayer, and demonstrates how contemplative prayer can
"counter the bad faith inherent in the religious enterprise (36). Bad faith as seen through a
Freudian analysis can also be referred to as oedipal religion, or religion that experiences a deity
as a symbolized parental figure who provides protection and existential comfort to the believer.
Bad faith is a form of self-deception; the believer uses the figure of God as a way of satisfying
egotistical goals, and in a way God itself becomes an idol. Freud discusses the various
narcissistic projects and oedipal dynamics that are exemplified in religious experiences, such as
protection, self-inflation, accusation, compensation, and consolation. Thayer writes,
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Protection from the arbitrary forces of nature and the unreliability of the future; selfinflation in our use of religion for self-gratification; accusation as we guiltily attack
ourselves and others for not being what we project God wants; compensation for all the
legitimate pleasures which in the name of obedience to a patriarchal or matriarchal god
we have fearfully and resentfully denied ourselves; and consolation for the suffering
which we endure as obedient children whose exalted parent should take better care of us.
(36)
When religion becomes an extension of what Freud calls our infantile project one seeks to hide
behind layers of self-invented realities which validate ones existence and gives solace to the
anxious and unconscious mind. Bad faith can be visualized as creating a bridge or platform to
hold you above the vast abyss of ultimacy below you. It is comforting and easy to believe that
you have something beneath you preventing you from falling into the depths below. In this
analogy, the fabricated bridge represents the self-serving and deceptive religious technique which
Freud calls oedipal religion. Only with the loss of self can one have an experience of God which
is not rooted in egotistical desires nor employs rational objectifying thought to make God into an
object that can be known. When God is approached as an It and not as a You God is
misconstrued as an object which can be defined by its borders or parts.
To fully understand what I mean when I speak of relating to God as a You rather than an
It, we must take a brief look at the seminal work of Martin Bubers, I and Thou. Here, Buber
presents a thorough and complex framework distinguishing two modes of existence, or rather
two modes of relation. By establishing a frame of reference in Bubers paradigm we will be able
to speak of relation more freely in the following pages. Buber begins the logical progression of
his thesis by setting it in the notion that the world is twofold for man due to his twofold attitude.
In the first lines of the book, Buber describes the essential dichotomy between the two basic
words man speaks. These two basic words Buber describes are not individual words; rather they
are the word pairs I-You and I-It. When one speaks the basic word You or the basic word It,

one is also speaking the word I. Though they may sound the same, the I of the basic word I-It is
different from the I of the basic word I-You; thus as Buber states, the I of man is also twofold
(53). There is no I other than the I of I-You or I-It, and when a man says I he means one or the
other. Buber writes, When he says You or It, the I of one or the other basic word is also present
(54). These two parts of each basic word are inextricably connected, and saying You or It means
one is also saying I.
When we utter one of these two basic words we enter into them; each basic word is a
mode of existence or state of being which necessarily excludes being in the other. In I and Thou
Buber discusses how we oscillate between these two different modes of existence. We engage or
encounter these two different forms of relation in the world of It and the world of You. To speak
the word I-You is to enter direct and immediate relation which only exists in the present moment,
while to speak the word I-It is to experience something that has become a part of the past. Thus
the I-You relation is a living relationship which emerges out of reciprocity and unites both
subject and object while the I-It relation solidifies the distinction and distance between subject
and object. One can only encounter a You in presence, while It is encountered through the past.
When one is present for a You it becomes present for him as well; the experience is shared and is
entirely reciprocal. When one is no longer present for this encounter the I-You relation ceases to
exist, and the You sinks back into the It world where it can again be observed and measured by
its borders. These distinct modalities can morph and become the other, but they cannot exist
simultaneously; an I-It relation can blossom into an I-You relation through our present
experiencing of it, but once we have exhausted this and experienced it we kill the living relation
and You morphs again to It. When one ceases to encounter the You as an immediate presence, it
becomes mediated by other things; concepts, categories, preferences and borders. The living
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relation dies as it becomes an expression of use and of the experienced through these mediations.
The genuine original unity (70) of the living relationship becomes the products of analysis
and reflection (70) as we exhaust the relation through our experience of it. Thus we can now
describe the two basic words as past experience and present relation.
But what does relation have to do with God? Buber discusses this question in the third
part of his book where he describes the eternal You (123). Buber writes,
Extended, the lines of relationships intersect in the eternal You. Every single You is a
glimpse of that. Through every single You the basic word addresses the eternal You. The
mediatorship of the You of all beings accounts for the fullness of our relationships to
themand for the lack of fulfillment. The innate You is actualized each time without
ever being perfected. It attains perfection solely in the immediate relationship to the You
that in accordance with its nature cannot become an It. (123)
The eternal You that Buber describes is what is truly being addressed and encountered through
every relation. This eternal You has been addressed by many names over time but all have really
meant You. But, the names entered into the It-language; men felt impelled more and more to
think of and to talk about their eternal You as an It (123). Even the man who fancies that he is
godless (124) addresses God when he devotes his whole being to the You of his life. In the third
part of I and Thou, Buber equates this eternal You, this relation present in all being, with God. In
the relation to God, exclusiveness and inclusiveness are merged into oneGod is not the
transcendent deity far removed from our world, nor is God present in all worldly things; God is
each on its own, while also simultaneously both and neither. God is beyond rationalism and
duality- God is advaita (a concept which I will describe in more detail later). Buber writes,
For entering into the pure relationship does not involve ignoring everything but seeing
everything in the You, not renouncing the world but placing it upon its proper ground.
Looking away from the world is no help toward God; staring at the world is no help
either; but whoever beholds the world in him stands in his presence. World here, God
therethat is It-talk; and God in the worldthat too, is It-talk; but leaving out
nothing, leaving nothing behind, to comprehend allall in the worldin comprehending
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the You, giving the world its due and truth, to have nothing besides God but to grasp
everything in him, that is the perfect relationship. (127)
Buber here is describing the perfect relationship with God, the absolute present union with the
eternal You, as something which neither exists within our world nor transcends it. God is both
and neither at the same time- this is, I believe, what the Christian mystics mean when they
discuss the Trinity. God is neither the Son, the Father, nor the Holy Spirit, and yet God is all of
them. A good analogy that has helped me is viewing the Trinity like waterwater has many
states of matter; it can be liquid, gaseous in the form of steam, or solid in the form of ice and
snow. Each state has its own unique qualities and yet all are inherently one substance; each are
different and yet the same. God in the Trinitarian sense has no parts but rather different qualities
or attributes which are embodied within each section of the triad. God is all of these individually
and collectively; God is neither one nor three; this is the meaning behind the word advaita.
Bubers eternal You is encountered all around us if we know how to look and how to
receive. Despite this, God still does not (and cannot) exist within our immediate awareness; God
is silent and unseen and cannot be proven with empiricism. But relating to God as an ultimately
transcendent being removes us from God and removes God from around us. Rather, God is
awareness itself; God is that which surrounds us. One could say that God is in every breeze or in
every blade of wilted grass, but this too would be a misstep; every pebble and boulder, every
sapling and sequoia, are in God. In his book entitled The Experience of God, Raimon Panikkar
outlines three visions of the divine, the dualist vision, the monst vision, and the advaita vision.
The dualist vision of God is that of an absolutely Other. The Creator is separated by an
infinite distance from the Creature. In this vision God does not deal with human beings because
God is immutable and infinite. This relationship that God has with humans is a relationship of

reason, as God is the unique target of human understanding. Thus, although God is seen as
transcendent, God still becomes an object, or It. The dualist experiences God as wholly other
because they start with I as the subject of experience. In the dualist vision God is
communicated with through dialogue; I as the subject of experience communicates with It
the object of experience that exists outside of our reality.
The monist vision of God is a pantheist one in which everything is God. In the monist
vision everyone experiences God because everyone experiences things. Spinoza writes, Deus
sive natura, God or Nature, meaning that there is no God other than Nature. This vision of God
is also a relationship of reason but in a different way than the dualist vision; the monist vision
sees no distinction between Creature and Creator and thus approaches them both from the same
perspective of reason. In the monist vision God is communicated with through monologue; I as
the subject of experience communicate with It the object of experience that exists as the
entirety of our reality. The error of the monist interpretation consists in omission and not excess;
All is divine, but the divine is not exhausted in what we call reality (128).
The non-dualist or advaita conception of divinity is neither God as an individual entity
transcendent from reality, nor is God totally identical with all of reality. God is neither
completely transcendent nor completely immanent. In the non-dualist vision god is
communicated with neither through dialogue nor monologue but through a supra-rational
experience of reality, or rather relation with reality. Panikkar writes, Although silent and hence
ineffable in itself, it nevertheless speaks to us. It is transcendent but immanent in the world,
infinite but delimited in things. This pole is nothing in itself. It exists only in its polarity, in its
relationship. God is relationship, intimate internal relationship with all. (63)

We cannot argue which of these visions of God is most correct nor can we refute any of
them outright. All we can say is that we cannot approach God through the faculty of reason when
reason itself, as a part of reality, is under question. If reason was the means for divine experience
reason would become the divine. Approaching God as supra-rational reality/existence/awareness,
an advaitic conception of the divine where God is neither fully transcendent nor immanent,
seems like the natural result when the self has been stripped away and relation occurs. Martin
Buber discusses the advaitic conception of the divine when he writes, In the relation to God,
unconditional exclusiveness and unconditional inclusiveness are one (127). Buber continues
later to say,
One does not find God if one remains in the world; one does not find God if one leaves
the world. Whoever goes forth to his You with his whole being and carries to it all the
being of the world, finds him whom one cannot seek. Of course, God is the whole
other; but he is also the wholly same: the wholly present. Of course, he is the mysterium
tremendum that appears and overwhelms; but he is also the mystery of the obvious that is
closer to me than my own I. (127)
Approaching God as neither transcendent nor immanent, while simultaneously as both, is the
true essence of entering into a relation with the eternal You as Buber describes it.
The experience of God can occur at any place or time, but one condition is certainly
regarded as propitious for the experience of the divine: silence. Silence is a condition and
atmosphere for the experience of God because in silence we are able to listen and receive. Trying
to know God as an object of awareness is impossible especially when we remain aware that the
highest knowledge is not to know (129). Naming or conceptualizing God is a trap which is easy
to fall into; when discussing God we are dealing with a symbol expressed in a word that is trying
to say something inexpressible. We use the word God in order to understand something that is
above understanding; God is mysterious and infinite and cannot be contained in a word. Only

through silence can we set the conditions where we open ourselves to relation within the mystery
of God.
Panikkar expounds on the notion of silence, writing that in order to experience God we
must experience silence in three forms; silence of the intellect, silence of the will, and silence of
action. Silence of the intellect refers to, as Panikkar puts it, The tranquilization of our reason in
such a way that ideas no longer dominate our lives (132). We must become aware that we
cannot understand everything in our lives. The silence of the intellect occurs when, confronted
with ultimate questions of nothingness, the mind remains respectfully quiet (132). Panikkar
writes that the silence of will, is achieved when the will no longer makes any sound, when it
moves harmoniously in the whole and wishes what ought to be wished (133). The silence of
the will occurs when will becomes free will. Free will here does not mean anything-goes
satisfaction of the individual ego, but a condition where the intrinsic dynamism of being is not
defined nor constrained by outside factors. Finally, Panikkar writes that the silence of action is,
the nonviolent action that directs life like an expert helmsman who is not scrupulous about
following the direction of the wind yet knows how to use it (133).
Silence is the unique place of freedom because the vacuous space which remains when
reason, will, and action fall away, the heart of selfless being, opens one to the possibility of
experiencing the divine. Silence is a condition for freedom, the space needed for experiencing
God (134). Every place contains the potential for experiencing God if we are receptive to it and
know how to live in it. God is life, and as such we do not live under God, through God, with
God, or by God, but rather in God. The experience of life, rather than the reflection on it, can be
equated with the experience of God. Panikkar writes, This experience of Life is both subjective
and objective genitive: it is the experience of Life itself and our participation in that experience
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(136). In life we are both experiencer and experienced; much like Herrigel shooting the bow
when he becomes both marksman and target. This non-dualist or advaita relationship we have in
Life is in essence the experience of God.
It is impossible to experience God in the material just like it is impossible to experience a
wholly transcendent God. In addition, any knowledge of infinity is also impossible. Through the
awareness of non-duality we are able to see our contingency, and in that contingency we are able
to glimpse the infinite. Panikkar concludes the main body of his book by saying, we cannot
experience an exclusively immanent God, which we would confuse with a pantheistic identity.
Nor can we experience an exclusively transcendent God, which would be contradictory in itself.
Instead, we meet God in relationship. And, as we have said, we are that point of contact (136).
Those who experience God in this way can only do so with the loss of their egoic
identities. The emptiness that is left could be described as their profound or spiritual identity;
thus the experience of God is understood in the subjective genitive. It is not I who experience
God, but rather Gods experience; the experience of God which occurs within me. On this,
Panikkar writes, Our experience of God is the divine self-consciousness in which we participate
as we become, in Christian language, part of the whole Christ (137). The experience of God is
that ultimate and eternal You incarnated in the immanent. One must be able to see God in all
things while simultaneously seeing all things within God. We cannot witness the presence of God
as a being to whom we can face; we can witness God by becoming conscious that the source of
our actions and the ultimate subject of our being belongs to that infinite sea that we call God
(141).

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The final paragraph of Raimon Panikkars book resonates deeply with the third part of
Martin Bubers I and Thou where Buber discusses the concept of the Eternal You in relation.
Panikkar writes,
The experience of God thus consists in touching the totality of Being with the totality of
our own being: to feel in our body, our intellect, and our spirit the whole of reality both
within us and outside us. And paradoxically, it is the experience of contingency: we
merely touch the infinite at a point. (141)
This act of touching the totality of Being is what Buber is describing when he speaks of the
perfect relation to the eternal You; that You which is inherently addressed every time You is
uttered with the entirety of ones being; God.
My own spiritual journey has only just begun. Through the process of studying and
discussing these texts and, in fact, through writing this paper itself, I believe that I have been
opened up to Capax dei, or the capability of God. Early on in The Experience of God Panikkar
distinguishes between faith, acts of faith, and belief. Faith, according to Panikkar, is the openness
to a more; the openness to transcendence. Panikkar writes, Faith is the capacity, faculty, or
supplementary possibility (that would be the simplest word) of transcendence (the most
philosophical word) of God (the most theological word) (30). The capacity for the infinite is
what I believe faith to be; it is the antenna on the radio set of experience which allows us to tune
in to something more. I believe I have only just barely discovered Credere in Deum, or to
believe in God as Christian philosophers might say. This means an opening to the mystery of
the divine; receptiveness to the infinite. Panikkar continues by writing that an act of faith is that
activity by which we put our faith into practice (31). This is where I believe I am facing
towards; learning how to recognize this faith and apply it to my life. Panikkar writes, It is the

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act that surges from the heart as symbol of the whole person and through which we make a leap
to the third dimension, in which the human being is realized (31). Belief, as opposed to faith, is;
The formulation, the doctrinal articulation, generally announced by a collectivity, which
has crystallized progressively during the course of time in propositions, phrases,
affirmations, and, to use the Christian word, dogmas or doctrines. Belief is the more or
less coherent symbolic expression of the faith, often formulated in conceptual terms. (31)
This doctrinal articulation and conceptual expression is where I begin to get lost because these
are often accompanied by institutionalization (31). I understand that institutionalization is a
necessary process of the social human being and is the means by which the experience of God is
shared, but I have a hard time overlooking the conservative fossilization of established
experiences (32). For me, much of the beauty I find in the mystery of the divine is lost when the
unnamable You is entered into the It-world. Martin Buber comments on this at the beginning of
the third part of I and Thou;
Men have addressed their eternal You by many names. When they sang of what they had
thus named, they still meant You: the first myths were hymns of praise. Then the names
entered into the It-language; men felt impelled more and more to think of and to talk
about their eternal You as an It. But all names of God remain hallowedbecause they
have been used not only to speak of God but also to speak to him. (123)
Belief, to me, is the It-instrument through which the You experience of God is known by many
(and which is necessary in some sense), but which has also obstructed and ultimately deadened
the original living relation to the eternal You. Belief is like the finger pointed towards the moon;
it is important not to get too focused on watching the finger itself. When religion becomes caught
up in dogmas and rules, though they may have their spiritual meaning behind them, I become
lost.
So I suppose in the end I am right back where I started. I only hope that I have gained
something lasting in writing thisI believe that the process of writing this has led me to know
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with confidence that I have faith in God. Not belief that God, but faith in God; an openness to
the mystery in which we live and an openness to the mystery within each of us.
Amen.

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