Nicholas of Cusa (1453)

“I do not know what I see, because I see nothing visible. I know this alone that I know that I do not know what I see and that I can never know. I do not know how to name you, because I do not know what you are. Should anyone tell me that you are named by this or that name, by the fact that one gives a name I know that it is not your name. For the wall beyond which I see you is the limit of every mode of signification by names. Should anyone express any concept by which you could be conceived, I know that this concept is not a concept of you, for every concept finds its boundary at the wall of paradise. Should anyone express any likeness and say that you ought to be conceived according to it, I know in the same way that this is not a likeness of you. So too, if anyone wishing to furnish the means by which you might be understood should set forth an understanding of you, one is still far removed from you. For the highest wall separates you from all theses and secludes you from everything that can be said or thought, because you are absolute from all the things that can fall within any concept.” Nicholas of Cusa (1453) wrote about his god those words that never could any better characterize the nature, or should I say the lack of nature, of what lies beyond, lower than the abyss itself. It comes as both a relief and a distress to see the otherworldly experience of the deep reflected in religious visions. What was our world constructed upon? Maybe the denomination of “cave men” unconsciously voices a much, much, deeper truth about our own origins.