Page 111 - Eclipse of God

84 Chapter 6

of the depths, first illuminating, then burning and purifying.
The truest source of this is a fundamental awareness inherent
in all men, though in the most varied strengths and degrees of
consciousness, and for the most part stifled by them. It is the
individual’s awareness of what he is “in truth,” of what in his
unique and non- repeatable created existence he is intended to
be. From this awareness, when it is fully present, the compari-
son between what one actually is and what one is intended to
be can emerge. What is found is measured against the image,
no so- called ideal image, nor anything imagined by man, but
an image arising out of that mystery of being itself that we call
the person. Thus the genius bearing his name confronts the
demonic fullness of the possible conduct and actions given to
the individual in this moment. One may call the distinction
and decision which arises from these depths the action of the
pre- conscience.
We mean by the religious in this strict sense, on the other
hand, the relation of the human person to the Absolute, when
and insofar as the person enters and remains in this relation as
a whole being. This presupposes the existence of a Being who,
though in Himself unlimited and unconditioned, lets other
beings, limited and conditioned indeed, exist outside Himself.
He even allows them to enter into a relation with Him such
as seemingly can only exist between limited and conditioned
beings. Thus in my definition of the religious “the Absolute”
does not mean something that the human person holds it to
be, without anything being said about its existence, but the
absolute reality itself, whatever the form in which it presents
itself to the human person at this moment. In the reality of
the religious relation the Absolute becomes in most cases per-
sonal, at times admittedly, as in the Buddhism which arose
out of a personal relation to the “Unoriginated,” only gradually
and, as it were, reluctantly in the course of the development