Universal Theology

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Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. ~ Douglas Adams

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[Jana]

Over-mind or Infinite-mind
One might say that Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) was one of the first to exquisitely articulate a universal spirituality beyond mythic parochial ecumenism. Cusa’s theology anticipated contemporary questions of monotheism and pluralism, empowerment and reconciliation, and tolerance and individuality. He determined that the highest learning that the human being by oneself can obtain is a knowledge of ones ignorance…thereby reaching a coincidence of knowing and not knowing or "learned ignorance" (docta ignorantia). Cardinal Nicolas of Cusa called this "Coincidence of opposites" (coincidentia oppositorum). Wherein learned opposites can coincide in the divine simplicitas, that concurrence where opposites coincide in the infinity of God and the ineffability of Divine Truth. Paradoxically “silence” allows the greatest approximation of Divine Truth or The Word, while "ignorance" is the most effective learning. (The more we learn, the more we know we don't know.)

Here Cardinal Nicolas is pointing to the limitations of the linear mind, and the potentiality of pure consciousness beyond finite mental constructs…thus resolving the gulf between the finite and infinite. In infinity opposites coincide without diminishing the reality or force of their contradiction. Through the logic of infinitude Cusa unites opposites, transcends analogy and comparison, overcomes the limits of discursive reasoning, avoids reductionism, exceeds composition and synthesis, rises above affirmative and negative reasoning, frees the mind from quantitative appraisal allowing the space for pure abstraction, permits infinite concepts to be grokked without violating their indescribability or illimitability. Like Bohm, Cusa saw all things to be enfolded (contractum) in the Mind of God or the implicate order of the infinite universe, while the unified maximality of God (universum) is explicated or unfolded into the world and all its particulars.

You might say that Cusa is the first documented nondual theorist in the Western Tradition who was a preceptor of our modern fascination with themes of creativity, diversity, synchronicity, equanimity, union of opposites and individuation, or personal psycho-spiritual exploration…all of which lead to the desire for unique and genuine spiritual experience, consequent transmutation and the alchemical union with the Divine.

Selected Spiritual Writings by Cardinal Nicholas (of Cusa), H. Lawrence Bond