Transcendence is an essential attribute of the Absolute Being. God’s glory fills the world, but the world cannot exhaust God. God is the Ground of Being and the Source of energy within every atom and the life of all creatures. He is the center of the universe and holds all things together.
Yet God’s involvement in the world in no way limits or affects His transcendence and absoluteness. How can finite human beings connect with the transcendent God?
Some passages recommend that we apply the principle of transcendence in our daily life, by overcoming the limitations of nation and race in our dealings with others. Others speak of getting in touch with the deepest part of our own mind, where the Ab- solute Being chooses to make His dwelling place.
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory. Isaiah 6.3
God! there is no God but He,
the Living, the Everlasting.
Slumber seizes Him not, neither sleep;
to Him belongs all that is in the heavens and the earth.
Who is there who shall intercede with Him save by His leave?
He knows what lies before them and what is after them, and they comprehend not anything of His knowledge save such as He wills.
His throne comprises the heavens and earth;
the preserving of them oppresses Him not;
He is the All-high, the All-glorious.
Qur’an 2.255: The Throne Verse
Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand
and marked off the heavens with a span,
enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure
and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?
Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord,
or as his counselor has instructed him?
Whom did he consult for his enlightenment,
and who taught him the path of justice,
and taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding?
Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket,
and are accounted as the dust on the scales…
All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness. Isaiah 40.12-17
The Supreme Being is thousand-headed, Thousand eyed, thousand footed; Pervading the earth on all sides, He exists beyond the ten directions.
The Supreme Being, indeed, is all this,
What has been and what will be,
The Lord of immortality As well as of mortal creatures.
Such is his magnificence,
but The Supreme Being is even greater than this;
All beings are a fourth of him,
Three-fourths—his immortality—lie in heaven.
Three-fourths of the Supreme Being ascended;
The fourth part came here again and again,
Diversified in form, it moved To the animate and the inanimate world. Rig Veda 10.90.1-4 (Hinduism)
Thou art the fire
Thou art the sun
Thou art the air
Thou art the moon
Thou art the starry firmament
Thou art Brahman Supreme;
Thou art the waters—thou, the Creator of all!
Thou art woman, thou art man,
Thou art the youth, thou art the maiden,
Thou art the old man tottering with his staff;
Thou facest everywhere.
Thou art the dark butterfly,
Thou art the green parrot with red eyes,
Thou art the thundercloud, the seasons, the seas.
Without beginning art thou, Beyond time and space. Thou art he from whom sprang The three worlds. Svetasvatara Upanishad 4.2-4 (Hinduism)
The Self is one. Ever still, the Self is
Swifter than thought, swifter than the senses.
Though motionless, He outruns all pursuit.
Without the Self, never could life exist.
The Self seems to move, but is ever still.
He seems far away, but is ever near.
He is within all, and He transcends all.
The Self is everywhere.
Bright is the Self, Indivisible, untouched by sin, wise,
Immanent and transcendent. He it is who holds the cosmos together.
Isha Upanishad 4-8 (Hinduism)
There was something undifferentiated and yet complete,
which existed before heaven and earth.
Soundless and formless, it depends on nothing and does not change. It operates everywhere and is free from danger.
It may be considered the mother of the universe.
I do not know its name; I call it Tao.
If forced to give it a name,
I shall call it Great. Being great means functioning everywhere.
Functioning everywhere means far-reaching. Being far-reaching means returning to the original point. Tao Te Ching 25 (Taoism)
Divinity existed before the appearance of heaven and earth and gives form to them; it sur- passes the yin and the yang, yet has the quality of them. Divinity is thus the absolute existence, governing the entire universe. Yet at the same time it dwells within all things, where it is called spirit; omnipresent within human beings, it is called mind.
In other words, the human mind communes with Divinity, which is ruler of heaven and earth; mind and Divinity are one and the same. Divinity is the root origin of heaven and earth, the spiritual nature of all things, and the source of human destiny. Itself without form, Divinity nurtures things with form.
Kanetomo Yoshida, An Outline of Shinto
Beyond the senses is the mind, beyond the mind is the intellect, higher than the intellect is the Great Atman [the original mind], higher than the Great Atman is the Umanifest. Beyond the Unmanifest is the Person, all-pervading, and imperceptible.11 Katha Upanishad 2.3.7-8 (Hinduism)
Buddha abides in the infinite, the unobstructed, ultimate realm of reality, in the realm of space, in the essence of True Thusness, without birth or death, and in ultimate truth…
How should enlightening beings see the body of Buddha? (Dharmakaya) They should see the body of Buddha in infinite places. Why? They should not see Buddha in just one thing, one phenomenon, one body, one land, one being—they should see Buddha everywhere.
Just as space is omnipresent, in all places, material or immaterial, yet without either arriving or not arriving there, because space is incorporeal, in the same way Buddha is omnipresent, in all places, in all beings, in all things, in all lands, yet neither arriving nor not arriving there, because Buddha’s body is incorporeal, manifesting a body for the sake of sentient beings. Garland Sutra 37 (Buddhism)
The Way is like an empty vessel
That yet may be drawn from
Without ever needing to be filled.
It is bottomless; the very progenitor of all things in the world.
In it all sharpness is blunted,
All tangles untied,
All glare tempered,
All dust smoothed.
It is like a deep pool that never dries.
Tao Te Ching 4 (Taoism)
Teachings of Sun Myung Moon
God transcends space. He encompasses the world and the entire universe. Such also is His unlimited love. (94:282-83, October 9, 1977)
God is the origin of heaven and earth. There is nothing that does not originate from Him. Because everything belongs to God, the whole cosmos senses its bond with God and lives in connection with Him.
By analogy, we humans have four hundred billion cells, and whatever each cell feels, its feeling is communicated to our brain. All creatures are in such a relationship with their Creator. (140:123, February 9, 1986)
Not my parents, my community or my nation gave me life. My life originated rather from the one Origin—God, the Absolute Being, transcending all these. Therefore, my life must be firmly connected to the transcendent Cause, to the axis of the Absolute Being.
Relational factors such as time, circumstances and social conditions should not restrict it. Only when we unite our life to the transcendent Cause, the transcendent Purpose, can we transcend the bonds of time, circumstances and social conditions, and extricate ourselves in one leap. (36:64, November 15, 1970)
A human being attains perfection when he centers his life on his mind; likewise, the creation attains perfection only when God stands as its center. Thus, the universe is one organic body that moves only according to God’s purpose of creation.
As one organic body, the universe exists in a relation- ship of internal nature and external form, with God as the internal nature and the created universe as the external form. (Exposition of the Divine Principle, Creation 1.1)
Everything revolves. Atoms and even elementary particles rotate. Electrons revolve around protons. The solar system revolves around the sun, and the Milky Way rotates around its galactic core.
They are revolving around something that remains still. This universe, with all its varied phenomena, is a huge complex of myriads of these relationships. Therefore, we can think that this universe also revolves around a single core: God, the origin of all creation. All things revolve because they resemble their Master, God, who is always revolving. (173:134-35, February 14, 1988)
God, the Creator of heaven and earth, is the Parent and Origin of all beings. He gives value to all existence. Because he is, this world of phenomena came to be.
The Absolute Being does not change because the times change—what is absolute does not change. Nor is He restricted by time and space. From a position transcending all restrictions, God has dominion over all restrictions.
(21:249, November 24, 1968)
A human being has both mind and body. Beyond his mind is his spirit, and beyond his spirit is God. Therefore, a person becomes perfect only after becoming completely one with God. One human being, even though apparently only an insignificant individual, represents all of human history and all of the future.
Therefore, he has a cosmic value… As he pursues the ultimate goal, each person must attend his own deep mind. This is an ironclad rule of Heaven. Heaven will punish a person who fails to obey his original mind’s command.
In the course of history, the voice of God has been saying, “Live by your deep mind. Live according to your conscience and belong to the side of goodness. Be careful not to be caught in materialistic, evil conditions.”
Then, is the standard of a person’s conscience able to receive the heart of Heaven 100 percent? No, it is not. Many restrictions impede fallen people’s conscience. At the entrance to the heaven of our hopes stand many gates, each a saga of our shortcomings. Borrowing a Christian expression, they are gates of judgment.
Our course is made all the more difficult because we are currently in a historical period of fear, anxiety, and confusion. We live in an era when even though we may struggle to achieve goodness, we many times cannot. These days we should not possess so many material things. When God created human beings, He first created the material, the body, and then breathed into it of His spirit.
Therefore, although human beings are composed of both body and spirit, the spirit is the center. As the world moved towards exalting the authority of material, a period of ideological struggle became inevitable. In fact, this phenomenon was conspicuous right after World War II.
Eventually, however, a new age will come based upon spiritual teachings. Then, what will be the nature of this teaching? It will penetrate matter, penetrate mind, and center on the Spirit. The course of restoration is heading towards an age when thought will center on the Spirit. (4:268, August 3, 1958)