Scholem, from Major Trends:

Nothing seems to me to express better this sense of the distance between God and man, than the Hebrew term which in our literature is generally used for what is otherwise called unio mystica. I mean the word devekuth, which signifies “adhesion,” or “being joined,” viz., to God. This is regarded as the ultimate goal of religious perfection. Devekuth can be estasy, but its meaning is far more comprehensive. It is a perpetual being-with-God, an intimate union and conformity of the human and the divine will.

Yes, except for the word “distance”. One cannot have distance from infinity. And for a panentheist, this is everything.

If we understand the panentheism and infinitude we must understand also that there cannot be any question of belonging to the infinite One. The necessarily all-inclusive infinite One necessarily includes each of us, whether we intuit or acknowledge it or not. We cannot avoid this metaphysical belonging.

The only real questions concern our own finite understanding of and relationship to the infinite One: First, do we recognize our metaphysical situation — that we are situated within and belong to the Infinite One, who transcends but includes us? Can we suprehend the comprehending, incomprehensible truth that our own finite notion of “infinity” is necessarily bounded by nihilitude, which bestows upon us one-within-One identity — belonging to, but absolutely not identical to One’s own infinitude, of which at best we can participate?

This is why Jewish mystics, for as long as they live, teach and write, pursue devekut, not unio mystica.

Devekut is angelic, willing participation in the all-inclusive infinite One.

Note: A while back I finally understood that there is absolute truth, but that truth cannot be comprehended objectively. It is everted objectivity, which, when finite is subjective, but if infinite, is something a friend of mine calls “superjective” (not in a Whiteheadian sense). Absolute truth is that by which finite truths not only pragmatically work, but harmonize with devekut, and transmit divine light of our one-within-Oneness.

Another note:

In comprehension the given is a What.

In apprehension the given is a That.

In suprehendsion the given is a Whom.

In comprehension, we can reach out and grip some of reality; the hand of thought closes around an objective truth.

In apprehension, our reach exceeds our grasp; our fingertips touch something real, but we cannot close the hand of thought around any objective truth. The mysterious resistance makes us feel apprehensive. It is a perplexity, an aporia.

In suprehension, we intuit the reality that we cannot grip a reality in whose grip we are gripped. We cannot comprehend comprehension. No subject is an object of thought. And the superjective is itself the ground of our own thinking, the Being of our own being, the One in whom we are one.

Another note: I have been contemplating letterpress printing another hermetic tract, and? in the spirit of my own designerly kabbalah, receiving it as a design brief for some more accessible, less sacred books.

These prenatal books have had a kaleidoscope of shifting titles, including “Enworldment”, “Exnihilist Manifesto”, “Everso”, “The Ten-Thousand Everythings”, “Pearls and Shells”, “Second-Natural”, “Philosophy of Design of Philosophy” and “Hermetic Design”.

Today, writing about one and One and one-within-One, the ironic prankster in me — (who, in the most solemn moments, not only refuses to exercise quiet pious resoect, but goes into full-on boy-in-a-pew mode, and gets even louder, sillier and more fidgety) — suggests that the correct form for my esoteric tract might not actually be a chapbook, but rather a label on a castile soap bottle.

I really might do this.

Nihilitude:

Dilute! Dilute! Ok!