“To become sober is: to come to oneself in self-knowledge and before God as nothing before him, yet infinitely, unconditionally engaged. P. 104”

—  Sören Kierkegaard

1850s, Judge For Yourselves! 1851 (1876)

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Sören Kierkegaard photo
Sören Kierkegaard309
Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism 1813–1855

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“If self-knowledge does not lead to knowing oneself before God - well, then there is something to what purely human self-observation says, namely, this self-knowledge leads to a certain emptiness that produces dizziness. Only by being before God can one totally come to oneself in the transparency of soberness. p. 106”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

1850s, Judge For Yourselves! 1851 (1876)

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“The knowledge of God proceeds from the love of God, and this love has little or nothing of the rational in it. For God is indefinable. To seek to define Him is to seek to confine Him within the limits of our mind — that is to say, to kill Him. In so far as we attempt to define Him, there rises up before us — Nothingness.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VIII : From God to God
Context: Not by way of reason, but only by way of love and suffering, do we come to the living God, the human God. Reason rather separates us from Him. We cannot first know Him in order that afterward we may love Him; we must begin by loving Him, longing for Him, hungering after Him, before knowing Him. The knowledge of God proceeds from the love of God, and this love has little or nothing of the rational in it. For God is indefinable. To seek to define Him is to seek to confine Him within the limits of our mind — that is to say, to kill Him. In so far as we attempt to define Him, there rises up before us — Nothingness.

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“We have been created in order to return to God through love, through his own love. In us it must be ardent, pure and unceasingly active, so that we expend all our energies and are consumed by it. Actually, we shall never be able to do or give anything that can sufficiently recompense him who is infinite Love. Before him every creature is deceitful, and in comparison with him, man is nothing. p. 140”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From Prayer, Aspiration, and Contemplation

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“Gaining the sense of immortality or eternal life will make you appear like a god, prophet or saint before those who lack self-knowledge.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

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“Was there ever a more horrible blasphemy than the statement that all the knowledge of God is confined to this or that book? How dare men call God infinite, and yet try to compress Him within the covers of a little book!”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Source: Raja-Yoga

G. I. Gurdjieff photo

“Death must come before rebirth. But what must die? False confidence in one’s own knowledge, self-love and egoism. Our egoism must be broken.”

G. I. Gurdjieff (1866–1949) influential spiritual teacher, Armenian philosopher, composer and writer

All and Everything: Views from the Real World (1973)
Context: All religions speak about death during this life on earth. Death must come before rebirth. But what must die? False confidence in one’s own knowledge, self-love and egoism. Our egoism must be broken. We must realize that we are very complicated machines, and so this process of breaking is bound to be a long and difficult task. Before real growth becomes possible, our personality must die.

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“Self-consciousness is not knowledge but a story one tells about oneself.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

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“To sustain the belief that there is no God, atheism has to demonstrate infinite knowledge, which is tantamount to saying, “I have infinite knowledge that there is no being in existence with infinite knowledge”

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“Experiencing oneself as Life does is to enjoy oneself [jouir de soi]. Enjoyment does not presuppose any differences similar to those in which the world is born: it is homogeneous phenomenological material, a monolithic affective body whose phenomenality is affectivity as such. The self-revelation of Life is not a formal structure that can be conceived on the basis of “outside oneself” and in terms of its own structures, since these are bypassed, overcome while being maintained in this very bypassing. The self-revelation of life is its enjoyment, the primordial self-enjoyment that defines the essence of Living and thus of God himself. According to Christianity, God is Love. Love is nothing other than the self-revelation of God understood as in its pathetic phenomenological essence, specifically, the self-enjoyment of absolute Life. This is why the Love of God is the infinite love in which he eternally loves himself, and the revelation of God is none other than this Love.”

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Source: Michel Henry, I am the Truth. Toward a Philosophy of Christianity, translated by Susan Emanuel, Stanford University Press, 2003, p. 30

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“Adversity, on the contrary, sobers him and reminds him of God and his Glory.”

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