In this brief posting, I write to correct one of my erroneous tendencies. When I argue for a transcendent beyond all ways of being and thinking, I tend to think of the transcendent as a blank – as actually nothing. Proper thought of transcendence would really be thinking of nothing. An empty mind would be accurate thought of transcendence. Attempts to characterize transcendence are, then, projections upon a blank slate. All characterizations are inherently inaccurate because they present transcendence as more than it should be.

This view of transcendence as beneath all representation is erroneous. For we posit transcendence as that on which everything depends for its existence. Thinking of that on which everything depends for its as existence as less than anything which exists is logically unsatisfactory.

Rather we should think of transcendence as more than anything which exists. It transcends our ways of thinking because it is more than anything we can represent. Our minds go blank when we try to represent it because it is way too much for our thinking.

I am thinking of Plato’s use of the sun as a model of the Good on which everything depends for its existence. We cannot see if we look at that which enables anything to be seen. We cannot see the sun because it is too much to see; not because it has too little to see.

We should understand our attempts to characterize the transcendence as inherently inaccurate because we are incapable of representing the excellence -the fullness of the Transcendent. The proper frame of mind when contemplating transcendence is not the dreamy state of having a blank mind but rather being animated and dazzled by so much.

When I attempt to characterize the transcendent, I should worry about understating rather than overstating the excellence by which it surpasses everything.

We should not think of the Transcendent as unable to have any relation to and action within the immanent which depends upon it for existence and features. Rather we should think of ourselves as unable to comprehend how the Transcendent is related to and acts within the immanent.