Dictionary of all Scriptures & Myths

UNION WITH GOD

A symbol of the soul's one-ness with the higher nature, implying complete freedom from any tie or attraction to the lower nature.

“By grace man regains the complete union with God, which he had originally. The soul, like all things, pre-existed in God. Then I was in God, not as this individual man, but as God, free and un-conditioned like him. Then there were no real differences in God. Immanent in the divine essence, I created the world and myself. By my emanation from him into individual existence I gave God his divine nature (his Godship), and do give it him constantly, for I give him that possibility of communicating himself which constitutes his essence. God can only understand himself through the human soul; in so far as I am immanent in the essence of the Deity, he works all his works through me, and whatever is an object of the divine understanding, that am I. . . . This breaking through and out from the limitations of creature-ship is the end of all existence and of all change. God became man that I might become God. . . . But the soul is nevertheless not annihilated in God. There remains a little point in which the soul continues to show itself a creature” (Eckhart). — Ueberweg, Hist. of Philos., Vol. I. pp. 480–1.

"That unspeakable joy of life and intensity of individuality which God possesses in never knowing what self is, in possessing of choice, His being in the being of the spiritual universe. It is to that that we look forward; not to a heaven of selfish rewards; but to the loss of all consciousness of our lower being, in union with the being of God; and to the gain of our true individuality in the feeling that we are at one with the individuality of all." — Stopford A. Brooke, Serm., Individuality.

“All positive religions expressed for him (Bruno) one and the same truth, some more, some less adequately,—that the supreme end of human activity is the union of the soul with God, whereby it becomes one with God and is raised above the sphere of sense and reason, above nature, out of the ordinary cycle of human life and human death." — J. L. McIntyre, Giordano Bruno, p. 305.

“What may be called the highest mystery is at the same time the highest truth, whether in Christianity or in Neo-Platonism, namely, the perfect union with God. Thus Macarius (c. 330) says in his Homilies (14, 3): 'If a man surrenders his hidden being, that is, his spirit and his thoughts, to God, occupied with nothing else, and moved by nothing else, but restraining himself, then the Lord holds him worthy of the mysteries in much holiness and purity, nay, He offers Himself to him as divine bread and spiritual drink.'" — Max Müller, Theosophy, etc., p. 482.

"The soul passing out of itself by dying to itself necessarily passes into its divine object. This is the law of its transition. When it passes out of self, which is limited, and therefore is not God, and consequently is evil, it necessarily passes into the unlimited and universal, which is God, and therefore is the true good" (Mde Guyon). — Vaughan, Hours with the Mystics, Vol. II. p. 228.

"So long as man cherishes the desire of being himself something, God comes not to him, for no man can become God. But as soon as he renounces himself sincerely, wholly and radically, then God alone remains; and is all in all. Man can create no God for himself; but he can renounce himself as the true negation, and then he is wholly absorbed in God. This self-renunciation is the entrance into the Higher Life which is wholly opposed to the lower life — the latter taking its distinctive character from the existence of a self." — J. G. Fichte, Way towards the Blessed Life, p. 159.

Every existence tends towards the Higher, the first Unity, to obtain perfection. The whole universe is one complex, the lower emanates from the higher, and is its image, but the Divine potentiality is active in each. Love and yearning for the original source of being, and the desire of Divine perfection, are the principles of motion common to all the created (Geberol). — Myer, Qabbalah, p. 155.

See Also

ADOPTION
AEON
ARCHETYPAL MAN
ASCENSION
ASCETICISM
ATMAN
AUSTERITIES
BLISS
BRAHMA
BROTHER OF JESUS
CONSUMMATION
GARDEN OF REEDS
GOD
GRACE
IMAGE OF GOD
INDIVIDUALITY
LIBERATION
MARRIAGE
PEACE
RESURRECTION
SEASONS
SHEEP (lost)
SIMORG
WILL