The Godhead is too far beyond man's conception, experience, and knowledge; the Absolute cannot be comprehended by his finite capacity. It is indeed the Unknowable. Now metaphysical ideas must be metaphysically understood. If they are understood sensuously or physically, or if an eternal principle is replaced by a historical person, truth is turned to idolatry. Those who are able to hold such a lofty conception of its fleshly appearance as an Incarnation cannot cramp it into the little box of human individuality. Any prophet who makes such a claim repeatedly is merely emphasizing his person at the cost of his Overself, is glorifying his little self rather than the Infinite whose messenger he claims to be. The man who understands his own limitations and the Absolute's lack of them will never claim equality with it. Such a man will never ask others to show him the reverence which they ought to show to the pure spirit nor to give him the allegiance which they ought to give to God. Whereas nearly all popular religions set up as an intermediary between It and us "The Divinely Incarnate Prophet" or else "The Son of God," philosophy depersonalizes it and sets up instead the true self, the divine soul in man. For even the prophets and avatars whom the divine Godhead sends down to mankind are sent not only to teach them that this Absolute exists but also to direct them towards the realization of their own true inner self. The true self will then reflect as much of the divine as it is able to, but it can never exhaust it. It is the Overself and, through the threefold path, is Knowable. In the Unique Godhead, ever mysterious in its unmanifested self-existence, there rises and sets, like the sun's light, the manifested World-Mind, in which--in its turn--there rises and sets all this wonderful cosmos of which it is the very soul. The first is forever beyond man but the second is always accessible to man as the Overself within him.
-- Notebooks Category 28: The Alone > Chapter 2 : Our Relation To the Absolute > # 91
