ON THE NAMES OF GODcan be substituted for any other other.Ergo, they are all indifferent terms for naming the
totality of what exists—that is, the Absolute. Here we are confronted, however, with a
different problem from that of naming God in a direct way—or, perhaps, with the same
problem seen from another angle—because, if that operation could be achieved, we would
have accomplished something more than obtaining a universal equivalence: we would
have destroyed the equivalential relation and made it collapse into simple identity. Let us
consider the matter carefully. In a relation of equivalence the particular meanings of its
terms do not simply vanish; they are partially retained, and it is only in some aspects that
the replacement of one term by the others operates. Some currents of Hindu mysticism
have advocated a total collapse of differences into undifferentiated identity, but Western
mysticism has always played around the Aristotelian-Thomist notion of analogy,
grounded in an equivalence that is less than identity. A mystic like Eckhart was trying to
think ‘‘unity in difference,’’ and that is why the analogic relation of equivalence was
crucial in his discourse. The universe of differences had to be brought into unity without
the differential moment being lost. But it is here where we find a problem, for, if the
equivalence becomes absolutely universal, the differential particularism of its links neces-
sarily collapses. We would have an undifferentiated identity in whichanyterm would
refer to the totality, but in that case the totality—the Absolute—could be named in an
immediate, direct way, and its transcendent dimension, which is essential to the mystical
experience (and discourse) would have been lost. If, by contrast, the equivalence remains
an equivalence and does not collapse into identity, it will belessthan universal. In that
case, as it remains an equivalence, it will be able to be the means of representing some-
thing transcending it, but, as the chain will be less than universal,clod, flesh,andstone
will be not only the transparent medium of expression of the Absolute but also its jailers:
the remainder of particularity will be back with a vengeance—as it cannot be eliminated,
it will transform the mystical intervention from a free walk into the Absolute into the
attribution of an absolute value to a particularity that is entirely incommensurable with it.
If we put our two conclusions together, the result is only one: God cannot be named;
the operation of naming Him, either in a direct way or indirectly, through the equivalence
of contents that are less than Him, involves us in a process by which the residue of
particularity, which mystical intervention tries to eliminate, proves to be irreducible. In
that case, however, mystical discourse points in the direction of a dialectics between the
particular and the Absolute, which is more complex than it claims to be and which we
must now explore.
Let us concentrate for a moment on this double impossibility around which mystical
discourse is organized and see to what extent it belongs exclusively to the field of mystical
experience or whether it should rather be conceived as the expression, in mystical garb,
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