The World Beyond the Window

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Effing the Ineffable:
How do we express what cannot be said?
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Thomas Aquinas ended his life in a state of ecstasy, declaring that all that he had written was of no significance beside the beatific vision that he had been granted, and in the face of which words fail.  But Aquinas was exceptional. The history of philosophy abounds in thinkers who, having concluded that the truth is ineffable, have gone on to write page upon page about it.

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I have long been in awe of people who can express the inexpressible, who can describe their inner and outer experience with such depth and precision that their words penetrate to my very soul, to that place inside us all that is the source of our being, of who we are.

I think we all long to be able to put into words - and thus share - that "world beyond the window" - at the same time we know it's hopeless, that to describe it is to somehow diminish it, to reduce that mystery that "cannot be described but only revealed" to familiar labels and concepts.

Anybody who goes through life with open mind and open heart will encounter these moments of revelation, moments that are saturated with meaning, but whose meaning cannot be put into words. These moments are precious to us. When they occur it is as though, on the winding ill-lit stairway of our life, we suddenly come across a window, through which we catch sight of another and brighter world — a world to which we belong but which we cannot enter.

Roger Scruton also longs to open that window.  In this article at Big Questions Online, he wonders what these moments of revelation have to do with our ultimate questions - do these ineffable moments point to that which science cannot explain?  Do they point to the cause of the world?

We love each other as angels love, reaching for the unknowable “I.” We hope as angels hope: with our thoughts fixed on the moment when the things of this world fall away and we are enfolded in “the peace which passes understanding.” Putting the point that way I have already said too much. For my words make it look as though the world beyond the window is actually here, like a picture on the stairs. But it is not here; it is there, beyond the window that can never be opened.

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Roger Scruton is a writer and philosopher living in England. His many books include Beauty and The Uses of Pessimism and the Danger of False Hope.
Learn more about him at www.roger-scruton.com.
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all these years of thinking
ended up like this
in front of all this beauty
understanding nothing
- Bruce Cockburn
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