Part 5: What to Do About too much Aboutness

V: Religious Representation of Symbolic Failure 

Heidegger famously used the example of a hammer as an object that is only ever seen as what it is used for until it breaks. The Hammer’s appearance is molded by its concept, which is its “Ready-to-Hand" use-value. When it breaks, its resemblance to its Ready-to-Hand concept is severed. The brokenness of the hammer is the disjunction between its resemblance to a useful hammer and the non-resemblance of its brokenness that allows the hammer to be considered in a way that it was not before. When a concept is Ready-to-Hand, it is a useful as model of how the world is. When the resemblance between the concept and an appearance on the intentional screen is broken, it is broken by the counter-resemblance of the object of the Real formed by the broken hammer’s non-resemblance to a ready-to-hand hammer. The concept of the Ready-to-Hand hammer no longer reflects how the world is, and so the intention becomes “Present-at-Hand" because some aspect of the world has withdrawn into itself in the sense that Dasein realizes that the world is not for it, but that there are worlds that belong to themselves, or are for themselves and not intended for Dasein. The intention is how Dasein makes the world through representation for itself. Heidegger’s term for this intentional world-making is simply “worlding.” The counter-resemblance of the Real appears on the intentional screen as unintentional, in the sense that it is no longer Ready-to-Hand, or “for” the subject’s intentions, which is the world worlding for itself.  

The mystic cannot see the Real until her intention is no longer Ready-to-Hand, or no longer full of concepts that are useful as models. When concepts do not reduce uncertainty, they are Present-at-Hand because they register the surprise of the Real as the noncoincidence between the object of the Real and concepts, which might be thought of as the noncoincidence between being and knowing. Mystical contemplation withdraws the intention from transactional possibilities in favor of “intentional failure,” which is the defining oxymoron, or analogical contradiction, of mystical practice. When concepts fail to resemble the world as given by the Symbolic, they register the non-resemblance of the Real, which is how the mystic allows “being to speak for itself,” in Heidegger’s formulation. However, it is important to note that Lacan denied that the Real was how the world was in-itself, or Kant’s noumenal reality. One way to think of the distinction is between the withdrawal and the in-itself of what withdraws. The Real is the withdrawal, or the gap between the Symbolic and what withdraws from it, so it is the Non-Relation itself.  

 The mystic’s “subjective destitution” is her practiced inability to make her intention resemble the concepts of the Symbolic, which means that her intention is no longer like the given intention of Heidegger's “The They,” which is the intention given by the Symbolic of her Thrownness. Her subjectivity emerges as the failure of her objectivity, which Zizek has explained is the failure of the subject to be interpolated into the given Symbolic. The object of mystical practice is divine love, which is the failure of love to be objective. Love is the failure of use-value because it is only in its brokenness, which is its Non-Rapport, that it emerges as a particular, or concrete, subject. Lacan’s aphorism that, “Love means giving something you don’t have to someone who doesn’t want it,” summarized well the Non-Rapport of love as the failure of the object of desire to be intentional. For Lacan love begins where desire ends because love is not an object that can be given or wanted like other objects. Love is the unintended failure of the object of desire to be what can be intentionally, or objectively, desired. The mystic cultivates the failure of her given intention, so that divine love can emerge in the withdrawal of the object of desire from the subject of desire. Mystical desire is desire for what cannot be desired, which is desire desiring its own obstacle, or the eternal incompletion of the Non-Relation. The failure of love to be objectified in the register of the Real is the noncoincidence between desire and representation, which is the noncoincidence between being and knowing. 

Real love appears as representation's brokenness, or as the warping of the Symbolic, which is how the presence of absence appears in the intention because it is representation that does not reduce ambiguity but rather produces the ambiguity of counter-resemblance. Counter-resemblance is the Non-Rapport in representation between the signifier and the signified that comes into particular focus when the object of the Real emerges as the object of Non-Rapport in symbolic failure. The noncoincidence between signifier and signified is the always present absence of a rapport between being and knowing, but it becomes an object within the intention when intention is unintentional, or ambiguous. Counter-representation presences absence particularly the absence of resemblance, or rapport, between a concept and the presence of the object of the Real in the intention, which is the presence of the absence of a relation between determination and ambiguity, or objectification and subjectivity, or the signifier and the signified.  

The presence of the absence of resemblance manifests as symbolic failure or brokenness, which appears as unintentional intentionality because it is not “for” the subject. When intention is broken, it is broken by the object of the Real, which is the “Object-Cause-of-Desire,” or the “Object-Cause -of-Anxiety.” The object of the Real produces the surprise or the anxiety or the horror or the wonder that the subject desires to determine with intentional representation. The mystic’s desire is to see the Real, but the Real is only ever seen as its inversion in symbolic failure, so the mystic’s speech becomes a hyperbolic negation of representation.  

Cognitive science holds that brains are prediction machines, or uncertainty reducers, and that that is what consciousness is for, or at least what the intention was selected for. Many in that field claim that the necessary and sufficient reason for consciousness is to reduce surprise. When concepts reduce or eliminate surprise, they are selected for and are shared via the Symbolic as the ready-to-hand concepts of a culture’s symbolic repository. Concepts that resemble experience are Ready-to-Hand because there is no difference between the conceptual frame as the prediction, or the expectation, and what is framed as the phenomenal experience. Object-Cause-of-Surprise is the difference between a concept as a model and concept as a model plus the non-resemblance of its difference. The Real’s counter-object is the difference between the hammer’s resemblance to the concept of a ready-to-hand hammer and the particular difference of its brokenness. The hammer’s failure to be Ready-to-Hand allows it to appear to the subject as what Heidegger called “Present-at-Hand.” When an object is Present-at-Hand, it is usually because the object has failed to be Ready-to-Hand, which is why most of Dasein’s thinking is the result of things not working as intended. A Present-at-Hand object has been disconnected from its Ready-to-Hand network of conceptual associations, so that it can be considered theoretically for its distinct, individual properties. Non-resemblance creates the re-considerations of theory. The counter-resemblance of the Real’s Object-Cause-of-Anxiety becomes the Object-Cause-of-Theory.  

Losing its usefulness allows the hammer to be seen differently than as it was through the concept that previously molded its appearance on the intentional screen. Heidegger's point is no more complicated than a fish does not realize it's in water until it's not. However, a fish does not theorize about the nature of water when it is out of it. The fish just tries to get back in. This difference for Heidegger is the defining characteristic of the sort of being that Dasein is, as the being that theorizes. Heidegger's simple point reveals something essential about the subjective intention, namely that the objects that appear as phenomena are not objective in the sense of disinterested. An object’s appearance is shaped by the subjectivity that it appears to and not only by its own qualities. Whatever a hammer is without its use-value to the subject, those aspects of the hammer are “withdrawn” beyond the intentional horizon until it has no use. The hammer’s uselessness allows the “in-itself” of the hammer to appear as an imaginary object because it is no longer “for” its intended purpose. However, for most intention's its uselessness is not the cause of any extra contemplation beyond the thought to throw it away and get a new one. 

There will always be aspects of any object that are withdrawn beyond the horizon of the intentional screen because it has a horizon, and that horizon is what the subject cares about, or what the subject is interested in. The subject’s Care is not her own but belongs to the Symbolic and the Imaginary given by the subject’s Thrownness. Dasein can become a clearing when it is cleared of its habitual intentions, but this “de-territorialization” cannot become utterly devoid of intention, which is just another way of making the basic phenomenological point that consciousness is always about something. The Real is the object formed by the consciousness of a failure to represent. However, the failure to represent produces another object besides the one formed out of the failure itself, which is the imaginary in-itself that appears as the object that if obtained would resemble the concepts of the Symbolic. This Imaginary object is a projection of an in-itself that constitutes the lack of the Object-Cause-of-Desire. A withdrawn in-itself is an Imaginary object because it is imagined as the lost whole of Symbolic correspondence to the Real, which is how the Non-Relation between the Symbolic and the Real is imagined as a relation. The Clearing is not absolute, so that whatever comes into the Clearing will speak for itself, but in the language of the subject’s intention, which forms a strange paradox because whatever withdraws is what does not speak the same language as the subject’s intention in the first place. The desire of the mystic is for the unmediated speech of the withdrawn in-itself, but this hiddenness is the horizon of the intention formed by the Non-Relation, so the Non-Relation must be imagined as a relation even when it is a withdrawn in-itself. A withdrawn in-itself is imagined as an obstacle to overcome with the relation of intentional representation to unintentional symbolic failure, which would be the interpolation of whatever withdraws from the representation into the Symbolic. However, the mystic acknowledges the absolute nature of the Non-Relation because she imagines it not as a obstacle to be overcome with more symbolic interpolation, but rather with less. The obstacle of the Non-Relation becomes the mechanism of mystical speech, so this obstacle is made intentional by clearing away the given networks of conceptual relations according to the Via Negativa. The mystic seeks to reduce the relations of representation to increase the unintentional speech of being speaking for itself, but nonetheless in the language and images of her given Symbolic. 

Object relations take place within the sentence, so that the object in the subject position of the sentence is just as determined as the object in the predicate position of the sentence. The Real can only be seen as the gap between the determinations of representation and the failure to determine from outside of the utterance’s determinations from the perspective of the utterer. The absence that is the Non-Relation becomes an excessive presence as the obstacle between the Subject of Annunciation and her annunciation. Mystical practice intends this unintentional sort of intention, so its utterances are indented to presence the absence of the Real by calling forth the gap between the representation and being, which is the abyss. 

The possibility spaces of objects that withdrawn from other objects do not form the object of the Real because the object of the Real is the Object-Cause-of-Desire, which is the withdrawal itself and not what is withdrawn. Objects do not desire what has been withdrawn from them, nor are they anxious about it, nor do they wonder about it, or what it is in-itself apart from how it may relate to their own objective intentions. If an object is “curious” about the in-itself of another object, it is only as it relates to its projects. The subject is the failure of an object to be objective. The subject’s excessive care about what has been withdrawn from it is beyond an object’s care about what is related to it via use. Since the intentional screen is an adaptation developed for it usefulness as related to survival and reproduction, it has no investment, or access to whatever is outside of the relation of the intention of use to the intention of representation.  

When the relation between use and representation is broken, representation is useless. However, the subject emerges as the curiosity about what is useless as the withdrawn in-itself of being. The object of the Real is formed by what is counter to the intention and becomes a curiosity, or Object-Cause-of-Theory, about Being-In-Itself only to the being for whom being is a question. The Real’s object is formed by the Non-Relation between representation and the desire, which is when representation does not resemble desire. Desire is excessive because it desires what is not indented for it. Concepts resemble Dasein’s intentions until the intention’s representation becomes unintentional as symbolic failure, which is the object of the Real, or what cannot be interpolated into the Symbolic.  Concepts are for the reduction of uncertainty, except that the reduction of uncertainty is not all that Dasein intends. The mystic intents the unintentional production of uncertainty in line with Freud’s concept of the “Death Drive” as the beyond of his “Pleasure Principle.” Death Drive is excessive because its desire is for what is undesirable, which is what is not for the subject’s pleasure. The Counter-Experience is the experience of what is counter to the intention as the experience of the beyond of desire which might be thought of as unrepresentable desire or as unintended drive. 

Dasein’s desire withdraws from itself so that it becomes its own obstacle, which is not like other objects withdrawing from each other. Dasein “enjoys,” in the Lacanian sense of excessive-enjoyment, or “Jouissance,” the non-resemblance of brokenness, which is why it actively seeks destruction. The mismatch between resemblance and non-resemblance is the mismatch between Ready-to-Handed-ness and its excess, which is enjoyment of what is useless, or ambiguous, or even directly harmful. Seeking what cannot be represented is seeking what cannot be Ready-to-Hand and so resists intention absolutely. Death Drive seeks the objective, outside of the intention as the hard limit to intention, which is how desire becomes its own obstacle. The mismatch between a concept’s intention and the counter-intention of the Real is the obstacle necessary for desire because desire cannot want what does not withdraw from it. The Real is the absolute resistance to intentional representation that causes desire, as well as anxiety and wonder. 

Symbolic failure is a failure from the use-value perspective of the Ready-to-Hand intention, but from the perspective of the Present-at-Hand intention, it is the irreducible ambiguity of an in-itself. Symbolic failure appears as the object of the Real formed out of what is counter to the intention because it is not for the subject. The Real is the objective, outside of intention, so it appears as a counter-object within the intention. Concepts that have been formed by the individual are given by the collective intention and are stored in the afterward-ness of the Symbolic for use according to the object relations of resemblance to whatever objects are before conceptualization. The Real is what withdraws from the object relations of resemblance, so it appears as what does not resemble the concepts of the Symbolic, which is what is in the intention as its outside. 

Graham Harmon has made the point that objects withdraw from each other also, so that withdrawal is not just a phenomenon in which objective possibilities withdraw from a specifically subjective intention. The claim of Harmon’s Object-Oriented Ontology is that what is withdrawn of an object, from itself and from other objects, is the object’s virtual interiority just as a subject’s virtual interiority withdraws from itself as the unconscious and from other subjects as the first-person, private intention. However, the question remains as to whether an object’s interiority is like the subject’s intention because subjectivity is warped by desire in such a way that it may be difficult to compare subjective intentions to objective ones.  

Harmon has given “Undermining” and “Overmining” as examples of how objects withdraw from intentional representation. Undermining is when objects are reduced to what constitutes them, so that what they are as wholes is withdrawn. This is how objects withdraw from the representation of the sciences. The material reduction makes statements like beauty is “nothing but” the lure to procreation, or a body is “nothing but” a collection of cells. Overmining is when objects are reduced to their relations or their effects, so that what they are apart from their position in a system of difference, or what they are “in-themselves,” is withdrawn. This is how objects withdraw from the structural relations of identities as “difference-from” other objects rather than identity as within the object. Both forms of withdrawal are consonant with Heidegger's idea that when Care is Ready-to-Hand, or structured according to the intention, its Present-at-Handed-ness, or its “own voice,” is withdrawn.  

Both Undermining and Overmining concern how objects withdraw into an interior, virtual space that might be called the “in-itself” of the object because these aspects of the objects are hidden to a certain kind of intention. Harmon has held that objects have intentions that are like subjective intentions, so that objects withdraw from each other in a similar way. Objects withdraw their relational possibilities from themselves and from each other because only some relational possibilities are engaged in interactions at any one time. Objects may have goals that shape which possibilities are Ready-to-Hand for them and which have withdrawn into virtuality, but this virtual interiority is not like the possibility space of the subjective intention because it is not a Present-at-Hand intention in which a clearing is made for being to speak for itself. The thwarting of an object’s intentions may produce a virtual interiority of withdrawn possibilities, but it only produces intentional subjectivity when this virtual interiority is warped by the desire of excessive care beyond object relations. The beyond of object relations is Lacan’s “Object-Small-a," which is the object formed out of a particular object’s failure to be an object because it is too particular to hold its abstract form, but Object-Small-a is only an object on the intentional screen of a subject of desire. The intentional screen of a subject of desire is warped in a way that cannot hold the screen’s objective intention. When the intention is about Object-Small-a, it is about the too much intention of desire, which is too much aboutness to be objectified by intentional representation. Object-Small-a is the objectification of the failure to objectify desire. Object-Small-a is the object that signifies lack of objectification, which is too much to objectify because it is the excess of what cannot be interpolated into the Symbolic. 

An object’s virtual interiority is like a possibility space that is withdrawn because this possible interface surface is not currently being engaged. If an object’s possibility spaces were imagined as geometric surfaces, then it would be like two triangles that could only interface on one of their surfaces at a time while their other two surfaces were withdrawn from objective interactions. Objective perspectivism has only to do with the practicality of actual interfacing possibilities. If objects appear to have inner intentions, they are not like the intentions of subjects of desire because object’s intentions are not excessive in the sense that they do not extent into the impossible realm of the Real. Object's do not care about the Real, they only care about object relations, so they do not relate to Object-Small-a at all. Object-Cause-of-Desire does not appear on their intentional screen because a withdrawn possibility does not evoke the excessive desire for the Real. The excessive desire for the Real is the desire for the in-itself of how objects are without the intention, which is the desire to overcome the noncoincidence between Being, in the register of the Real, and Knowing, in the register of the Symbolic.  

Object relations are without the intentional warping of the presence of desire on representation. Objects relate to other objects according to their intention for those object relations, and this shapes which possibilities are Ready-to-Hand, or related to according to use, and which possibilities are withdrawn. However, objects do not have the Present-to-Hand intention to know how objects are in-themselves, or to let being speak for itself.  Lacan denied that the Real was the numina, or whatever is without representation because the Real is the failure of representation, so it is a phenomenon of the failure of representation. What withdraws as the virtual interiority of object relations is not numina either, it is a defined possibility space that Deleuze thought of as actualized possibility because it was already defined enough to be an object.  

An object is a possibility space, and when it is not being engaged in object relations, it is a virtual possibility space. Concepts are virtual when they are not actively being engaged in object relations, and they may be actualized, or concretized, within mental space without being materialized. Deleuze was also keen to point out that material objects also have virtual, possibility spaces, which are virtual because they are withdrawn “actual,” rather than actualized, possibilities. For Deleuze “possibility” was not synonymous with “virtual,” and “actual” was not synonymous with “actualized,” which might be thought of as “concretized” to keep the distinction clear. The virtual was actual possibility that was not actively engaged in object relations, so it might be thought of as a withdrawn, actual object. Absolute possibility had to be somewhat structured before it could become a possibility for Deleuze, which was his formulation for the Repetition of Difference. A repetition loosely structured difference according to relations among differences, which is very similar to AFN Whitehead’s definition of concepts as relations of different percepts according to rules. For Deleuze “Difference-in-Itself" could not be accessed as a possibility space “in-Itself” because an “in-itself” is the void of without-relations and difference is a relation, which is why Deleuze used differential calculus to underlie his theory. Differential equations put differences into relations with each other according to rules. The without-relations of Difference-in-Itself is a void that must be brought into relation with itself to make the something out of nothing that Deleuze called, “Difference-for-Itself.” The relation was primary to whatever it related for both Deleuze and Whitehead because it was the relation that produced the relata as the defined difference of objects. 

“Pure Difference” for Deleuze was a relation of difference to difference under the rule of repetition, which is Difference-for-Itself in the form of the Repetition of Difference. Absolute possibility, or possibility in-itself, does not contain any actual possibility because it does not contain the differential relations that define possibilities, which is just a form of the prosaic idea that freedom requires limits to define its freedom. Deleuze’s “Desiring Machines” were defined by the structures of their limits, which were their stops, gaps, thresholds, and gradients. The absolute possibility of Being-in-Itself must be distinguished from the relative possibility of Being-for-Itself because the withdrawal of one from the intention is not like the other. The former is when the intention is about the void, which is the horizon of the intention, and the latter is about withdrawn, defined possibilities. The Real is the relation between the void of absolute possibility and the defined possibility of the concepts of the Symbolic. The Real is not the void, nor is it reality for Lacan, the Lacanian Real is the Non-Relation between the two that produces reality out of the void as a Hegelian Self-Relating Negativity, or as a Kierkegaardian self-relating relation. The void speaks as the subject of desire’s intention, or more accurately, the Real is the split in the subject of desire’s intention that speaks.  

The Non-Relation is so central to the subject of desire because it reflects the lack of instinctual direction given by human biology. The Real of the Non-Relation is present as an absent instinct for Human Being, which means that the difference between instinct and desire is that the latter lacks a defined object. The Symbolic and the Imaginary given by one’s society define desire where biology does not, but the lack of desire’s direction towards a biologically defined object shows itself when culturally defined objects fail to determine desire. For Lacan the subject of desire is in a double bind because desire cannot be determined outside of the given Symbolic and Imaginary either, which is the meaning of his famous phrase, “Les non-dupes errent.” One must be “duped” into the “father’s” Symbolic and Imaginary, which mean that one must use the signifiers of Heidegger's “The They” to locate desire, because there is nothing but the unmediated Real outside of language and society. Whatever Existential “authenticity” means, it cannot mean defining one’s own desire apart from “The They,” or the Lacanian “Big Other.” It must mean defining desire through the Non-Relation of society and one’s desire. Therefore, Lacan defined the Sinthome as the psychoanalytical “solution” to the symptom because it was the object of the double negation of the void. The void is first negated by the Symbolic, and then by the Real, which is what of one’s desire can be interpolated into the Symbolic plus what fails to be interpolated in the register of the Real. The singularity of the symptom is the Sinthome because it is a repetition, in the register of the Symbolic, of difference, in the register of the Real. 

Marion’s Counter-Experiences are experiences of a counter-object, which is the object of the Real defined by the Non-Relation between the Real and the Symbolic. The object of the Real is the Object-Cause-of-Desire, anxiety, and wonder, which are the characteristic affects of the Couter-Experience. The undeterminable hermeneutics of Counter-Experiences are the affects of desire, anxiety, and wonder. Desire, anxiety, and wonder are undeterminable when the intention is unintended. It is the surprise of non-resemblance to the concepts of the Symbolic that causes the intention to be unintentional. Therefore, the mystic is in a bind because she must surprise herself with the undeterminable affects of the Counter-Experience. Somehow, the mystic “must not let her right hand know what her left hand is doing,” which is the sort of self-splitting associated with psychosis. Mystical practice induces the psychosis of unintended intention, which is to deliberately induce the Real’s deformations of the intention. The unintentional intention might be thought of as a clearing away of familiar concepts to differentiate new ones in the unfamiliarity of the Real, but it is not a direct descent into the void, even though it is sometimes articulated that way when it is portrayed as the long practice of self-annihilation in the many life times that it takes to acquire “no-self.”   

The Non-Relation is the “not, not relation,” so it is not the “no-relation” of “no-self,” or of no-intention. The complete no-relation between the Symbolic and the Real of no-concepts is apparently accomplished when the intention is about nothing, which would require a collapse of the intention into the void of total self-annihilation. The intention is aboutness, so if it is about nothing, this might be just another way of saying that there is no intention. There can be no Subject of Annunciation to articulation this total lack of intention because there is no aboutness to annunciate. This sort of no-intention is the mystical union described as the Nirvana of “No-Self,” which would be the no-intention of no-aboutness. Mystics within this tradition can attain this sort of no-intention, but they cannot report anything about it, except to say that it is beyond concepts, or that it just “is,” and that one must experience it for oneself because nothing can be said about it. As described this sort of experience seems to be an intention about no-intention, so that the ego-self has been annihilated even though the intention has not. This sort of mysticism commonly claims that there is a self behind the ego-self that is revealed when the ego is destroyed. This ultimate self is sometimes called the “silent watcher” because it is watching the ego-self disinterestedly but not uninterestedly. Sometimes this Silent Watcher is depicted as an individual consciousness and sometimes as consciousness itself.   

These experiences of the darkness of nothing are not Marion’s Counter-Experiences. Many other mystics claim an aboutness of a “Beatific Vision,” which requires that the intention remain a Non-Relation between the Symbolic and the Real for there to be an intention. The Subject of Annunciation articulates the Beatific Vision as the “not, not” aboutness of the double negation. Those who claim a Beatific Vision use the formula of “like” but “not like,” which is the formula of Aquinas’s knowing the divine by analogy: God is “like” a rock, but not “like” a rock, so God is “like” a “not, not” a rock. There is a divide within mystical experiences between experience that mostly fits the description of no-aboutness and those that are of the double negation of aboutness, which might be thought of as “counter-aboutness” because the double negation of aboutness is the aboutness of the Symbolic negated twice by the counter-aboutness of the Real. The “super-saturation” of the no-intentions of the Neo-Platonic Plotinus, or of his Chirstian pseudo-disciple the Pseudo-Dyonisius, might be thought of as the models in the Western Tradition for the former no-aboutness and the biblical images of the beloved in the Song of Songs, or of Moses’s Burning Bush, or of Ezekiel’s descriptions of Ophanim as the “wheel within a wheel” barely scratch the surface of the latter counter-aboutness of Counter-Experience. This latter sort of intention is not “no intention,” but the unintentional intention of counter-aboutness, which can be produced by the double negation of the Via Negativa to make a clearing for being to speak for itself.  

Being speaking for itself is the counter-aboutness of Heidegger's Present-at-Hand intention because it is the unintended speech of the Other of the Other, which is the Other of the Symbolic as the Real. The absolute outside of intention speaks from within intention as the other of the other, or the Real. Lacan’s idea that there is “no other of the other” holds in Heidegger’s clearing because the other of the other is the Real, or the Void for Heidegger. However, the Real is not the Void but the Non-Relation between the Void and the Symbolic of the intention. The Via Negativa clears away particular representations of the divine but not the Symbolic because the Real speaks through its withdrawal from the Symbolic. The Cloud of Unknowing described by the anonymous, English, Christian monk of the 14^th Century would be the total clearing away of all knowing, or of all symbolic representation, except that the mystic describes the experience as a “Cloud of Unknowing” upon his return to the Symbolic, so the Real is represented as the failure of the Symbolic, which is the Symbolics' unknowing. This is the basic form of unknowing that all iconography presents. When the anonymous monk started his mystical ascent, he denied various kinds of representation that the Church had used to represent God all the way up to and including Christ Himself, as the Icon of God. However, this denial always included a qualification of the "not, not” and not just of the “not.” The anonymous monk always began his denial of any particular representation of the divine with, it is not that this representation is not good and valuable, but it is nonetheless a mediation, and so not as good and valuable as the direct experience. Therefore, it must be cleared away because it is blocking the immediate presence of the divine.  

The claim of the Cloud of Unknowing, which is like the claims of most practitioners of the Via Negativa, was that the Cloud of Unknowing is the unmediated experience of the Godhead in-itself. This unmediated experience was the progressive denial of all symbolic mediation. The contradiction at the heart of the Via Negativa is that the denial of symbolic mediation produces the copious, hyperbolic speech of the mystic, at least up until the point of direct apprehension of the divine’s presence, but at this final level of the ascent, mystics can bring back a report upon return. The concept of the Cloud of Unknowing is still a concept, but it was constructed by the rejection of concepts, and the process of rejecting each concept left a necessary record of how the Real resisted representation. This process and its record are necessary because the record is of a process written in the Symbolic about symbolic failure, which is the speech of the Real. Symbolic failure is the speech of the Real withdrawing from the Symbolic as the concrescence of the Via Negativa through a particular representation or through a particular mystic’s ascent. Divine Love is made concrete as it withdraws from abstract divinity into particular divinity in the process of Kenosis, or self-emptying. Abstract divinity empties itself of its abstraction by particularizing as a Concrete Form. The meaning of Ekhart’s idea that God withdraws into his ever-deepening depths as he reveals Himself, is that God’s abstraction is endless, so that his revelation in Concrete Form is also endless.  

The double negation is the relation of the void to itself of Hegel’s Self-Relating Negativity. The mystic’s God is indistinguishable from the Void because both are without the mediation of the Symbolic. Only the Symbolic can make the distinction between something and nothing because absolute nothing is without distinction. Distinctions are made by the relations of difference, which is what the Symbolic is. Whatever is immediate is unmediated by the relations of difference and is therefore not a thing, or not an object, and so cannot be conceived, and cannot be intentional. This absolute nothing is that which resists “symbolization absolutely,” but it only becomes the Real as its resistance to symbolization. The Real is how the void speaks as the eternal withdrawal, or self-emptying, of the divine’s abstraction into the particularity of concrete expression. Counter-Experiences cannot be intentional, so they usually occur without any practice or technique as in sickness, or accidental beauty, or even in the unintentional sublimity of the everyday. However, the mystic cultivates the Counter-Experience with great cunning to surprise herself with the beautiful sickness of divine love.