Preliminary Considerations 25 



the time in one region of the self-experience (though 

 God does not cease to be transcendent, because in the 

 cosmos He is immanent). This symbolic statement is, 

 however, incomplete, for it is static, and does not repre- 

 sent the dynamic nature of immanence. This we may 

 express by saying that / = / (/) that the immanent 

 / is a function of the transcendent 7 1 . For us the great 

 point is that the initial transcendent Reality is perfect 

 reciprocity, and the perpetual cycle of creation returns 

 to this again. The absolute experience of God is no 

 fuller; only, others share it. For consider. In perfect 

 reciprocity there is complete self-abnegation, complete 

 sharing of experience 2 . Nothing new is introduced by 

 the entry of others to share this experience; nor even by 

 the entry of God into conditions of pain and limitation, 

 since there is self-abnegation eternally in the self-rela- 

 tions of a God who is Love. (Death has no transcendent 

 analogue; it is purely a phenomenon of limitation in 

 time and matter, and is merely an extension of self- 

 sacrifice. It is a stage, a crisis of life, not life's ending.) 



1 I am not sure that a competent mathematician could not 

 formulate an equation expressing the rate of change of / c towards 

 /, in terms of the relation between organism and environment, and 

 the pari passu removal of God's self -limitation an equation of 

 becoming that would be suggestive though it must be funda- 

 mentally remote from the truth, since no equation can take count 

 of contingency, and freedom begins as contingency, even if it ends 

 as harmonious self-determination. The equation would perhaps 

 have to be of the type 



(Ic-o (!- 



= / 



J /,=* + </)*( + * + +)./ / = 



if transcendence were wholly lost which of course it is not where 

 a + 6 + ... are phenomenal experiences of the created beings; but 

 I am not mathematician enough to envisage the form it must 

 take. 



* This only becomes intelligible in the Transcendent Godhead 

 when we assume the doctrine of the Trinity (vide infra). 



