Vodou 601: The God in God
I can only liken this to talking about the multitude of mathematical infinities—things that cannot be counted but have definite characteristics.
The all, god, is an infinity that contains infinities. The process of theosis exposes the soul to infinity, and in the process exposes the infinity in that soul which the soul and god share. This is one of the reasons the consciousness, whose job is discriminating, categorizing, etc has a very hard time with god. Something whose purpose is to count is exposed to the uncountable.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that the person needs a drink (or something) afterward. They were just exposed to the fact that every tool they know how to use is nonsense. Their consciousness needs a much smaller universe to recover from that shock, and intoxicants do tend to make the world smaller for awhile. Every doctoral candidate in math I’ve ever met also needed the regular application of intoxicants for a similar reason. Contemplating the symbolic relationships between quantity and something that is not quantity is a bit of a brain bender.
For frequent fliers in experiencing infinity in a religious context, there is something of a trap in how they handle the continued exposure to the uncountable, consciousness wrecking experience. At some point, they will need to balance the knowledge that they are an infinity with the knowledge that they are not the infinity that contains infinities.
The priest is god. The priest is not god.
Phrased more carefully, the priest is an infinity. The priest is not the infinity of infinities.
This is another place that ego tends to sneak in. For the sheer sake of comfort, it can be easy for a priest going through theosis to begin to think of themselves as the infinity. Especially early in the process, as the person is increasingly exposed to experiences which make it clear that the limits we would like to place on ourselves as human beings are grossly smaller than our spiritual nature, the consciousness wants to cling to something simpler than the fun house mirror through which the process happens—having to be in the uncertain territory where you have a life outside your spiritual experiences which tells you one thing and the spiritual experiences which tell you another, where a divine force can flow into and through you with no respect for consciousness, decency, and boundaries whatsoever—at some point in the process, it can be easy to want to call it quits.
The process is so painful that you just want it to be over with, and the sheer enormity of the infinity you keep encountering makes you have some questions about yourself. And then there is the experience of having a lwa use you to do things you did not know possible. The consciousness wants something to cling to, and the idea of being the all is, in a way, the comfort of an ending. There is just the problem that a priest is not that infinity of infinities, though the infinity of infinities and other infinities can handily reach through the priest for any amount of purposes.
A saner way to think of it is this—god has a work force, with workers of greater and lesser capacity. The lwa have great capacity. A priest going through theosis will have greater capacity than one who does not, but the lwa have much greater experience and capacity than the priest.
God, as always, has infinite capacity.
