Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [61]
Contemplation brings us into contact with ultimate reality
In the first type of contemplation, then, it is the world of true and ultimate reality which enters our life; whereas, in the second, it is we who emerge from our actual life into that world. This renders a further important characteristic of contemplation easier to understand. It does not suffice in any form of contemplation that we should abandon ourselves to the object—to “rest” therein, to be “filled” by it—in an attitude however devoid of pragmatism.
In order that contemplation may bring out its full meaning and attain its perfection, another feature must be present. The object must affect us not only with its isolated specific content, it must elevate us into the world of valid and ultimate reality. We must, in contemplation, meet that world as such, so as to acquire suddenly a comprehensive new attitude towards all things.
Who of us does not know the supreme moments when a great truth, a glorious beauty of art or of nature, or the soul of a beloved person manifests itself to our soul with a lightning-like splendor, gracing our eyes with a vision of ultimate reality and prompting us to exclaim, “O Lord, how admirable is Thy name in the whole earth!” (Ps. 8:10)?
It is not as though the specific content of what has thus manifested itself to us were presently to vanish again, after having fulfilled a transitory role. On the contrary, we continue to envision that object in its deep and unique proper essence, situating it, as it were, in its abode in the cœlum empyreum (“the highest heavens”) of that valid and ultimate reality into which it elevates us.
In other words, not until an object which by virtue of its specific content admits of contemplative attention so affects us that we at last face God Himself, encountering that object in the world of God and seeing it in the light of God—not until then will our attitude be that of contemplation proper. Then only, with our awakening to a sense of true and eternal reality, will our state of consciousness outgrow the limits of time. The halt we make will no longer mean a mere interruption of the stream of purposeful actuality but a triumphant soaring above it, an essential liberation from its fetters. So long as we are merely contemplating an object as such, not following it up to its abode in the cœlum empyreum and not being led by it into the presence of the “Father of all lights,” we may at most actualize certain formal features of the contemplative attitude; we will not rise in triumphant freedom and sweep above the neutral, pragmatic process of life with its succession of conative tensions and its inherent unrest.
Perfect contemplation always implies at least an indirect reference to God
Thus, all perfect contemplation implies an indirect reference to God, Unless it helps us to establish a contact with God, the contemplative attitude cannot attain a complete unfolding of its specific character. This does not mean that God must be its formal object; that all true contemplation must be religious contemplation proper. The contemplation we have now discussed is directed to some created entity as its formal object. Yet, even here, a reference to God is necessarily implied.
For first, contemplation is more than the intellectual analysis of an object or even the enjoyment of disinterested knowledge. It requires that the object should help us to approach the world of valid and noble reality, which again involves, as a background at least, our awareness of the presence of God.
And, secondly, no thing discloses