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But precisely because of this great significance, it has long evoked diametrically opposed attitudes. While for some it is clearer than daylight, for others it is a mere phantom of an undeveloped imagination.
Scholars have long attempted to logically substantiate the undeniability of this truth through so-called "proofs of the existence of God." Each and all of these proofs together are both respectable and useful. But if they don't convince everyone, then they truly lack the necessary comprehensiveness of proof. Orthodox theological thought, however, can provide more convincing evidence.
If we present all the existing proofs of Divine existence in the form of a living, integral process of the human soul’s search for God, then, in the modern scientific setting of the matter, this process lacks real completion.
There is a living search for God, but it's unclear whether the God the soul seeks has truly been found . Yet, in reality, this moment does occur, given the necessary conditions. And, as it is essentially mystical, it can rightly be called a mystical proof of the existence of the Divine. Briefly, its essence can be expressed as follows:
God is the purest spiritual being, the subtlety of which cannot be compared to any created being. But for all His subtlety, He is also the most real being. The reality of all being can be known only through experience. In no other way can we be assured of the reality of the Divine Being. The most mysterious and most real communion of the human spirit with the Divine, or mystical experience, is the ultimate witness of the veracity of Divine Being. Such is the essence of mystical proof. Specifically, in the living process of mystical knowledge of God, the following three main points can be discerned.
At first, the method of mystical knowledge is – primarily – faith, in the middle – spiritual experience, and at the end – contemplation.
“I did not believe in God,” says Tolstoy 1 , “and this tormented me. And how did I find Him? When I asked myself almost every minute: should I end up with a noose or a bullet, all this time, alongside this train of thought, my heart was tormented by a painful feeling. I cannot call this feeling anything other than a search for God. I say that the search for God was not reasoning, but a feeling, because this search did not flow from my train of thought, it was directly opposed to them - but it flowed from the heart ... Despite the fact that I was completely convinced of the impossibility of proving the existence of God, I still sought God, hoped that I would find Him, and, out of old habit, turned with prayer to Him Whom I sought and did not find ... Sometimes doubt in the existence of this God weighed on my soul, and then I was horrified and tormented ... “He exists,” I said to myself. And as soon as I acknowledged this for a moment, life would immediately rise within me, and I would feel both the possibility and the joy of being... Not two, not three times, but dozens, hundreds of times I found myself in these states of joy and revival, then again despair and the awareness of the impossibility of life. For three years I sought God. And then one day, finally... I looked back at myself, at what was happening within me, and I remembered those hundreds of times of dying and coming to life. I remembered that I lived only when I believed in God. As soon as I know about God, I live; as soon as I forget, disbelieve in Him, I die. So what else am I seeking? I asked myself. It is impossible to live without Him. Therefore, He exists. And I was saved from suicide."
"With unbelief, my heart contracts, suffers a kind of burning, languishes, my mind grows dark, I find myself in a completely joyless state," says the living embodiment of faith in our age of unbelief, the famous pastor of Kronstadt. "But with a living faith that God is everywhere, in every place, and therefore always with me and in me, my heart is broad, free, light, alive, my mind is clear, I am in a joyful state. Thus, the very thing that kills me serves as striking proof of That Whose existence I doubt. The mental denial of Self-Life by my free soul is, naturally and righteously, death to it" ("My Life in Christ").
Thus, faith in the Divine Being infuses the joy of existence into the human spirit, and without it, it dies spiritually. This is the assurance of mystical experience in the first stage of development.
This testimony of faith is further complemented and strengthened by the testimony of inner spiritual experience. Formally considered, spiritual life is reduced to a constant mutual movement— God to the human spirit and the human spirit to God. This mutual movement sustains spiritual life just as bodily breathing sustains bodily life. Just as there is no life in the body without breathing, so there is no life in the spirit without this communion with God. But how is the real contact between the Divine Spirit and the human spirit, resulting from such interaction, revealed to human consciousness? According to the unanimous testimony of Christian mystics, God appears to the human soul in the form of an immaterial fire, which sustains the continuous burning of the spirit in the soul of a blessed person.
“The holy theologians,” says St. Dionysius, “often describe the highest and indescribable Being under the form of fire, since fire contains within itself many, if one may say so, visible images of the Divine property. Sensible fire is, so to speak, in everything, passes freely through everything, is not restrained by anything. It is clear and at the same time hidden, unknown in itself, if there is no substance over which it would exert its effect, elusive and invisible in itself. It conquers everything, and whatever it touches, it exerts its effect on everything. It changes everything and communicates to everything that in any way approaches it. With its life-giving warmth it renews everything, illuminates everything with clear rays. Irrepressible, indiscriminate, it strives upward, penetrating and does not like to be below. Active, strong, invisibly present in everything; left in neglect, it seems non-existent; “through friction, as if through some kind of search, in a substance related to it it suddenly appears and immediately disappears again, – abundantly communicating itself to everything, it does not decrease” (“On the Celestial Hierarchy”).
"Do not be deceived: God is fire, and when He came to earth and became Man, He cast fire upon the earth, as He Himself says ( Luke 12:49 ). This fire goes everywhere, seeking its substance, that is, a good heart and will, in order to fall within it and be kindled. In whomever it is kindled, it emerges into a great flame, reaching to the heavens, and does not allow him to remain inactive or to surrender to rest. It does not scorch the soul in which it is kindled, although this kindling does not occur without the soul's feeling it, as some of the dead believe. The soul is not an insensate substance, but is a sentient and rational being. Therefore, from the very beginning, it senses and is aware of the kindling of that fire" (St. Simeon the New Theologian) .
"Light is God , and the contemplation of Him is like light. Through the contemplation of light comes knowledge, by which it is known that God undoubtedly exists" (the same).
Thus, from spiritual experience, man learns that God truly exists, beyond all doubt.
But man is not only a sentient being, but also a rational one. And because of this, he not only senses God as a living reality, but also, in a certain way, contemplates Him.
While a person remains in passions, he either sees nothing, or sees something else instead of what really exists.
“A cloud of passions that has descended upon the discerning part of the soul, like some dark thickness, forces one to see something else instead of what is in reality” (Callistos).
“When the mind is renewed... the contemplation of the mysteries of the Holy Trinity shines in it” (St. Isaac the Syrian ).
"Everything that exists is known from its manifestations. And the mystery of God is inherent in certain of its manifestations. Following them, the mind gains a sense of Divine intimacy, ascending from the comprehensible in God to the incomprehensible. Having reached the latter, it understands that something truly exists that eludes its natural comprehension, something that surpasses all intellectual and even angelic ability to comprehend" (Callistos).
Ascending gradually up the mountain of contemplation, he finally enters into some mysterious, though luminous, darkness, in which he sees and at the same time does not see God.
"Consider this: beyond everything, where no word, thought, or idea appears in various forms, but simplicity, incomprehensibility, silence, and wonder reign, the formless, the infinite, the unlimited—he sees in a strange way the vision of the invisible and the formless form. Moreover, he himself becomes formless and imprints on himself what corresponds to what he invisibly contemplates and what is unseen; in short, he imprints divine and supernatural beauty" (Callistos).
But let us not, however, expatiate any further on this sacred mystery of silence. It is not words, but silence itself that can best teach us this secret of sacred silence.
Let us only note that the human mind at this stage of development, although it feels its powerlessness to define the Indefinable, nevertheless so truly senses the reality of divine existence that, according to the testimony of, for example, Anthony the Great , it senses the Divine existence more strongly than its own.
This, in its main features, is the testimony of mystical experience about the existence of the Divine.
If we bring all that has been said to a brief conclusion, then in mystical experience God reveals Himself to the human soul as the highest mystical reality, manifested in a constant influence on the human spirit.
Source: https://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Feofan_Bystrov/misticheskoe-dokazatelstvo-bytija-bozhija/