Our intelligence captures things more refined than our sensory organs, such as realities of the nonmaterial world, of the metaphysical, logical, rational world, which are the causal relations among humans; perception on which the whole techno-scientific culture of man is based. The very word “intellect” or “intelligence” which in Latin is "inter-legere", admirably defines the specific function of this human faculty: through the intellect, a man reads or collects, existing realities, realities which to the senses are unrealities, non-existent things, where the sensory organs are not affected.
The merely intellectual man finds it difficult to comprehend the realities of the spiritual world, and however much the spiritual man seeks and tries to explain to his fellow humans, what God, the Christ, eternal life, etc., is, he cannot grasp the true meaning of these words, which passes imperceptibly through his intellect. For him, “God” is a “sacred word,” or even a “poetic idea,” but by no means an “objective reality.”
One day, someone asked St. Augustine, what is God, and the great African genius replied, “If nobody asks me, I know what God is - but if anyone asks me, I confess I don't know.” Which means that intellectually I ignore, but spiritually I know what God is; since this very subtle reality of the spirit is not intelligibly analyzable and definable, I can have the intuitive experience of God without being able to give an intellectual definition.
What the intellectual man must do to comprehend the spiritual world is not to intensify his intelligence - which would be the continuation of the same horizontal line - but to take another direction - the new direction of verticality. Of course, it is not possible to have a vertical line by adding or multiplying the horizontal ones, or even using magical formulas; it is necessary to abandon this level and start a different course.
This shift from the horizontal to the vertical dimension is what is called conversion, redemption, salvation, which is not the total of horizontal bits of intelligence, but is a new beginning, an unprecedented direction, a “new life,” a “rebirth by the spirit,” the discovery of a new world hitherto ignored. It is not a “continuation” of something pre-existing, but it is a “new beginning,” a virgin fact, original - it is a dazzling light invading darkness.
This is the main reason why this “new beginning” cannot be manufactured by the “Adamic man” from certain pre-existing materials created by him - or, as Paul of Tarsus says, that salvation is a gift from God; comes from above, as a work of Divine Grace, not from below, thanks to human deeds or interference. The man can and must pave the way for the advent of this “new beginning,” this “rebirth by the spirit,” but he cannot create it from within or fabricate it from something within him, since the lesser cannot cause the major, the negative cannot produce the positive, the sinner cannot make himself a righteous man, for all this, would be a blatant contradiction to the eternal laws of Logic, Reason, God itself, but again, the man must pave the path for this advent to occur.
Ultimately, what the initiate in the things of God, the Christlike man, intuitively knows, is logical and rational. It can be said that the mystique is integrally logical and 100% rational - though the profane consider it just the opposite. In God, the eternal Logos, Logic and Mystique, Reason and Revelation are embraced fraternally.
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The original meaning of the Latin word “legere” is not exactly “read,” as it is generally translated, but “collect,” “hold.” Also, in German, the corresponding word “lessen,” “read” means the physical act of collecting. The word “comprehend” derives from “hold”; we comprehend what we “hold” in the intellect; what is not bound by intelligence, what is not experienced, is not comprehended.
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