"What the lover sees himself as wanting is his beloved. In this he is not mistaken, of course; the point concerns only why he loves her. That question the lover himself does not ask: immersed completely in the universe of love, its object is self-evidently its final cause. But if our object is to understand, the question 'why' obtrudes. The beloved attracts because she configurates the precise aperture through which being [the Infinite] can pour through to her lover in largest portions. Or change the image. Among innumerable pieces of quartz that lie strewn about the floor of a quarry it may chance that one alone bends the sun's rays at the exact angle that sends them toward my eyes. Doing so makes the quartz gleam. Yet it is the sun's light I see; were cloud to intervene, the quartz would turn to slag. So it goes: every emptiness we feel is 'being' eclipsed, all restlessness a flailing for the being that we need, all joy the evidence of being found."

--Huston Smith, Forgotten Truth: The Primordial Tradition (1976)

That image with the quartz really gets me, especially the idea of bending light at the right angle (also the image of the aperture). It seems that what determines the precise "angle" which is necessary for a person to perceive the Infinite in the most powerful and arresting manner is the result of, really, one's entire history--culturally, historically, emotionally, psychologically, one's language, personal experiences, family, body, karma, anything. Everything affecting everything else to allow one to perceive through this particular piece of quartz the shining bliss of the Divine.