The indirect communication that is the incarnation requires something we lack, an illumination only God can provide. And insofar as only God can provide that to each of us, each follower is in direct relation to the Absolute. Someone “who comes later must receive the condition from the god himself and cannot receive it at second hand.” And “if the one who comes later receives the condition from the god himself, then he is a contemporary, a genuine contemporary.”13 You could say there are no latecomers in the communion of the saints,
