If you could see God, you wouldn't be able to recognize Him as God.
The only way to appreciate God's full glory is to see him in his infinite nature. But you could never see his infinite nature with your natural eyes because if you could see it, then it would be separate from you...and if it were separate from you, it must have its own limits. That is, there must be some space between you and it that was not God in order to see all of Him...but then God would not be in that space, God would have His own limits or boundaries. And if God has limits, He must not be infinite. If He is not infinite, He must not be God.
Indeed, God could only make himself visible to our mortal senses by taking on a finite body...thus, we could not recognize his full nature. But even at the Second Coming and the Final Judgement, when Christ is supposed to appear in all of his Glory, we still aren't seeing all there is to see of God. If we did, there would be no need for a Beatific Vision. We could see Christ coming, and we might even see the sky filled with God's presence...but there would still be the problem of that distance between us, some space that it did not appear that God occupied.
So here's a crazy thought. Maybe the only way to truly perceive God's infinite nature would be to look at God from inside God. From within God, you would be able to see Him stretched infinitely in all directions around you. But you would be more than merely inside God if you were really inside God. God's being actually would have to pass through in every aspect of your being as well. There would be no space between you and what you saw, not even the space you thought you were occupying. And perhaps this is why you can't experience the beatific vision until you are completely joined with God in Heaven.
If perfect bliss were seeing God from within God, then it only makes all the more poignant the nature of Hell -- seeing nothing but space apparently unoccupied by God. (And in life, those who spurned God probably cherished that seemingly unoccupied space most of all, since it gave them a sense of freedom and ownership, thus making it easier to see why they might choose Hell. Meanwhile, those who desire God spurned the seeming distance, making an existence within God seem all the more fitting a reward.)
Obviously, I'm just trying to stretch the ol' meditative muscles here, and in no way trying to assert any kind of hard belief (especially if Thomas finds something doctrinal that would contradict anything I've just said).
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