Our longing to save consciousness, to give personal and human finality to the Universe and to existence, is such that even in the midst of a supreme, an agonizing and lacerating sacrifice, we should still hear the voice that assured us that if our consciousness disappears, it is that the infinite and eternal Consciousness may be enriched thereby, that our souls may serve as nutriment to the Universal Soul.  Yes, I enrich God, because before I existed He did not think of me as existing, because I am one more—­one more even though among an infinity of others—­who, having really lived, really suffered, and really loved, abide in His bosom.  It is the furious longing to give finality to the Universe, to make it conscious and personal, that has brought us to believe in God, to wish that God may exist, to create God, in a word.  To create Him, yes!  This saying ought not to scandalize even the most devout theist.  For to believe in God is, in a certain sense, to create Him, although He first creates us.[37] It is He who in us is continually creating Himself.

We have created God in order to save the Universe from nothingness, for all that is not consciousness and eternal consciousness, conscious of its eternity and eternally conscious, is nothing more than appearance.  There is nothing truly real save that which feels, suffers, pities, loves, and desires, save consciousness; there is nothing substantial but consciousness.  And we need God in order to save consciousness; not in order to think existence, but in order to live it; not in order to know the why and how of it, but in order to feel the wherefore of it.  Love is a contradiction if there is no God.

Let us now consider this idea of God, of the logical God or the Supreme Reason, and of the vital God or the God of the heart—­that is, Supreme Love.

FOOTNOTES: 

[36] Todo lo humaniza, y aun lo humana.

[37] In the translation it is impossible to retain the play upon the verbs crear, to create, and creer, to believe:  "Porque creer en Dios es en cierto modo crearle, aunque El nos cree antes."—­J.E.C.F.

VIII

FROM GOD TO GOD

To affirm that the religious sense is a sense of divinity and that it is impossible without some abuse of the ordinary usages of human language to speak of an atheistic religion, is not, I think, to do violence to the truth; although it is clear that everything will depend upon the concept that we form of God, a concept which in its turn depends upon the concept of divinity.

Our proper procedure, in effect, will be to begin with this sense of divinity, before prefixing to the concept of this quality the definite article and the capital letter and so converting it into “the Divinity”—­that is, into God.  For man has not deduced the divine from God, but rather he has reached God through the divine.