Personifying the Universe. Unamuno, Life 7.21

Unamuno finishes presenting his initial portrait of God as the personification of the universe, which latter believers like him regard as an external, material expression of interior consciousness or awareness (cf. mind as imagined by Anaxagoras) that cannot be portrayed or conceived in purely, merely, or simply rational terms.

Cuando la compasión, el amor nos revela al universo todo luchando por cobrar, conservar y acrecentar su conciencia, por concientizarse más y más cada vez, sintiendo el dolor de las discordancias que dentro de él se producen, la compasión nos revela la semejanza del universo todo con nosotros, que es humano, y nos hace descubrir en él a nuestro Padre, de cuya carne somos carne; el amor nos hace personalizar al todo de que formamos parte.

En el fondo, lo mismo da decir que Dios está produciendo eternamente las cosas, como que las cosas están produciendo eternamente a Dios. Y la creencia en un Dios personal y espiritual se basa en la creencia en nuestra propia personalidad y espiritualidad. Porque nos sentimos conciencia, sentimos a Dios conciencia, es decir, persona, y porque anhelamos que nuestra conciencia pueda vivir y ser independientemente del cuerpo, creemos que la persona divina vive y es independientemente del universo, que es su estado de conciencia ad extra.

Claro es que vendrán los lógicos, y nos pondrán todas las evidentes dificultades racionales que de esto nacen; pero ya dijimos que, aunque bajo formas racionales, el contenido de todo esto no es, en rigor, racional. Toda concepción racional de Dios es en sí misma contradictoria. La fe en Dios nace del amor a Dios, creemos que existe por querer que exista, y nace acaso también del amor de Dios a nosotros. La razón no nos prueba que Dios exista, pero tampoco que no pueda existir.

Pero más adelante, más sobre esto de que la fe en Dios sea la personalización del universo.

When the compassion that is love shows us the entire universe struggling to achieve, keep, and cultivate its awareness—seeking ever to become more conscious, feeling the pain of the inner discord that this quest produces—it reveals to us an image of the universe in our own likeness, a human likeness in which we are primed to discover our Father, whose flesh has made our own. Love causes us thus to personify the All of which we form a part.

In the end, saying that God is forever making the world is the same as saying that the world is always creating God. Belief in a personal and spiritual God is founded in our belief that we ourselves have personality and spirituality. As we feel ourselves to be aware, we feel that God must be: in other words, we feel him to be a person. And as we long for our own awareness to be able to live and exist independent of its material body, so we believe that the divine Person lives and exists independent of the universe, which manifests as the state of his awareness aimed outwards, toward what lies beyond.

Of course the logicians will come in here to set forth the clear, rational difficulties that arise from this position, but we have already said that the content of these observations, for all that it be presented in rational forms, is not rigorously or strictly rational. Every rational conception of God contradicts itself. Faith in God is born from our love of God—we believe that he exists because we want him to exist—and perhaps reciprocally, from his love for us. Reason does not prove his existence to us, but it also does not refute the possibility that he might exist.

Later there will be more to say about the idea that having faith in God amounts to personifying the universe.