For the loving worm within its clod,
Were diviner than a loveless God
Amid his worlds, I will dare to say.
The essence of the divine is Love, Will that personalizes and eternalizes, that feels the hunger for eternity and infinity.
It is ourselves, it is our eternity that we seek in God, it is our divinization. It was Browning again who said, in Saul,
'Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for! my flesh that I seek
In the Godhead!
But this God who saves us, this personal God, the Consciousness of the Universe who envelops and sustains our consciousnesses, this God who gives human finality to the whole creation—does He exist? Have we proofs of His existence?
This question leads in the first place to an enquiry into the cleaning of this notion of existence. What is it to exist and in what sense do we speak of things as not existing?
In its etymological signification to exist is to be outside of ourselves, outside of our mind: ex-sistere. But is there anything outside of our mind, outside of our consciousness which embraces the sum of the known? Undoubtedly there is. The matter of knowledge comes to us from without. And what is the mode of this matter? It is impossible for us to know, for to know is to clothe matter with form, and hence we cannot know the formless as formless. To do so would be tantamount to investing chaos with order.