Spirituality,
Religion, Nature
My Name is
Existence, To Be, “I AM”
Existence is an
existential noun and name given to the act of being. It could be seen
impersonally, as the simple fact of existing which is common to all; or it
could be seen in a full sense, metaphysically and analogically personified, as
the very God’s essence, the Existing, the Existence.
To call God the
Existence is not new but something as old as the Old Testament, where God
identified himself to Moses telling him: “I Am Who I Am,” in the Hebrew tradition, Yahweh
(Exod. 3:14). To say “I am Who I am” means I am a
person, the Being, I am the Existence
itself.
In the Christian
tradition, this name is translated simply God
or Lord. However, this name has
been vulgarized and has almost lost its etymological meaning in the life of
Christians; the concept of God as the Being, or the Existence, is hardly found.
Clearer Understanding. That God is the Existence hasn’t been anything new for
me, since I have said often that God is
Existence, the Being; however one day I did have a clearer insight of God as
the Existence, the noun; and later I
had a clearer insight of God as the act
of existing by itself. These ideas weren’t new for me except for their clarity.
Some days later I experienced this act of existing in myself, and realized how
great this act of being is; my own “I am!” “I exist!”
You might have the
same experience that I had; just close our eyes and say: “I am alive!” “I
exist!” and experience your existing. This is a great
experience! Look around you and see how other people die; they disappear from
our view, they cease existing, while you are alive, you are. That is why people are afraid of dying, because they are
afraid of ceasing to be. Although, we shouldn’t be afraid of dying because we
are eternal, we will live forever, not as we had believed we would be, but we
will live in the mind of God as his “ideas.”
The important point
in this experience of being is still greater, when we consider that the act of
existing is common to God and us; it
is the same act: to be. In this sense
we are “equal” to God, although there is an infinite difference of our being
and the Being of God; between how God exists, and the way we exist. When I say
“I am,” all that I mean is nothing else than “I exist;” but when God says “I
am,” he is saying “I am Yahweh” in Hebrew, which means “I am who I am;” I am
the one whose essence is to be, to exist. That is all that God is: to be; he owns his existence. That is
why, when the scripture says that, it usually adds: “And there is no other”
(Isa. 45:5), because he is the only one whose essence is to be. [1]
And when we experience God as the being,
we may exclaim: “This is the greatest experience that a human being may have!”
God Is Close to Us. When God is seen as the Existence per se, by itself, or when the Existence
is seen as God, then it is clear, that God, the Existence, is very close to us and that we are very
close to him. Then it is easy to see God in everything that exists, or better,
that the being of everything that
exists is the Being of God. My being, as well as all being, proceeds from God;
he is the only One who exists by himself, and this is his essence, what distinguishes him from any other being.
Any existence is
existence of God. Why? Because the Being of God is the total Existence, infinite and transcendent-imminent, and, as such, he is everything that is. If there would be existences which
wouldn’t be God’s existence, then they would be gods. God does not and cannot
give his Being to anybody, thus the existence of all
created universe must be God’s self-existence. Hence we may see his Being in
everything that exists, and that the act of being, anywhere, anyhow, is always
God.
So everything that
exists, the whole creation, is somehow “divine;” it is nothing else than the
transcendent Existence seen as immanent, covered by different forms. It seems like
the Existence has incarnated itself and constantly incarnates in creation. The
Existence is always in action, taking sometimes physical forms, sometimes
spiritual personalities. (All these are metaphorical words since there are no
proper words to express the essence, presence, and action of God.)
This explains also
the action of God in everything that happens in the universe, in our lives, and
even in the afterlife. He is so close to us at any moment! He is in action in
us and in the whole universe, right now. The act of being is always per se good. Perhaps it is sad to say
that, but the act of being itself of
a pain, or death, or of an immoral action, is always good, because it is God’s
existence.
Abstract and Real. These concepts might
be seen as too abstract because they are metaphysical concepts, but they are
very real at the same time. Nothing is more real than being, than to exist, or
“the existence.” It is not the air or
the space which is God, but the transcendent and metaphysical act of Being or
Existing.
The “Actus Purus.” God is said to be actus purus, pure act, pure action,
the act of being. God is the
necessary I am. This is in contrast
with all contingent beings, as all creatures are, because they could, or could
not, exist.
God is the eternal
Existence, whose essence is to exist by itself; that is its nature; his essence
is an act: to be, to exist. But even
these words, exist, act, are
analogies, since the existence of God is
not as the existence of creatures. We neither know how God exists nor have
words to express it, so we are forced to use analogical words.
The Existential Act is Also the Being. The existential and
metaphysical Act of existing is also a being, “the Being.” Thus, God is an action and a being, not as two separate entities but as the same entity. And
again, to say that God is a being is an analogy. When we say that God is the
Being, we do not mean that God is another being, one more being added to all
existing beings; rather, he is the total being, and that any being is God’s
being.
The Being of God is
ineffable and transcends our concepts; he belongs to a different order, and is
inexplicable. But we must use words which are mere symbols or analogies of the
reality of God. And, of course, the ontological Existence is not a male.
Which Is First. It is not possible
to determine which is first, the being or the existence of God. In the physical
world there is not existence unless there is a being, as there is no time if
there is no creation. Being and existing are simultaneous, as creation and time
are. In God, existing and being identified with each other: the Existence One
is the same as the Being One, and the Being One is the same as the Existence
One. The Existence is always because the Being is always, and vice versa. It is
just in our limited mind that we can make distinctions between these two
concepts, but in God they identify.
Existence Personified. We may say also that this Act of existing, God, is personal; that
is, that he is communicable; that we may relate to him, since God has no
relations with the world. When I say that God is personal, I do not mean that
he is like a human person. It has been common in the traditional theism to
assimilate the personality of God with that of human persons; hence the
anthropomorphism usually seen in the practice of religion in monotheistic
religions. This is wrong.
I have limited my
interpretation of a “personal” God as being communicative or communicable. I
explained earlier in this chapter the word “communication,” suggesting instead
the word “contemplation.” In this context, a personal God would mean that God
is contemplative, as an adjective
meaning that we may contemplate him, rationally, mystically, or intuitively.
(There are not adjectives in God; this is said only for our understanding.) And
this would be the way that human beings may relate with God: by contemplation,
love, and submission.
Problem of Calling God a Person. Because of the
anthropomorphism involved ordinarily with the concept of person, to call God
person might create the idea that the I am, the Being,
is somebody “over there.” Theistic religions usually see God as somebody there
who comes to us from the “height,” when instead the supreme Act of existing,
the Existence, is already “here” in all that is: God is the total, transcendent
Existence. Our human existence, and the existence of the whole universe, is
existence of God; it couldn’t be any other way, because the Existence of God is
transcendent and immanent, and everything which exists is existence of God.
This might be seen as
too strange, even as idolatry or pantheistic, but this is the metaphysical
fact. From the biblical perspective, God is seen as the Act of existing: I am, Yahweh, is a verb, an action.
This is a radical
change of perspective that may affect deeply all kinds of communication,
relationship, or experience of God; I myself am surprised to realize it; but we
must accept the fact, and make the necessary adjustments in our minds and in
our relationship with God.
If we do not see the
essential Existence who is identified with the Being
as somebody, or personal, then the
alternative would be to see it as something,
impersonal. But the essential Existence, the Being who always was and is, must
be able to communicate and interact with intelligent beings as we are, and in
this sense we may say that he is communicative,
or personal, as explained.
The Paradoxes of God. All this may be seen
as paradoxical, and it really is; but it couldn't be any other way: the
Christian God is a God of paradoxes, and any statement about God has to be a
paradox, as I have said all along. Our concept of God must be meaningful and,
at the same time, not contradicting science, since truth is only one;
otherwise, it is better not to have God at all.
Personal Is an Analogy. The words person and personal,
among others, are commonly used to talk about God without quotation marks. This
never meant that these words may be taken literally, as human persons are. When
I started writing this book I said this in a prayer:
When
we try to think how God will be, that which we think is not God. God is an indescribable, incomprehensible being who is
beyond everything that we can understand or imagine. God and everything from
the ‘beyond’ transcends human intelligence. Given our limitation, we cannot
penetrate the sphere of the divine, and we lack categories to express it. We
may only have ideas or use words that are mere symbols, but not the reality
itself; we may only use analogies and make conjectures, speculations, or
suppositions, according to what we know in the physical world. To think that we
truly know would be ridiculous and arrogant.
Go to Content
HTM NATURE / EXISTENCE NATURE 03-12-11
[1]
The famous and
authoritative Spanish translation of the Bible from the originals by Casiodoro de Reina (1569), and revised by Cipriano de Valera (1602), translates this verse of Isaiah
this way: Yo soy Yahweh, y ninguno
más hay, which I literally interpret as “I am
Yahweh, and there is no other one.” God is the only one who may say: “I am who
I am,” and there is no one like him.