Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/44

 not the powerful self-consciousness imprisoned within the particularity of desire, but the self of consciousness, which knows itself in its universality, and which thus as thinking itself, as forming conceptions within itself, knows itself as Brahma.

Or if we proceed from the determination that Brahma is Essence as abstract unity, as absorption in self, he has then his existence in the finite subject too, in the particular Spirit, as this absorption in self. To the Idea of the true there belongs the universal substantial unity and identity with self; but in such a way that it is not merely the Undetermined, not merely substantial unity, but is determined within itself. Brahma, however, has the determinateness outside of him. Thus the supreme determinateness of Brahma, namely, consciousness, the knowing of his real existence, his subjectivity of unity, can only be the subjective consciousness as such.

This attitude is not to be called worship, for there is here no relation to the thinking substantiality as to anything objective, but, on the contrary, the relation is immediately known along with the determination of my subjectivity, as “I myself.” In fact, I am this pure thought, and the “I” itself is indeed the very expression of it, for “I” as such is this abstract identity of myself within myself as wholly without determination—“I” as “I” am merely thought as that which is posited with the determination of subjective existence reflected into itself—I am what thinks. Conversely, therefore, it is conceded, on the other hand, that thought as this abstract thought has this very subjectivity which “I” directly expresses as its existence. For the true thought, which God is, is not this abstract thought, or this simple substantiality and universality, but is thought as the concrete, absolutely full or filled up Idea. The thought which is merely the potential existence of the Idea is just the abstract thought which has merely this finite existence, namely, in the subjective