Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/63

 has true independence; all other actuality, all particularity, has none at all. Out of nothingness everything has proceeded; into nothingness everything returns. Nothing, nothingness is the One, the beginning and the ending of everything. However diverse men and things may be, there is but the One principle—nothingness—out of which they proceed, and it is form alone which constitutes the quality, the diversity.

That man should think of God as nothingness must at first sight seem astonishing, must appear to us a most peculiar idea. But, considered more closely, this determination means that God is absolutely nothing determined. He is the Undetermined; no determinateness of any kind pertains to God; He is the Infinite. This is equivalent to saying that God is the negation of all particularity.

When we consider the forms of expression which we hear used, and which are current at the present day, namely, “God is the Infinite, is Essence—pure, simple Essence, the Essence of Essences and Essence only”—we find that such expressions are either entirely or nearly identical in signification with the statement that God is nothingness. In like manner, when it is said that man cannot know God, God is thus for us emptiness, indefiniteness.

That modern mode of definition is therefore merely a milder expression for “God is nothingness.” That, however, is a definite, a necessary stage: God is the Indeterminate, the indeterminateness in which immediate Being and its apparent independence are abrogated and absorbed, and in which they have vanished away.

3. God, although actually conceived of as nothingness, as Essence generally, is yet known as a particular immediate human being, as Foe, Buddha, Dalailama. Such a conjunction may appear to us the most offensive, revolting, and incredible of all, that a man with all his sensuous needs should be looked upon as God, as He who eternally creates, maintains, and produces the world.