“For the volitional or affective man (the bhakta) God is ‘He’ and the ego is ‘I’ whereas for the gnostic or intellective man (the jnani) God is ‘I’ –or ‘Self’– and the ego is ‘he’ or ‘other.’ (LSelf, p.201)
What must be understood by the term “God”? From the strictly human point of view, which alone is what religions as such have in view, “God” could not be the Absolute as such, for the Absolute has no interlocutor; we may, however, say that God is the hypostatic Face turned towards the human world, or towards a particular human world; in other words, God is Divinity which personalizes itself in view of man and insofar as it more or less takes on the countenance of a particular humanity. Another question: what does this personalized Divinity, this God become partner or interlocutor, or this Divine Face turned towards man “want” or “desire”? The most concise answer seems to us to be the following: if the Divine Essence, being infinite, tends to manifest itself by projecting its innumerable potentialities into the finite, the Divine Face, for its part, operates this projection and then – at a more relative level – projects within this first projection a principle of coordination, among other things a Law intended to regulate the human world and above all to regulate this miniature world that is the individual. This Face is thus like a sheaf of rays with diverse functions; a Face which, although it issues from the same Divine Order, does not amount to a single subjectivity with a moral intention; thus it is vain to seek behind the infinitely diverse combinations of the veil of Maya an anthropomorphic and humanly graspable personality. (GTUFS: FaceA, The Decisive Intuition)
God is the Absolute, and being the Absolute, He is equally the Infinite; being both the Absolute and the Infinite, intrinsically and without duality, He is also the Perfect. Absoluteness is reflected in space by the point or the center; in time, by the movement or the present; in matter, by ether, which vehicles energy; in form, by the sphere; in number, by unity. Infinitude, for its part, determines space by extension; time, by duration; matter, by substantial indefiniteness; form, by the limitless diversity of formal possibilities; number, by quantitative limitlessness. As for the divine Perfection – from which all manifested perfections derive – it is reflected in space by the contents of matter inasmuch as they express either simple existence, or the divine Qualities which space vehicles. (GTUFS: DivineHuman, Structure and Universality of the Conditions of Existence)
Indeed, God is ineffable, nothing can describe Him or enclose Him in words; but on the other hand, truth exists, that is to say that there are conceptual points of reference which sufficiently convey the nature of God; otherwise our intelligence would not be human, which amounts to saying that it would not exist, or simply that it would be inoperative with respect to what constitutes the reason for man’s intelligence. God is both unknowable and knowable, a paradox which implies – on pain of absurdity – that the relationships are different, first of all on the plane of mere thought and then in virtue of everything that separates mental knowledge from that of the heart; the first is a “perceiving,” and the second a “being.” “The soul is all that it knows,” said Aristotle; it is necessary to add that the soul is able to know all that it is; and that in its essence it is none other than That which is, and That which alone is. (GTUFS: DivineHuman, Structure and Universality of the Conditions of Existence)
It is important never to lose sight of the fact that the term “God” designates the Divinity, either in all its possible aspects – hence also beyond every aspect – or in some particular aspect, notably that of the Creator. It is necessarily thus because this term cannot contain in itself a privative nuance. (GTUFS: DivineHuman, Structure and Universality of the Conditions of Existence)
It should be noted here that the word “God” does not and cannot admit of any restriction for the simple reason that God is “all that is purely principial” and that He is thus also – and a fortiori – Beyond-Being; this one may not know or may deny, but one cannot deny that God is “That which is supreme” and therefore also That which nothing can surpass. (GTUFS: LSelf, The Vedanta)
In reality God is indeed not “existent” in the sense that He cannot be brought down to the level of the existence of things. In order to make it clear that this reservation implies no kind of privation it would be better to say that God is “non-inexistent”. (GTUFS: LightAW, In the Wake of the Fall)
When it is said that the personal God is situated in Maya, which runs the risk of sounding offensive, one must be careful to make it clear that this God is the Supreme Principle “entering” into universal Relativity, hence still “Supreme” despite the “entering,” which enables one to affirm that God the Creator and Legislator is at one and the same time Atma and Maya, or Atma in Maya, but never simply Maya. (GTUFS: FaceA, The Ambiguity of Exoterism)
On the one hand, God is the “Other” who is infinitely “above” the world, and on the other hand, the world is His manifestation in which He is present; this implies that without this immanence the world would be reduced to nothing, and that the world – and all that it contains – is necessarily symbolical. In a certain sense, nothing resembles God; but in another sense, everything resembles Him, at least with respect to positive, not negative, manifestation. Likewise, the human subject – the ego – is as though suspended between “elevation” and “depth”: between the Divine Being which resides “in the Heavens,” and the Divine Self which resides “in the depths of the heart.” The first is the separative dimension, that of adoration, worship, law, obedience, in short, of religion; the second is the unitive perspective, that of wisdom and union; or that of pure sanctity, which by definition is “being” and not merely “thought.” (GTUFS: HaveCenter, Universal Categories)
In the three Semitic monotheistic religions, the name “God” necessarily embraces all that is proper to the Principle, with no restriction whatever, although their exoteric formulations evidently envisage the ontological aspect alone. (GTUFS: LightAW, Maya)
God is the Eye that sees the world and which, being active where the creature is passive, creates the world by His vision, this vision being act and not passivity; thus the eye becomes the metaphysical center of the world of which it is at the same time the sun and the heart. God sees not only the outward, but also – or rather with all the more reason – the inward, and it is this latter vision that is the more real one, or strictly speaking, the only real one, since it is the absolute or infinite Vision of which God is at once the Subject and the Object, the Knower and the Known. (GTUFS: EyeHeart, The Eye of the Heart)
God (love of): By “love of God” is meant first the choice of Truth and then the direction of the will: the Truth that makes us conscious of an absolute and transcendent Reality – at once personal and suprapersonal – and the will that attaches itself to it and recognizes in it its own supernatural essence and its ultimate end. (GTUFS: LightAW, The Ancient Worlds in Perspective)
In his commentary on the Lord’s Prayer, St. Francis of Assisi defines the love of God in the following manner: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven: so that we may love Thee with all our heart, thinking unceasingly of Thee (this ‘thought’ not being a discursive ratiocination, but a direct, intuitive and synthetic ‘recollection’ of the heart); with all our mind, directing towards Thee all our intentions and seeking Thine honor in all things (volitive attitude), with all our strength, putting all the powers of the soul, and the sentiments (sensible faculties) of the body in the service of Thy love and of nothing else (synthesis of all possible human attitudes); and so that we may likewise love our neighbors as ourselves, drawing them all, as far as we are able, towards Thy love, rejoicing in the good which they enjoy, and having compassion in their misfortunes, as if they were our own, and causing no offense whatsoever to anyone.” (GTUFS: ChristIslam, The Spiritual Virtues According to St. Francis of Assisi.)
God (Personal): The “Personal God” is in fact none other than the personification of the Essence. (GTUFS: LogicT, The Servant and Union)
The Absolute by definition comprises the “energy” or “shakti” that is Infinitude, and, as All-Possibility, it projects Relativity, Maya. Now, the Personal God is the center or the very summit of this extrinsic dimension; far from being able to determine the Absolute-Infinite, His function is to bring about and govern existential projection; it is with regard to this projection that God as Creator, Legislator and Retributor is omnipotent and appears to be the Absolute itself. (GTUFS: SurveyME, Dimensions of Omnipotence)