{137} (cont'd)

II

How does he acquire it? A person makes his I with things, with other persons and with himself as reality. {138} This “with” is not a “relational” addition to the reality of the person, but is a constitutive moment of it, a constituting respectivity. It is constitutive not only “naturally”, that is, not only because the “with” stems from what man is de suyo, but is formally constitutive of him: to be a person consists in being it “with”. What is the nature of this “with”?

1. A person makes his life, realizes his I, his relatively absolute being, with that in which he is. Man is among and with “things” (in the widest sense of the term) but, as we pointed out, that of them in which he is, for the effects of his absolute being, is in the reality. The “with” refers formally to reality. A person, therefore, makes his absolute being with “the” reality of real things, that is, with reality simpliciter, as we mentioned. And so, in effect, the character of reality is that in which man ultimately is. The ultimateness of the character of reality not only concerns real things (as is obvious), but because it concerns them is eo ipso the ultimateness of the absolute being of the person: the latter configures itself on the former. In addition, any personal activity is the realization of possibilities. But every possibility is founded on the fact that it is reality which makes it possible for man to be an I. And thus, reality is the ultimate possibility of life, of the being of man. That is to say, man not only is “in” reality, but makes his absolute being “from” reality: reality is not only ultimate, but possibilitating. And not only this, but man inexorably has to make his own absolute being. To be absolutely is not only a possibility, but a forcefulness which comes from reality itself. Man not only lives “in” reality and “from” reality, but man lives also “by” {139} reality. Reality is not only ultimate and possibilitating, is also impelling. Reality is, as I said, that “with” which man makes his own I, his absolute being. And he does so, indeed, because the structure of this “with” consists in being “in, from and by”, i.e., because reality is ultimate, possibilitating and impelling.

2. Whence it follows that reality is not a kind of “object” to which my person is referred, but rather the very fundament of my absolute being: reality is a power, the power of the real. The power of the real is not causality. Causality is the functionality of the real qua real. But power is the dominance of the real qua real. Reality is dominating, is power, purely and simply because it is real. And the dominance of this power is, in our case, the power to make us be absolute. Dominance is dominance of fundamentality of my absolute I.

3. How does it dominate? To be sure, it is not a type of physical force because it is a power, and not a cause. Nevertheless, reality is a determining formal principle. Determination is not the same as causality. Although not a force, reality is physically determining. And it is so, not only because a determinate act, my act, is physical, but also and above all because “the” reality in itself is a physical characteristic of things. We have seen this already: the impression of reality gives us impressively the physical moment of the reality of a thing. From this follows that reality simpliciter is something formally physical. By virtue of this, “the” reality is in itself, and formally a physical determinant of my absolute being. This singular characteristic of being something “physical” without being a “force” is just what takes place in the essence of religation. That is why religation {140} is something physical, but is not mere vinculation.

Religated to the power of the real as ultimate, possibilitating and impelling, I find myself physically determined by it in my absolute being. Therefore, what determines us physically is “the” reality. “The” reality is what “makes me be I”. Absolute being is acquired through the physical determination of the power of the real as something ultimate, possibilitating and impelling. This is the second step of our explanation.


{140}

III

What is this power of the real in things? The power of the real is a power which things have qua real; and qua real they constitute a part or moment (the term is unimportant) of that we call “the” reality. Therefore, we ask ourselves, What is that reality in real things which as a power physically determines our I, and makes us acquire our absolute being?

1. Above all, “the” reality is not a mere general concept. This we have pointed out before: it is a physical moment of things and also determines us physically. Whatever its concept may be, that which we call “the” reality is a physical moment of things.

2. However, it is not like a kind of sea in which things would be floating or submerged. “The” reality is not a mere concept, but neither is it something separate from things, as if it were an envelope surrounding them. Reality is always and only a characteristic of things, the formality itself of each thing qua real. Reality and its power are in real things themselves. {141} Certainly, what determines a person is “the” reality, but “the” reality is a moment of things themselves. Man is not in reality except by being among and with things.

3. Nonetheless, in each real thing, and by the mere fact of being real, its moment of reality in a certain way exceeds that which they are concretely. The impression of reality is physically transcendent to each thing. Because of this, real things have the power of determining my relatively absolute being. What does this mean?

A) First, in things themselves, their moment of reality exceeds the specific concretion of each thing. To be real is “more” than being this or that. Reality is not like an ocean, but rather a character of things and in things; and yet this character has the peculiarity of not exhausting itself in that which each thing is. This is what I express by saying that to be real is “more” than to be this glass of water, this pair of glasses, etc. In a certain way, each concrete real thing is more than what it is concretely. What is this “more”?

At first sight one might think that it is a case of “composition” between what the real thing is and its character of reality. But this is not so. This idea of composition, at best, would be a special conceptualization of the “more”, but it could never be the naked fact of the “more”. Personally, I am far from admitting such a special conceptualization.

From another point of view it might be thought that reality is a mere transcendental concept, and because of this its content would be found as if “contracted” to each thing. In this case, what would be intellectively known primo et per se would just be {142} the being “and nothing more”; and it is in being where we would intellectively know each thing as a contraction of being. In other words, now it would not be the case that in the thing we intellectively know “more” than what the thing is concretely, but to intellectively know a thing would be to intellectively know “less” of what being is. Confronting this conceptualization, let us put aside the fact that it identifies reality and being, and that it considers transcendentality as a mere concept. I do not share either of these ideas; I have insisted, actually, upon the difference between reality and being as an ulterior act of reality, and also upon the physical character of the moment of reality. But what is decisive now concerns a different point: that truth resides in just the opposite of what we have been told. And this because what I intellectively know in the thing is that being real is “more” than being this particular thing. Where I intellectively know the “more” is in the thing itself, not in a being anterior to it. Therefore, there is no contraction of “the” reality to this real thing but, on the contrary, there is something like an “expansion” of the real character of each thing beyond that which each one concretely is. Therefore, when I intellectively know each real thing, I intellectively know in the thing itself that to be real is “more” than being this or that.

Composition and transcendentality (in the classical sense), are two conceptualizations of something prior and radical: of the sheer “more”. They are founded on the “more”, but do not constitute it primarily or formally, as if the “more” were founded in composition or transcendentality. Metaphysics has accustomed us to take the received concepts as if they were the primary characteristics of things. But this is not the case. With respect to our problem, it is necessary to consider the “more” in its pre-conceptual primacy. To say that to be real is “more” than being this or that particular thing, means, first, that the moment of reality of this pair of glasses, {143} for example, is not to be identified “simply” with just being this pair of glasses, and second, that the moment of reality of this pair of glasses is a characteristic which exceeds in a certain way the reality of the glasses, because in this reality I am somehow given reality simpliciter. It is not the case that in this pair of glasses what I apprehend is “this real pair of glasses” plus reality, but that in this real pair of glasses its reality is not reduced to just being this real pair of glasses. The “more” is quite imprecise. And because of this the intelligence must determine it accurately. This “more” is given to me in the impression of reality. The proof resides in the fact that it is this character of reality simpliciter, and not the reality of the pair of glasses, what in the pair of glasses determines my absolute personal being. It is as reality simpliciter that we encounter the power of the real in the real pair of glasses. “The” reality simpliciter has a physical power.

B) And this is the second point. The character of reality is not only “more" than that which each real thing is in particular, but it is that in each real thing which determines my relatively absolute being qua absolute. The power of the real, although it is not a power that is outside or above concrete real things, nevertheless, is a power of “the" reality qua reality; it is something “more" than the power of concrete realities, since in each concrete thing, however modest, I am determining myself before “the" reality as such; this is precisely the root of my absolute being. “The” reality has a physical power, which means that each real thing transports a character, and a power which is not exhausted in the reality of concrete things that, as real, have power over me. The “more” is a constitutive moment of the power of the real: the power of the real is the power of the real in its total “more”.

{144} As a moment of things and a determinant of the I, the power of the real is “more” than the reality and the power of each concrete real thing. Each real thing carries physically in its reality the character and the power of “the” reality simpliciter; this is the third step of our explanation.


IV

What is this characteristic of reality according to which it has the power to determine my relative absolute being? To ask this question is to ask about the foundation of, and in what this strange unity consists, that unity between what the thing really is in its concretion, and the moment in accordance with which being real is “more” than being this or that. Because it is in this unity wherein ultimately consists the reality in and of the thing, as well as the power of this reality.

1. Above all, we must recognize that when each aspect is taken by itself, something undeniable follows. The difficulty starts when one thinks about something equally undeniable, namely, that we are dealing with aspects of one and the same reality, with the reality of each thing. And this is because what now jumps out at us is that what we said in the previous step is not clear at all. What is the origin of the difficulty? One might first think that the difficulty stems from a lack of precision and rigor in the ideas. But even allowing for this, the truth is that the difficulty has deeper roots. It is not a difficulty which resides formally in our ideas, but in the constitution of the real thing. The thing itself, in a certain way, is ambivalent: on one hand it is “immersion” in itself, and on the other it is “expansion” to more {145} than itself; it is at one and the same time and formally “its own” irreducible reality and presence of "the” reality. This ambivalence is real; any real thing, qua real, is this way. Consequently, the first thing to be done is to recognize this fact. The difficulty is not in the bluntness of the ideas, but in the structure of the thing itself. A real thing, qua real, is this strange ambivalent imbrication of being “this” reality, and being the presence of “the” reality. This structural imbrication is what we formally designate as the “enigma" of reality. To say that any real thing is an enigma means in a formal sense that reality possesses that structural ambivalence. And conversely, to say that reality possesses this ambivalent structure, affirms that reality is structurally enigmatic.

2. The enigmatic character of reality is not something extraneous to the power of the real. Just the opposite. Precisely because reality is enigmatic we are religated to the power of the real in a problematic way. The power of the real is an enigmatic power, and because of this, religation religates me to it in a problematic way. The problematic in religation is the living presence of what is enigmatic about reality. That is the meaning of the affirmation we have repeated many times: we are physically religated to the power of the real in a problematic way. Now we can see why. First, because reality itself is enigma, ambivalence. Second, because as a consequence of this, the determination of my relative absolute being is eo ipso enigmatic: this is what formally constitutes the enigma of life. Life is constitutively enigmatic because to live is to construct my relative absolute being, and this is enigmatic because the power of the real which serves as its foundation is enigmatic. From this several important consequences follow.

{146} A) The determination of my relative absolute being is the physical living presence of the enigma of reality. This living presence is restlessness. Restlessness, I have pointed out, is not agitation amongst the turmoil of life, nor is it necessarily constantly changing position. On the contrary, restlessness is something much closer to a type of quiescence, that strange mixture of rest and motion, that species of dynamic repose. Such restlessness is always but restlessness for the absolute of being. It is not the restlessness that takes us from one thing to another, as for example the restlessness which St. Augustine mentions; rather it is an intrinsic and formal restlessness belonging to each act, because in the least of his acts, man, when making his absolute being, always senses in an express or muted way this double question: What is going to become of me, of my absolute being? And, What am I going to make of myself since I am making that being? The unity of these two questions is radical restlessness: the restlessness of being relatively absolute.

B) Since the power of the real is enigmatic, the intelligence is not only “in front” of the reality which is given to it as something which is present, but is propelled by reality itself “towards” its radical enigma. The intelligence is not only intentionally “directed” towards, but physically “propelled” towards. The “towards” is not a going “towards”, but rather is a moment of the apprehended reality itself: it is not the case of “towards reality”, but of “reality as towards”. The impression of reality is not the exclusive monopoly of any type of sensing —of the visual, for example— but covers all sensing, including orientation and equilibrium. That is why reality is not only something which is present (as in the case of sight), but has other ways of being present. One of them is {147} the “towards”. And these diverse ways are not simply juxtaposed, but are intrinsically articulated (I cannot enter into this problem here) into a unitary apprehension of reality. All the ways, insofar as perforated by the “towards”, take us from themselves “towards” something beyond what is immediately apprehended in other ways, sound towards the sonorous thing, etc. The essential point is that it is not our reflections, but reality itself which is taking us towards this beyond. We are being taken by reality through reality. Hence, in our case, the enigma of reality is the intellection of reality in a very precise “towards”, namely, towards the radical fundament of each real thing. The power of the real not only determines us physically in a problematic way, but indeed this determination is the very problem itself of the fundament of the structure of reality qua reality. Religation is religation to reality in its enigma.

3. Propelled by reality itself towards its enigma, our intelligence can discover what the knot of the difficulty is. The power of the real, actually, like any power, is founded on the properties (let us put it this way) which the thing having that power possesses; if did not possess them, it could not have that power. And here is the knot of the difficulty. The power of the real is founded on the constitution of reality qua reality. The power of the real, as a determinant of my relative absolute being, is a power which is founded on reality itself. However, that reality is not the one belonging to this particular pair of glasses, because to be real is "more” than being this pair of glasses. But neither is the power of the real simply the power of that reality which this pair of glasses is. Because together with the pair of glasses, that in which I now am is in “the” reality simpliciter; for it is there that I determine {148} myself in my relative absolute being, as we already pointed out. From this there are two decisive consequences:

A) The reality on which this power is founded is not concrete real things. In other words, all things are real, but none is “the” reality. But “the” reality is real because it determines me physically, making me be relatively absolute. Therefore, there is another reality on which “the” reality is founded. And this reality is not one more concrete thing, because it is not “a” reality but the fundament of “the” reality. And as fundament of a power which determines my relatively absolute being, it will be an absolutely absolute reality. This is just what the reality of God is. Only because this reality exists can there be a power of the real which determines me in my relative absolute being.

B) But I find this power of the real in the concrete reality of each thing. Which means that the absolutely absolute reality, that is, God, is present formally in things constituting them as real. The presence of God in real things is primarily that of a formal character. God is not primarily present in real things as the cause is in its effect, but is present constituting them formally as real. The possible effective causation of God with respect to things is an ulterior interpretation required by something prior: by the formal presence of God in things. And this presence consists in the fact that the reality of each thing is constituted “in” God. God is not a reality which is there in addition to real things and hidden behind them, but is in real things themselves in a formal way. Therefore, absolutely absolute reality is certainly different than each real thing, but is constitutively {149} present in each in a formal way. That is why each real thing is intrinsically ambivalent. Each thing, on one hand, concretely is its own irreducible reality; but, on the other, is formally constituted in the absolutely absolute reality, in God. Without God “in” the thing, it would not be real, it would not be its own reality. And this unity is precisely the resolution of the enigma of reality. The ambivalence of reality simply consists in this double moment of not being God, yet being now, formally, constituted in God. That is why a thing is “its own” reality and a presence of “the” reality; that is why the power of the real is in it. I shall return to this character of the real later.

Consequently, God exists, and is formally and wonderfully constituting the reality of each thing. Because of this He is the fundament of the reality of each thing and of the power of the real in it. Here we have the fourth step of our explanation.

Reviewing the previous steps, we shall put it simply: the personal life of man consists in possessing himself, and through religation making his own I, his own being. This being is an acquired absolute being and therefore is relatively absolute (first step). It is acquired by means of the physical determination of the power of the real as something ultimate, possibilitating and impelling (second step). As a moment of things and determinant of the I, the power of the real is "more” than reality, and therefore, “more” than the power of each real concrete thing (third step). But the power of the real is founded essentially in the constitution of reality itself. Hence, this power is founded on an absolutely absolute reality, different from real things, but in which things, by virtue of their being real, is now formally constituting them as real. This reality, then, is God (fourth step).

{150} By this constituting presence of God in things and of these in God, the power of the real in things becomes possible, that power through which I live, i.e., through which I am constructing my absolute I with them. I make my life with things, and without them I would not be able to live. But what I do with them, I do thanks to the fact that they are constituted as real in God. Without God as a formally constitutive moment of the reality of things they would lack their primary and radical condition of being determinants of my own being, simply because they would not be “reality”. And conversely, only by being real do they have that power, and they are real only be being so in God. Thanks to this, my being is founded in God insofar as He is constitutively present in a formal way in what things have of reality. Real things, through their power of the real, when they give me their own reality, are giving me God in their very reality itself. To justify the existence of God is simply to explain the truth of this phrase. This justification is certainly a fundamentation, though not a speculative reasoning process; rather it is intellective knowing of the effective progress of our religation. That is why this “proof” is not a demonstration of the mathematical variety. It always has the resonance of the progress of personal life. And therefore it only becomes complete through the development of the entire book. The whole book is what gives this proof the demonstrative power of a physical experience.