Substance of God

I recently came across a posting that seems to be rather popular and reposted quite frequently on Facebook and other social sites.

It usually starts with a reference to Einstein, who was frequently asked if he believes in God and his answer was usually similar to this:

“I believe in Spinoza’s God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.”

Einstein, around 1920

After this, following quote is usually attributed to Spinoza himself:

God would have said:

“Stop praying and giving yourselves blows on your chest. What I want you to do is to go out into the world and enjoy your life.

I want you to sing, have fun and enjoy everything I’ve made for you.

Stop going into those gloomy, dark and cold temples that you built yourself and that you call my home. My house is in the mountains, in the forests, the rivers, the lakes, the beaches. That’s where I live and express all my love for you.

Stop blaming me for your miserable life. I never told you there was anything wrong with you or that you were a sinner.

Stop reading alleged sacred scriptures that have nothing to do with me. If you can’t read me in a sunrise, in a landscape, in the look of your friends, in your son’s eyes… you will find me in no book!

Stop being so scared. I do not judge you, nor criticize you, nor am I ever angry with you, nothing bothers me, nor do I devise punishment. I am pure love.

Stop asking for forgiveness, there’s nothing to forgive. If I made you, I filled you with passions, limitations, pleasures, feelings, needs, inconsistencies of free will, how can I blame you if you respond to something I put in you? How can I punish you for being as you are, if I’m the one who made you?

Do you think I could create a place to burn all my children who misbehave, for the rest of eternity? What kind of God can do that?

Forget about any kind of commandments, of any kind of laws; those are wiles to manipulate you, to control you and only to create guilt in you.

Respect your peers and don’t do to others what you don’t want for yourself. All I ask is that you pay attention in your life, that your alert status is your guide.

Life is not a test, not a step on the way, not a rehearsal, nor a prelude to paradise. This life is the only thing there is, here and now and the only thing you need.

I have made you absolutely free, there are no prizes or punishments, no sins or virtues either, no one carries a marker, and no one keeps a record. You are absolutely free to create in your life a heaven or hell.

I couldn’t tell you if there’s anything after this life, but I can give you a tip. Live as if there wasn’t. As if this was your only chance to enjoy, to love, to exist.

So, if there is nothing after, then you will have enjoyed the opportunity I gave you. And if there is, rest assured that I won’t ask you if you behaved well or wrong, I will ask you: Did you like it? Did you have fun? What did you enjoy the most? What did you learn?

Stop believing in me; believe is to assume, guess, imagine. I don’t want you to believe in me, I want you to feel me in you when you kiss your beloved, when you play with your little girl, when you love your dog, when you bathe in the sea.

Stop praising me. What kind of egotistical God do you think I am? I’m bored of your praise, I’m tired being thanked.

Do you feel grateful? Prove it by taking care of yourself, your health, your relationships, and the world around you. Do you feel overwhelmed? Express your joy! That’s the way to praise me.

Stop complicating things and repeating as a parakeet what you’ve been taught about me. The only thing sure is that you are here, that you are alive, that this world is full of wonders.

What do you need more miracles for? Why so many explanations?

Don’t look for me outside, you won’t find me. Find me inside… there I’m beating in you.

That’s my substance, dear Humans. That’s the Substance of God!”

Attributed to Spinoza by some

I was certainly moved by this text and it resonated in many ways. But was this really from Spinoza and why haven’t I read about this before?

But it is not so easy to find good references. While the way God is portrayed here certainly has many similarities to how Spinoza saw God as something immanent and described it “as only one substance, which is absolutely infinite, self-caused and eternal”, it is also written in a way that is very contrary for someone who considered God to be not a person or entity but something that not only permeates the entire universe but in fact is the universe and possibly more and is at the same time without cause and reason.

And the earliest references to this text that I could find seem to be around September 2019.

This link seems to be from September 5, 2019 and has the name of Baruch De Spinoza underneath, so seems to attribute it to himself.

This link seems to be from September 13, 2019 and is more written in a way to indicate that this text would be what Spinoza might have said what God would say if he would be a self aware entity.

There are other more recent versions and also a discussion on Quora if this text is really from Spinoza. The consensus seems to be that while it in some ways could be a very loose translation of something that Spinoza has said at some point, it certainly isn’t a very accurate transcript of anything that Spinoza ever published and likely neither wrote in some private correspondence with someone. He would likely have agreed with the idea that God is not someone or something that keeps a scoreboard or something, but he might as well have taken issue with the idea that God could even have said something like that as he did not see God as a person who would talk or have opinions.