CHAPTER XIII.

Desire the Creator

Hunger has built the universe.
Hunger is desire.
Desire is love.
Love is God.

Of course we agree that God built the universe.

But it was not a God on a great throne outside the universe -- one at whose behest angels and devils picked up handfuls of world-stuff and fashioned things, which were then set running.

It was God, or desire, in the universe, which has grown it up to its present state, and which will keep on growing it through all eternity.

Find desire in your own self -- good or bad desire, it is all off one piece -- find desire in yourself and you find God. Study the motions and results of desire in yourself and you will understand how God works to create worlds and peoples.

Note how a desire for food affects you. Does it cause you to sit still and sigh? Not until you have first tried every ingenuity you can think of to gratify your hunger.

Desire impels you first to effort.

You go first to all the places where you have been accustomed to find food. We will suppose that you find nothing in the pantry, and of course that discovery whets your hunger. You again go over all the shelves, hoping to run across something. Nothing there.

Now note that up to this point your hunger has impelled you to do just what you have been in the habit of doing. Of course this effort has done nothing further than fix a habit of looking in certain places for food.

But now: You have failed to find the food and hunger urges you a bit farther. You begin to think. You keep moaning inwardly, “Where can I find food?“ Your wits grow a little keener