The totality toward which human reality strives is itself, not a transcendent God.

Evidence

Desire is a lack of being. As such it is directly supported by the being of which it is a lack. This being, as we have said, is the in-itself-for-itself, consciousness become substance, substance become the cause of itself, the Man-God. Thus the being of human reality is originally not a substance but a lived relation. The limiting terms of this relation are first the original In-itself, fixed in its contingency and its facticity, its essential characteristic being that it is, that it exists; and second the In-itself-for-itself or value, which exists as the Ideal of the contingent In-itself and which is characterized as beyond all contingency and all existence. Man is neither the one nor the other of these beings, for strictly speaking, we should never say of him that he is at all. He is what he is not and he is not what he is; he is the nihilation of the contingent In-itself in so far as the self of this nihilation is its flight ahead toward the In-itself as selfcause. Human reality is the pure effort to become God without there being any given substratum for that effort, without there being anything which so endeavours. Desire expresses this endeavour. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1348 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Thus this perpetually absent being which haunts the for-itself is itself fixed in the in-itself. It is the impossible synthesis of the for-itself and the in-itself; it would be its own foundation not as nothingness but as being and would preserve within it the necessary translucency of consciousness along with the coincidence with itself of being-in-itself. It would preserve in it that turning back upon the self which conditions every necessity and every foundation. But this return to the self would be without distance; it would not be presence to itself, but identity with itself. In short, this being would be exactly the self which we have shown can exist only as a perpetually evanescent relation, but it would be this self as substantial being. Thus human reality arises as such in the presence of its own totality or self as a lack of that totality. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 362 (#expands, via linked claim)

If we wish to conceive of a synthetic organization such that the for-itself is inseparable from the in-itself and conversely such that the in-itself is indissolubly bound to the for-itself, we must conceive of this synthesis in such a way that the in-itself would receive its existence from the nihilation which caused there to be consciousness of it. What does this mean if not that the indissoluble totality of in-itself and for-itself is conceivable only in the form of a being which is its own “self-cause”? It is this being and no other which could be valid absolutely as that of which we spoke earlier. And if we can raise the question of the being of the for-itself articulated in the in-itself, it is because we define ourselves a priori by means of a pre-ontological comprehension of the ens causa sui. Of course this ens causa sui is impossible, and the concept of it, as we have seen, includes a contradiction. Nevertheless the fact remains that since we raise the question of the being of the by adopting the point of view of the ens causa sui, it is from this point of view that we must set about examining the credentials of this . Has it not appeared due to the mere fact of the upsurge of the for-itself, and is not the for-itself originally a project of being its own self-cause? Thus we begin to grasp the nature of total reality. … Everything happens as if the world, man, and man-in-the-world succeeded in realizing only a missing God. Everything happens therefore as if the in-itself and the for-itself were presented in a state of disintegration in relation to an ideal synthesis. Not that the integration has ever taken place but on the contrary precisely because it is always indicated and always impossible. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1440 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Human reality arises as a lack of an impossible self-totality — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 362; Human reality is the pure effort to become God, desire being its expression — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1348; Human reality is an abortive project toward being its own self-cause — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1440 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Human reality is the pure effort to become God, desire being its expression #corroborates (0.95) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1348
• Human reality arises as a lack of an impossible self-totality #expands (0.90) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 362
• Human reality is an abortive project toward being its own self-cause #corroborates (0.90) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1440