Just To Be

The miracle of existence. “Just to be is holy” said Rabbi Abraham Joshua Herschel. I recently read a novel by a philosopher, Rebecca Goldstein: 36 Arguments for the Existence of God (Vintage Books, 2010). There is an inspiring passage in the first chapter about the mystery of being who you are (based on the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza [17^th century] who wrote about “conatus” – the very idea of each person’s unique existence as an experience of ecstasy when one realizes this mysterious fact. Think about it: why are you ‘you’ and not somebody else?). So, Goldstein’s character is feeling a “metaphysical chill blowing” on him as he thinks about his unique being:

Here it is, then: the sense that existence is just such a tremendous thing, one comes into it, astonishingly, here one is, formed by biology and history, genes and culture, in the midst of the contingency of the world, here one is, one doesn’t know how, one doesn’t know why, and suddenly one doesn’t know where one is either or who or what one is either, and all that one knows is that one is a part of it, a considered and conscious part of it, generated and sustained in existence in ways one can hardly comprehend, all the time conscious of it, though, of existence, the fullness of it, the reaching expanse and pulsing intricacy of it, and one wants to live in a way that at least begins to do justice to it, one wants to expand one’s reach of it as far as expansion is possible and even beyond that , to live one’s life in a way commensurate with the privilege of being a part of and conscious of the whole reeling glorious infinite sweep… (p. 24)

Goldstein’s character, Cass Seltzer, is an atheist, but this ‘metaphysical chill’ that comes upon him can’t be ignored. The very astonishing fact of ‘being’ seems to point to something transcendent and spiritually personal.

Have you ever felt something like that? I have. To me, the mystery of being gives me goose bumps. But more than that, the sheer fact of ‘being’ gives me a conscious connection to BEING ITSELF (read: God). And the reality of Love gives me a sense that Being Itself is Personal. 

To use an analogy: each of us is ‘a being,’ like a fish in the ocean. The ocean is ‘Being Itself.’ All beings live in Being. As Paul said, “In God we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17).

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