For some people existence is not blind, not meaningless. For some awareness is not that of an isolated individual standing at the brink of an abyss. I can remember as a young boy when I became aware of being. I was walking along the cliffs where I lived when I picked up a pebble. Something about it must have attracted me. Holding it in my hand I became aware of it as something which had being in itself. It was no longer just an object. It was other than me. It is impossible to express in words what I felt. Later I used to love to sit for hours on a ledge on a cliff listening to the sea surge, feeling the cool spray on my face. Sitting, half way between the sea and the sky, I did not feel alone. I was one with the seabirds, with the tiny creatures that lived on the rocks, with the foaming waves. I was aware of the world breathing. The moment someone else appeared on the scene everything changed and I would feel alone, an isolated individual. Later, when I read the following in Ursula King’s book on Teilhard de Chardin I knew exactly what he meant.
For Teilhard de Chardin the presence of another person seems to interrupt the unity of the world, to pluralise it for the seeker of ultimate unity. ‘But ‘the other man’, my God – by which I do not mean ‘the poor, the halt, the lame and the sick’ but ‘the other’ quite simply as ‘other’, the one who seems to exist independently of me because his universe is closed to mine, and who seems to shatter the unity and the silence of the world for me – would I be sincere if I did not confess that my instinctive reaction is to rebuff him.’
What I am trying to get at is that many people become aware of transcendence, that existence is not determined by a network of transitory relationships set within a finite physical domain. Those hours sitting on the rocks above the sea confirmed two things in my mind. The first was that I was indeed an isolated individual living within my enclosing universe. Others had their universes, perhaps there was even a communal one, from which I was excluded. The second was that I was surrounded by a thin, sometimes translucent, shell. At times the shell would dissolve and I would be at one with nature for a while. Later I became aware of a Presence pervading everything. I began to understand that everything is connected, unified by the pervading Presence of God. The only isolates are we individuals. We have become isolated because of the circumstances of our upbringing and because of the prevailing worldview we cannot help but share.