Sense of union

I am unhappy with the idea that our search should find ‘no end result’, only ‘openness’. It leaves me empty, unsatisfied, it feels wrong, an apology, a way of filling a gap that emerges because there is nothing else to emerge.

I think there is an answer which is more satisfying, and more correct, and it is a ‘sense of union’. This sense of union does not necessarily need quiet, or clamour, or peace, or rationality, or learning. It comes from a different direction, but it comes, and that is all that comes, and that is all there is. The direction that it comes from is no direction. It comes from what we are — isolated, lonely, about to die by ourselves — to lose everything that we know in an instant never to be recaptured, thought of again, remembered. The abyss is the loneliness that we are. We see ourselves in it. There is nothing else to see. It contains only us.

Perhaps a thing, and a living thing, needs that which naturally it is not. Perhaps a thing needs to be that which naturally it is not. Perhaps a thing wants that which naturally it does not have. Perhaps a thing aspires to that which naturally it can never be. We are deceived into thinking that those things which we naturally need, want, aspire to, are sorts of thing which are worth needing, waiting, or aspiring to. And this is wrong. The need is simply that it is our condition, we are not those things so we naturally tend towards them. It is simple.

We may find a sense of union with things, people, in quiet, in clamour, in feelings of peace, or terror, or depression, or joy, or ecstasy, or loss, or anticipation. It is the union with those things which breaks the natural barrier which is self — natural isolation.

This ‘openness’ is too much like an ideal world, an ideal space, the perfect place within which to locate something. It is a step away from what we are, and I am not sure that step away is necessary. Stepping away like this is too often used as a mechanism for obscuration — it has the flavour of religiosity about it — what is, is always beyond. Why might not what is be within us? Is there something so wrong with what we naturally are? Do we detest it so much, that in order to find ‘reality’ we must step away from it? Do we somehow imagine that ‘real’ human existence does not include war, violence, ill-treatment, hatred, jealousy, envy, tarmac? Can it really be true that we are only naturally gifted with an aspiration to be what naturally we are not? We are in the small things. The sloping grassy bank should be our aim — if we have an aim.

The danger with any philosophising is this constant desire to reach further, and this is a danger because sometimes it reaches only because reaching seems the right thing — because it is more than what we are — and philosophising can do that. But that does not necessarily mean it does anything useful for us. How could philosophy justify itself if it said all it could offer was what we already know. It may be that today philosophy has nothing to offer — it has burnt out, it is logic and history only.

Accepting what we are, and what is the world, is not easy, and this is a great task. It is as great a task as finding the space to be open to new possibilities. I am sensing that the new possibility is accepting. I do not like political effort, but I should learn to accept it and not allow it to impinge on my life. It need not, if I do not let it. If I do not let it impinge then I am free. If I am free then I am everything that I can be.

It is the sense of union which frees us, from our own isolation as mortal beings, and from our alienation in an absurd world.