What is this thing called Being mentioned so frequently in philosophy? Philosophers ascribe to it a power that is there but somehow cannot be separated out, but we are at the same time immersed in it. How? So powerful is it that Nisargadatta Maharaj achieved enlightenment but continually keeping before his mind ‘I am’. Etienne Gilson reflects on the power of the self-definition of God,” I am that I am”.
“There is then a resemblance between Being and beings. It is written inGenesis 1:26 Let us make man in our image and likeness.There is at least one sense in which this is true, and this first sense is presupposed by all the others:to beimplies necessarily a certain likeness to HE WHO IS.” (The Elements of Christian Philosophy)
When I first heard that response to Moses in Exodus 3:13-14: I AM WHO AM at the age of 15 it gave me a most uncanny feeling , a premonitory saltation to the age of 27 when at the instantaneous recognition of the reality of God, that name came into my head.
What is the deep reality for the philosopher who espouses a realist ontology behind the apparently simple recognition in experience of something - it is and it is this. How is that propaedeutic to the mystical immersion in pure being. Let me affirm that being mistaken is founded on the default nature of the unity of being. A mistake is a take.
The very first chapter of Nisargadatta’s teaching (‘I AM THAT) is called ‘The Sense of ‘I am’. I’ll have a look at that next and then at that exceptionally lucid book of Etienne Gilson’s ‘Methodical Realism’.
Anon.
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