Being/Home

V. The Desire for Perfect and Unconditional Being/Home

Human beings also seek a perfect sense of harmony with all that is. They not only want to be at home in a particular environment, they want to be at home with the totality, at home in the cosmos. This is confirmed by Mircea Eliade’s exhaustive study of world religions,^[11] which may be summarized as follows. Religion is grounded almost universally in a sense of the sacred which is not reducible to a mere subjective projection. Rather, the sacred is a source or cause of human striving to live in a spiritual and transcendent domain. This domain is not a sterile concept, but rather is filled with transcendent awareness and emotion frequently resembling what Rudolf Otto terms the sense of “creatureliness,” “mysterium tremendum,” “awesomeness,” “overpoweringness” (or “majesty”), “energy” (or “urgency”), “fascination,” and “transcendent otherness.”^[12]

Exhaustive as Eliade’s (and others’) studies are, it is important to validate this conclusion for ourselves. Have you ever felt, either as a child or an adult, a sense of alienation or discord – a deep sense of not belonging? You ask yourself, “What could be the source?” and you look around and see that at this particular time you have a good relationship with your friends and your family. Your work relationships seem to be going fairly well, community involvements have produced some interesting friends and contexts in which to work. Yet, something’s missing. You don’t quite feel at home in a general sense. Yet you do feel at home with family, friends, organization, etc. You feel like you are out of kilter with, and don’t belong to, the totality. And yet, all the specific contexts you look at seem just fine. You feel an emptiness, a lack of peace, yet there is absolutely nothing you can put your finger on.

Many philosophers and theologians connect this feeling with a human being’s yearning to be at home with the totality; not merely at home with myself, my family, my friends, or even the world, but to be perfectly at home (without any hint of alienation). When the desire for perfect home is even partially fulfilled, philosophers, theologians, and mystics variously refer to it as joy–love–awe–unity–holiness–quiet.

What is the origin of our desire to be at home with all that is, to live in what Eliade termed the “sacred domain”? What gives us the capacity to experience what seems to be transcendent joy–love–awe–unity–holiness–quiet? Indeed, what enables us to sense transcendent otherness, and to be able to bridge the gap between ourselves and this transcendent Other? Does not the transcendent Other have to bridge the gap to us? If so, then our sense of perfect and unconditional home further reveals our connection and participation with a transmaterial (spiritual), self-transcendent domain.