Existence is a reality in some respects comparable to a living organism; it cannot with impunity be reduced, in man’s consciousness and in his modes of action, to proportions that do violence to its nature; pulsations of the “extra-rational” pass through it from every quarter. Now religion and all forms of supra-rational wisdom belong to this extra-rational order; the presence of which we observe everywhere around us, unless we are blinded by a mathematician’s prejudice; to attempt to treat existence as a purely arithmetical and physical reality is to falsify it in relation to ourselves and within ourselves, and in the end it is to blow it to pieces. (GTUFS: UIslam, The Path)
The very fact of our existence is a prayer and compels us to prayer, so that it could be said: “I am, therefore I pray; sum ergo oro.” Existence is by nature ambiguous and from this it follows that it compels us to prayer in two ways: first by its quality of being a divine expression, a coagulated and segmented mystery, and secondly by its inverse aspect of being a bondage and perdition, so that we must indeed think of God not merely because, being men, we cannot but take account of the divine basis of existence – insofar as we are faithful to our nature – but also because we are by the same token forced to recognize that we are fundamentally more than existence and that we live like exiles in a house afire. On the one hand, existence is a surge of creative joy and every creature praises God: to exist is to praise God whether we be waterfalls, trees, birds or men; but on the other hand, existence means not to be God and so to be in a certain respect ineluctably in opposition to Him; existence is something which grips us like a shirt of Nessus. Someone who does not know that the house is on fire has no reason to call for help, just as the man who does not know he is drowning will not grasp the rope that could save him; but to know we are perishing means, either to despair or else to pray. Truly to know that we are nothing because the whole world is nothing, means to remember “That which Is” and through this remembrance to become free. If a man has a nightmare and, while still dreaming, starts calling on God for aid, he infallibly awakens; this shows two things: first, that the conscious intelligence of the Absolute subsists during sleep as a distinct personality – our spirit thus remaining apart from our states of illusion – and secondly, that when a man calls on God he will end by awakening also from that great dream which is life, the world, the ego. If this call can breach the wall of common dreams, why should it not also breach the wall of that vaster and more tenacious dream that is existence? (GTUFS: UIslam, The Path)
Existence / Intelligence: Existence, the being of things, neutralizes and unites, whereas intelligence discerns and separates. Existence by its very nature is an “exit” (ex-sistere, ex-stare) out of Unity and thus is the plane of separation, whereas intelligence, being Unity by its intrinsic nature, is the ray leading back to the Principle. Both existence and intelligence unite and divide, but each does so in a different relationship, so that intelligence divides where existence unites and vice versa. (GTUFS: LSelf, The Meaning of Caste)
Existence / Phenomena: Existence . . . concerns all things – whether qualitative or not and whether conscious or not – by the simple fact they stand out against nothingness, if one may express it thus. Phenomena are “neither God nor other than He”: they possess nothing of themselves, neither existence nor positive attributes; they are divine qualities “corroded” in an illusory manner by nothingness – itself non-existent – by reason of the infinitude of universal Possibility. (GTUFS: UIslam, The Path)