Excuse this over-simplification...the difference between existence and being
Descarte - I think, therefore I am
verses
Buber's I-Thou Relationship
The following excerpt is from tape 6 The Gift of Self by Gil Bailie:
"We all exist, we wake up one fine day and we look down, there we are, we look around and there is the world, we are aware that we exist, we have reflective self consciousness. That is existence. But there is something else and that is being... The biblical tradition – 3000 plus years of tradition – speaks almost unanimously on this matter and it says that we are called into being. We may exist waking up, blink our eyes and there we are, that is existence. But we are called into being, and it is only in response to that call that we really experience being. Martin Buber says, “Real existence or being is comprehensible only in connection with the nature of the being with whom one stands in relation.” Buber writes later on, “He who ceases to make a response (to this call) ceases to hear the Word.”
(Gil) So when we cease to make a response and we cease to hear the Word then what gradually begins to happen is the loss of ontological density.
(Aramis here) Grasping the significance of our waning of ontological density - the separation from the call and therefore response to the call - helps one realize the importance to abide in the only True Source of Transcendence.
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