Reverence for Life
“The worldview of reverence for life follows from accepting the world as it
is. The world shows us the repulsive within the beautiful, meaninglessness
within what is full of meaning, and sorrow within joy. However we look at it,
it remains a riddle.Reverence for life gives us a spiritual relationship with the world that does
not depend on our knowledge of the universe.” 📚
“I know the mystery of the living in the only way possible for a human being:
by experiencing this union, not through thought.Sadism gives rise to the need to know the mystery, yet I know as little as
before. I tear the living being apart, but in doing so I destroy it—and
nothing more. ✔️ (as it was).Only love, in the act of union, can satisfy my desire to know the mystery.
Only by loving, giving myself to the other, and entering into their world do
I find myself; I discover myself, I discover us both, I discover the human
being.The passionate desire to know myself and my fellow human being is expressed
in the Delphic oracle's saying, ‘Know thyself.’ All psychology grew out of
this!”
Have I grown into that yet?
Questions about this article
01What does reverence for life mean as a worldview?
It means accepting the world in all its contradictions: beauty and repulsiveness, meaning and meaninglessness, joy and sorrow. This stance connects a person with living reality even when knowledge cannot exhaust the world's mystery.
02Why can love reveal living reality better than destruction?
When someone destroys a living being to uncover its mystery, they also destroy the very object they hoped to know. Love instead makes union with another possible and, through it, reveals the other, oneself, and the human reality shared by both.