Existence and Choice

This book is about choice. Undoubtedly, to decide lies at the heart of existentialism. Do we choose, or are we set? Both. Defining existentialism, a word coined by the French philosopher Gabriel Marcel in 1943, is irrelevant and impossible. Immaterial because an objectifying stance or "God's Eye" on the matter is absent. Unfeasible because existentialists hold a wide range of divergent positions when answering its two basic queries: Who am I? How to live? Given the replies to these questions are as inexhaustible as crucial, existentialism is never outdated or on the way out. The existentialists were averse to a detached, theoretical approach. In answering existential questions, the scientific, objectifying, cataloging, judgmental way of thinking is deemed grossly inadequate. In every moment, one can choose. And this freedom is fundamental. One can also choose servitude. The flexibility with which the calm mind molds each moment -with its time, space, matter, information, and consciousness- into something better than before depends on meditative self-knowledge. Authenticity, creativity, and spiritual connection depend on this. Such knowledge is not theoretical but born out of meditative practice used as a gate to the "fourth time" of the living present.