I fell asleep reading about faith according to Kierkegaard. The light had stayed on and would hurt my eyes. I woke up around 4:30 or so in the morning, realised that I fell asleep in a perfectly sociable outfit surrounded by my laptop, phone, tablet, pills, a pear, a notebook, a novel, and a bottle of water. Then I had this experience.

It all started with a long letter from Sharjeel Imam a friend shared. Sharjeel attributes his optimism in the face of years of imprisonment to his faith. While I had some inkling about the nature of Faith through the Abraham story, which Kierkegaard uses, the leap of faith seemed to indicate a submission to something outside the realm of human agency and will, a realm I had been taught to venerate.

A few months ago, I had an experience of ego dissolution leading to proximity with a something which I felt as closeness. It was not an omnipresent clarity but a few clear visions. Imagined visions. Not completely given to me but willed. Although at the willing was not visible at that time. Following that, I read a bit of those people who had felt this intense coexistence and I felt some degree of kinship with them.

Without going to details, here is what I experienced: a sharing of is-ness with objects, leading to questions of what causes this is-ness, leading to wondering about the is-ness of this cause, and exploring the collapse of this cause to is-ness itself. This is all post-rationalisation. I felt intense happiness, wonder, felt ludicrous, felt intense fear, and ultimately fell asleep, tired.

Now the issue is that this is perfectly legible. The feeling cannot be replicated, but the logic can be. I do not know whether it diminishes the experience, but what it does for me is providing me an opportunity to know rather than believe. And I wonder whether it holds at all. Well.