Oh, sure, we can live as if there is no God. We can ignore him while we bask in the ignorance of our youthful days, diverting our attention through the pursuit of things and thrills and excitement. But sooner or later we will come face to face with the hard questions of life. And we find an emptiness at the center of our lives. That's when we find ourselves yearning for something more.
Boundary experiences serve as a wake-up call.
We are stopped cold, we are forced to take the measure of a hidden anxiety about life and death. The Dr. Yalom tells of his own boundary experience during a relaxing Caribbean-resort vacation. The comparison I made between the two of us made feel very smug - he was simply wasting time while I was being productive, learning, getting ahead. They were terrible, unanswerable questions. Human beings almost instinctively search for the holy.