Final limits (ICA)

This state occurs when an individual is conscious of the all-pervading mystery. He knows he is in a life and death struggle and that he will lose. Nothing he can ever do or know can compete with this omnipotence, the mystery always wins. It may be compared to the experience of Sophie in the film "Sophie's Choice", when she sees that there is no way for her to be happy whatever she decides about the two men in her life. Sartre's work "No Exit" dramatizes this sense of being overwhelmed by omnipotence.

A dimension of this experience is the sense of awe, that is fear and fascination. The fear is that one is placed in a state of utter impotence, for the all-powerful nature of God is not an abstract attribute but a concrete fact of existence; one knows one's self to be utterly inept and that one will always be that way. The fascination is that there is but one option and one chooses it: to end striving to escape this power and to "give in to God", to resign one's self to this presence in one's life. The residue of such times is a new awareness that one does not have to have it one's way. Indeed, one becomes "the Way" or, more exactly, "the Way" becomes one's way.

This state is number 7 in the ICA Other World in the midst of this World.