Stark givenness (ICA)

This is experienced as the knowledge that the universe is indifferent to a one's existence - neither for nor against, just indifferent. The individual sees the universe as broken and hostile and yet full of wonder and glory; as in the movie "Three Days of the Condor", when the main character realizes that the situation is not going to change for him.

In the ICA New Religious Mode in the arena of articulating the word about life (the life of knowing) the second formal aspect is one's experience of the vanishing cosmos or the wonder at the world. At the second phenomenological level, this occurs when one is stripped of one's illusions and has to decide how to relate to one's new universe.