I understand singularity as the uniqueness and unrepeatable character of all things – of persons, animals, but also of events such as an encounter. Yet uniqueness also means the perception of separateness and the otherness of every being. There can be no distinctness without difference, without separateness, without being thrown back upon one’s own existence. The awareness that every being is ultimately thrown back upon itself and does not dissolve into others; the realization that the weight of my existence, in its entirety, cannot be carried by another being. It thus also means vulnerability, dependency, the need for one another, imperfection – for all things depend on each other, not only the human being as a social creature.
Uniqueness can only be perceived with difficulty; it must be uncovered. Yet there is no essential core to which one could simply penetrate, infer, or define. Rather, uniqueness appears, unfolds (as if by fate?), gives itself, and overtakes one – revealing itself. Its recognition cannot be produced; every act of making, every striving, must come to an end.
Separateness is not division in the proper sense, but the manner in which the One manifests itself as the many. When I no longer want anything, when my intentions no longer solely shape my reality, it becomes possible to see that everything is already present. Nothing needs to be optimized. And then it may happen that time itself comes to a standstill and the moment dissolves into an eternal timelessness – as in the Buddhist understanding of existence, in which past and future fade as mere conceptions.
I then recognize that everything is already present in its completeness – exactly as it is: in its uniqueness and at the same time in its kinship with all that exists. Then there are no more secrets, no more belief or opinion – only immersion in the moment, in eternity: that nunc stans which Christian mysticism describes as the still point of God’s eternal Now.
