the present eye praises object

The purpose of this book is to describe and to analyse the human experience of presences. A presence is experienced in an encounter, which stands out from the multiplicity of contacts with things and persons. It is a vivid and magnetic radiance emanating from a living or unliving reality, a door, a folding chair, a tree, a river, a town, an old church, or a teacher. It leaves a powerful impression and elicits the need for a response in the form of attention, wonder, gratitude, or even request for some revelation. Examples drawn from everyday life, as well as from novels and poems, make palpable the wonder of experiencing a glowing presence and of the astonishing awareness of the pure present. The book invites the readers to enhance their own sensitivity to presences and thus to draw joy and a sense of well-being and wholeness from presences, wherever they appear in the present.