For in these experiences there is a ‘feeling of the world as a limited whole’. we seem abstracted to a point outside the world and we see it without our involvement in it -- we see it as one thing. And when this happens to you (if it ever does happen), you know that ‘how the world is’ is not everything. There is something else -- there is the existence of the world -- ‘that the world is’. You suddenly see the world in a way which makes you conscious of the mystery of its existence -- of the mystery of existence itself. and a question arises which could not have arisen before while you were investigating the facts and taking the fact that there are facts for granted -- namely, the question of the meaning of this latter fact. What does it mean that a world would exist, that anything should exist, that there should be facts at all? This is not a question that further knowledge of the facts of the world would enable us to answer. It is a mystery. we can become aware of this mystery -- deeply and disturbingly. But the paradoxical thing i that you can have this experience without detriment to your confidence as a scientist. For ‘how the world is’ remains untouched -- the facts are unchanged -- and ‘how the world is’ remains completely unmysterious. In other words, what I am saying is that it both makes sense to be confident that there is no unfathomable mystery within the world and at the same time to recognize that the world itself is the profoundest mystery