Material being in its empirically observable characteristics—including mass, time and space—is not composed, antecedently, of a form of being that bears those same characteristics; that is, material being is necessarily composed of a form of being that is unlike observable material being, without mass, not operating in time and not filling space. But yet material being is entirely dependent upon this unobservable, unmeasurable state of being; indeed, it is rather more than simply dependent: material being is entirely composed of this sub-empirical being, at every moment and in every respect of its existence.
All being that is naturally knowable to us thus derives its being and nature from a sub-material reality that is unmeasurable, unobservable and thus unknowable by natural reason alone; and yet our actions as human beings, insofar as we are free and guided by reason, cannot finally rest in an understanding of what reality is, nor thus of how we ought to act and live, until we know the nature of this antecedent principle of being.
Thus the desire to know what is real, and to act accordingly, ultimately ends in an ache to know a thing whose unknowability renders it silent to the natural mind, and which can only be known, ineffably, in that silence.