The Same and the Different: the Nature of Human Will

Philip Matthews

This essay will contain little or no evidence for what it asserts. This is because, by its nature, very little evidence can be produced. But some readers will feel spontaneously that what is described here is true – or has truth in it. Others will reject the whole subject as so much nonsense.

Now, I ask that those who see some truth in what is asserted here take time to imagine what it is like not to find truth here – that is, that they attempt to grasp something of how those who reject this essay come to do so. And I also ask those who reject this essay to take the time to imagine what it is like to accept the burden of the essay in principle, that is, to act for a moment as though they do see some truth in it.

The reason for asking readers to make these imaginative leaps is to point to a crucial aspect of what will be shown here: that within our reality, at all levels, at all times, and in all places, there is an element present that is utterly beyond our knowledge, though not beyond out experience.

The way to introduce my subject is in the form of a story.

There was an entity once that existed entirely alone. Because it had no contact with anything whatsoever, it had no sense of time or place. It had no consciousness – there was nothing to be conscious of. So it had no knowledge – there was nothing to be known.

Then it encountered something. It had absolutely no understanding of what was happening; it did not even know that it was encountering another entity.

The crucial feature of this encounter is this. As the two entities collided, their respective substances intermingled. The effect of this commingling was to produce new “elements” composed of varying proportions of each substance. Furthermore, these new “elements” continued to interact with each other – and severally with the original substances – to produce even more complex elements composed of varying amounts of the original substances, primary “elements”, and, as the process of interaction continued, secondary and tertiary “elements”, and so on.

This is the gist of the description of how our reality came – is coming – into being. There is this entity, call it the SAME, and there is that entity, call it the DIFFERENT, and the universe comes into being as a result of an encounter of one with the other. The universe is a mixture of the two, a mixture and a re-mixture, each admixture forming an element having a distinctive character. This is an important fact. Mixing the Same and the Different is not like mixing black and white in varying proportions to produce a range of greys, from light to dark. An admixture of the Same and the Different will produce a particular element that depends on the proportion of the Same and the Different it contains, and will be distinct in nature and behaviour from another admixture containing different proportions of the Same and the Different.

Why is this? It can be asserted that the universe contains a principle that appears in all phenomena as a kind of addition to how we consider those phenomena need to be in order to be physical facts. Put simply, the modern description of the physical universe is of a manifold of laws and distinctive natures that need not be known in order to be and to function.

Yet the universe can be known. How can this be, except that the universe contains a principle of knowability – of intelligibility – surplus to how we believe the universe needs to be in order to be what it seems to us to be. Thus, the universe contains a principle that appears to be in excess of what is needed in order for it to function.

Accepting this to be the case, two questions can be asked: (1) what is the source of this principle of intelligibility? And (2) what is its purpose?

As to (1), it can be asserted that the principle of intelligibility points to a fundamental or primary condition underlying reality. It is not merely a formal principle, because form need not imply intelligence, being at best no more than a fact of stability. Not is it an active or activating principle in itself, because activity at best need be no more than the fact of reaction between matters. Nor is it a reflection of reality, because a reality that needs not be known does not contain the principle of knowing, so that knowledge could not arise through reflection alone.

It seems then that intelligence must have its source in the origins of reality itself, in either or both of the entities involved in the original encounter. However, we can narrow the focus more closely than that. To the extent that one of these entities is unknown to us – that entity called the Different – then we can say that the principle of intelligence has its source in the entity called the Same. This does not exclude the possibility that the Different could also possess intelligence; we simply have no access to it.

(2) The question of the purpose, or task, of intelligence is as much a question about the nature of intelligence. In the same way, there is a better chance of discovering the purpose of knowledge by understanding the nature of that knowledge. What is knowledge but an answer to a question. And what is intelligence but the capacity to ask that question. And why would a question be asked, except that some circumstance has changed, so that some new experience was undergone.

Much about our reality can be explained by reference to this process of finding an answer to a fundamental question. For instance, the whole of existence can be viewed as a kind of articulation by means of which the question can be answered. And the Different can be defined in terms of the question as unanswered.

Thus, while reality is the result of a very complex series of admixtures of the Same and the Different in varying proportions, this reality is at the same time also a process of organisation whereby a specific intelligence is articulated throughout this admixture in order to gain knowledge about what is being experienced.

How is this possible? How can what appears to be an accident on one hand also appear to contain a highly specified purpose on the other?

The explanation must lie in the nature of the Same, that it can remain coherent in all its parts even as it is fragmented into admixtured subnatures. It is not merely that the fragments of the Same obey some surviving central authority, and organise themselves so as to serve its purpose. It is simply that the Same follows its own nature in all its parts – surviving intact even quite radical admixture with the Different – and it is its nature to behave as it does, to organise itself in order to understand its own experience.

An indication of how this organisation is achieved and to what end can be seen in the apparent evolution of life on Earth. The Earth itself can be conceived as a condensation arrived at through a long series of admixtures and re-admixtures of the Same and the Different. Life, however, to the extent that we are aware of it, must partake of the same nature as we do, so it should be viewed as an emanation if the Same. The development of life on Earth can then be seen as a series of preparations of the locus Earth for habitation ultimately by mankind. Thus eons of plant-life both laid down the material-rock foundation of the Earth we know, and tested for optimal living conditions for subsequent life on Earth. Then followed animal life, which provided new, sturdier rock formations, and also prepared the Earth for human mobility. Successive waves of hominoids refined this process of preparation until the Earth was fit for human habitation.

It was not a determined process; there were many blinds alleys. The dinosaurs, for instance, were for a time intended as habitations for humanity. This living environment is not perfect – it was never intended to be – it is no more than an adequate work-place for the human species, in which it labours to achieve its objective.

Isaac Newton described the human race as the “sensorium of God”. There is some sense in this, but it should be borne in mind that the Divinity that is the Same really has no inkling of what man experiences until mankind itself is in a position to tell It. Thus the task of mankind is not alone to experience this traumatic encounter between the Same and the Different, nor simply to gain some understanding of this event, and – hopefully – gain some understanding of the nature of the Different. We must also discover a way of communicating our findings to the Godhead, the Spiritual Being that is the Same, of which we are an integral, if projected, part.

Each level of this mission of humanity places distinctive demands upon human beings. Each human being has a part to play here – there is no exception. Each man and woman is open at all times to the experience of living and so must endure this dreadful burden. Again, each person strives for a particular type of understanding of his or her life-experience. It is not simply a matter of knowing what is experienced, for instance by naming or otherwise creating a narrative. Rather, we understand by absorbing the experience, by allowing the pain and tribulation, the trial of life, to impose itself upon us. It is in the resultant “shape” imposed on us that understanding lies.

The final task is the hardest by far: communicating this understanding to Divinity. It is not simply that the Spirit does not want to know – though the Spirit has asked a question, it has no expectation of receiving an answer – the message to be communicated is so strange and so awful that any attempt to speak it is greeted with complete incomprehension. So, the task of communicating with the Spirit – the ultimate task and destiny of mankind and the main reason for the existence of the human race – must be undertaken only after elaborate and lengthy preparation.

The initial task here is for each person to educate his or her own Ego. This task is undertaken by means of a series of conversions, so that the brute experience of the physical body is refined and understood at successive levels within each human being. Experience survives in us first as memory, so that our initial task is to become reconciled to each memory and the force it exerts on us. Some memories are easily absorbed, either because they are pleasant and so we are willing to identify with them, or because they repeat memories we have already absorbed. Other memories, however, will require a lifetime – and more – to absorb, memories that arouse not only pain and guilt, but that fill us with shame.

It is necessary to absorb experience as memory before we can undertake the next task, that of identifying the pattern to be found in experience. In a sense, this means passing from our lived experience, as it impresses on our feelings, to witness to the objective expression that underlies our experience. This objective expression is only superficially the “cause” of the experienced considered as an object or set of objects in the outside world. Behind these objects and situations can be glimpsed a ghost-like pattern, which can indicate to us something of why the experience occurred. In other words, the objects in the world are seen to be disposed in relation to us, as being capable of intelligence, rather than mere accidents that we encounter under one circumstance or another – that is, intentionally or otherwise.

The oriental concept of Karma bears in part a sense of this disposition, but leaving aside the teleological overtones that have been laid upon this concept. The ancient idea of Necessity is in some ways a better description, but here the deterministic overtones must be put aside. The world, the whole universe, is at any moment a coherent disposition, not a mere aggregate of accidents.

There is now a final task to be undertaken before our experience is sufficiently refined to serve as spiritual communication. At the level of recognising the patterns of our experience, we find that disparate experiences, originating at different times and places, reveal intimate connections with each other. As this level of understanding proceeds, we discover that large parts of our life-experience fall into quite remarkable coherent “shapes”. The word shape connotes pattern, but it is used here to indicate an important difference in this new level of understanding.

Up to now, our experience, though refined in ways that can astonish, remains whole and in a sense complete – nothing is felt to be lost in the process of refinement. Now, however, when we review the new shapes we discern through broad swathes of our lives, we see on one hand something of what was previously called the intelligibility of the world: what we can justifiably call a Discernment of the Spirit. But, at the same time, we have the profoundly disquieting sense that something is lacking in the Discernment.

This sense of lack can have a devastating effect on people. It generates intense hungers and desires, great violence and anger. Most of all, we feel an intense and abiding disappointment. We feel cheated that all our efforts should lead to what we inescapably feel is error, even delusion.

This lack is our experience of the Different. It will have no locus or form; it will simply permeate our understanding of the Spirit – that is, the Same – as a formless, meaningless absence.

This is the understanding that we must convey, first to our own Ego, then to the various spiritual hierarchies that are arrayed as emanations out from the core Divinity to us here on Earth. You can appreciate the difficulty the Spirits have in accepting this knowledge as the fruit of a mighty endeavour. You can also appreciate the extreme distaste human beings have for the task of preparing this incomplete knowledge and then conveying it to beings they consider superior to themselves.

This process of refinement of experience is undertaken by all human beings, regardless of race and religion, education or even apparent mental ability. Much of the activity of mankind, rational and irrational, moral and immoral, is in fact part of the response of humans to the demands of this process of refinement of life-experience. For instance, the process of reconciling ourselves to our memories of experience often involves deep pain and anguish, and human beings are strongly tempted to ease this suffering by projecting it – like a contagion – on to others. The disappointment experienced by those who manage to discern the larger patterns and shapes in their lives is often vented in anger and violence upon others. Whole societies can be convulsed by the need to absorb collective experiences, and these societies can behave exactly like individuals in visiting their pain and frustration on other social groups in acts of war.

Of course, it is not all gloom: humanity has happy experiences, and so there are memories they celebrate, and disappointments that are tempered by hope. It is significant that human happiness is expressed in ways very different to human unhappiness. The former is usually regularised as festivals, religious and cultural festivals, diligently prepared for and fully shared, while unhappiness erupts into human affairs, unpredictable and singular, flaring up and then dying away as the fury or resentment is vented.

It should be clear from the account above that the world, or indeed the universe, does not exist in time. The universe exists only at this instant of experience, and that instant is annihilated as it is succeeded by the next instant of experience. But the world does live on in us, as an effect upon us, like a wound which we then strive to heal. The patterns and shapes we discern ultimately in ranges of experience do not exist outside our witnessing of them: they simply indicate the disposition of the Same – and perhaps the disposition of the Different too – an expression of the natures or essences of these spiritual beings.

Formal knowledge, then, philosophy, theology, and the sciences, are really responses to life-experience, though we often treat them as explanations that in some way substitute for the content of experience, or, worse, as some kind of fruit of experience that leads us to an abstract conceptual reality hidden behind what our senses tell us. In fact, formal knowledge as a response to experience is on a par with our festivals and our wars – it is simply another way we have of coming to terms with our suffering and confusion.

But the most important insight here is this: that the human endeavour can fail, either because what is being sought – knowledge that will inform the Gods of their present situation – cannot be achieved, or mankind will be overcome by the conflictual nature of its response to its experience of the Same and the Different. Thus mankind, along with all the other spiritual emanations, may be condemned to a blind endurance of pure experience, unrelieved by hope or by the certainty of any cessation, which is at present the actual agony of the Same, the core Godhead.

A major consideration arises from the foregoing: can the human will be free?

The modern concept of free will implies that we can act from some point outside the whole universe, an unconditioned and undetermined origin point from which we can exert a force upon the universe and its contents.

Originally, the idea of the freedom of the human will was quite different. The human being was seen to be free in the sense of not being determined, by fate or by necessity, and so essentially a chaotic being subject to every whim and passing influence; in fact, the equivalent of a headless chicken.

By comparison with this view, the modern version of human freedom sees man as a god, capable of doing anything he wants to do, a being capable of anything and, ultimately, everything.

In both versions, man is seen to be beyond morality, in the classical Stoic version incapable of moral self-control, in the later modern version above and beyond – by definition of being free – all moral restraint, subject only, as Nietzsche rightly conceived of it, to his own unbounded will to power.

In both these accounts the concept of the freedom of man seems to mask a deeper concern – a fear of loss of control, a very real fear of descending into darkness and chaos. This is obvious in the Stoic account, which has continued to underpin the Christian view of mankind, but appears only in the modern account in our own ambiguous attitude to personal power, an awareness of both its desirability and its threat.

Now, the content of this fear of loss of control contains the possibility of gaining direct understanding of the nature of the universe and of man’s situation within it. It is clear that the divine Same is not a being of power, as commonly understood. It has abilities, most obviously its intelligence, but these powers flow from a being in a way similar to how natural powers behave, how gravity appears when certain material preconditions are met, how water will flow to achieve equilibrium.

Thus, there is no room in the Same for the idea of a will-power; therefore no possibility of applied forces in the universe. Yet there are natural forces, gravity and various chemical and electro-magnetic energies.

The encounter of the Same and the Different leads to a manifold of distinctive enmixed elements composed of the Same and the Different in varying proportions. These elements bear the energies brought into being during the encounters of the Same and the Different and of the various enmixed elements with each other. In these later encounters between various elements, the reactions will vary depending on the formation of the elements involved. Some will be more powerful than others, so that a whole complex of motions and reactions will come into being. And it is out of this complex that the universe of forces we experience comes into being.

Inasmuch as the universe is constituted at any instant as a disposition, rather than as a mere aggregate of accidents, its array of forces must also be disposed in some order. This is possible because the Intelligence of the Same (at least that; the nature of the Different remains unknown, so its influence on the disposal of the universe cannot be discerned) is not alone capable, by its very nature as intelligent, of imposing an order on the universe, it is also invulnerable to the forces of the universe. Thus these forces wash against the Same’s Intelligence and recoil, an endless flow of force and recoil, many kinds of forces, each with its own distinctive recoil.

Thus, the freedom discerned in man is this Intelligence. It is not a power or active force: it is a resistance, a nature finally detached from the universe, yet capable of organising it, capable of ordering – not the forces of the universe – but the recoils that these forces become upon contact with the Intelligence. In this way we act by manipulating forces already in action, not by initiating action.

As an aside: this human Will-Intelligence is discerned spiritually as a form only; it has no dimensions of its own. In appearance it is like a pearl, but shaped like a head of chicory, glowing very softly. This is the Light that all seek.

The spiritual emanations that preceded mankind have tasks similar to that of man, except that they have the additional task of preparing a way for mankind to return to the Godhead or the Same. Earlier spiritual hierarchies would have a greater proportion of the spiritual Intelligence and would also be less projected into the darkness of the Same-Different admixtures. They would thus have experience not only of the effect of the Different, but also a more or less direct perception of the divine Core would remain available to them.

In the case of mankind, direct perception of the spiritual Source would need to be occluded, for the mundane experience would be utterly unbearable if even the slightest vision of the Pristine State be permitted to them. Yet the human hunger for its origin remains unabated, no matter how deeply we are immersed in the toils of the Same-Different encounter. It informs all human desire and acts as the deep motivation of all human action.

This situation is made worse by the fact that after death, most of mankind turns immediately to face, as it were, its divine Source, and eagerly abandons all memory of its earthly experience. Thus the human race is in constant danger of failing to fulfil its task, which crucially involves the survival of the lessons of human experience while incarnate. This danger grows greater as human consciousness of its earthly situation increases generation by generation, and as the human ability to create substitutes for their Heaven, to ease their pain while alive on Earth by artificial means, improves.

It is the role of Christ in this case to bolster the courage of human beings, so that they can overcome their hatred of Earth in order to recollect the fruits of their individual lives on Earth after death. In this role, Christ is like a light, a companion light, who serves to remind individual men and women of the reason for their task on Earth, and to bear witness at all times to the value of that task. Christ, in other words, presents mankind with the reality of Heaven, as a correction to the human dream-memory of a state of repose, already affected, and so changed, by the vicissitudes arising from the Same-Different encounter.

In effect, Christ reminds each of us that we, as spiritual beings in union with all other spiritual beings, are engaged in building a new Heaven, a Heaven at present unknown, that because of the nature of our reality cannot be known until it is achieved.

DG: Good Friday 2005