We search for peace as if it were the highest goal. We try to remove suffering and agitation, hoping to reach a state of satisfied equilibrium. But suppose we did achieve that state, would it be enough?
When our will moves in harmony with the universal good, the friction falls away. The resulting peace is the felt resonance of alignment with the good.
But even this peace is still self-focused. The friction is gone and there’s no agitation, so the will rests in its own equilibrium. This is love that’s stopped aiming for the wrong thing, but as yet it lacks its proper object. It’s a peaceful background that provides us with the precondition we need to flourish. Alignment ploughs the ground and removes the weeds, but it’s not yet planted with things that can grow. Peace is the ground, not the final destination. Consciousness doesn’t rest there.
Peace is a state where the negative has been removed. It’s the absence of friction but not yet the presence of anything in particular. An athlete who has recovered from injury has removed the negative, but they have yet to play their sport.
Since our will is dynamic, always moving, the stillness that comes from removal of agitation can’t be its resting point. A will with nothing left to correct doesn’t become static, it continues moving in a positive direction toward the good.
Fulfilment is the deepening movement of consciousness beyond equilibrium. Equilibrium produces stability, but fulfilment intensifies and makes consciousness richer. Because intensification requires movement, it involves change.
We might think that change implies a lack, and so equilibrium is the ultimate state. But it’s only corrective movement that implies a lack. Movement can also arise from fulfilment and the overflow of abundance. If our cup is full, any movement causes an overflow. So the movement of fulfilment doesn’t arise from a lack; it’s the natural expression of plenitude. This is movement beyond equilibrium, taking us past the correction of a negative state into an ever-deepening positive state of joy.
A musician who creates once they have mastered their craft isn’t moving from any lack, but expressing their perfection. Their abundance naturally flows outward. Their melody contains equilibrium within it; it has moments of silence, structure and rhythm. But it’s also inherently relational and each note resonates with the others rather than merely following in sequence. Without that resonance, it’s mere sound rather than a harmonious melody.
Consciousness that has freed itself from the revolving prison of self-centred attachment doesn’t become still, it seeks an object. Like a melody, the will comes alive in relation.
Our will seeks the infinite
We’ve seen that the field is responsive and not indifferent to us, but responsive in what way?
Our will always aims toward the good, but not for a finite and limited good; it aims for something complete. Fulfilment overflows, and an overflow must move toward an object. If fulfilment implies a relational overflow, what kind of object does consciousness seek?
The answer becomes clearer if we consider the direction of our will. When we direct our attention toward the finite, the infinite is occluded from our view. But our real desire is for the infinite. Our will always seeks the whole. Think of the moment we achieve what we aimed for: the job promotion, money or fame. The yearning is quiet for a while but it’s still there underneath, undissolved by the thing meant to satisfy it.
We seek knowledge, but our search is for complete knowledge, the theory of everything that explains all other things. When we pursue joy, we don’t want a momentary experience but a lasting and complete state of being. By our nature, we’re ceaselessly drawn toward the ultimate good.
So in all ways we seek the infinite, and looking for it in finite and limited things leaves us disappointed. A finite object cannot satisfy an infinite orientation of will.
This infinite orientation of the will is a movement toward the highest good. It’s a continuous good we participate in, not an end goal to be reached. Participation in a dynamic and living reality isn’t passive. The movement of the will can’t deepen unless it receives a response and so participation opens into relationship.
Love requires a person
Since participation requires relation, what could receive that overflow?
We already distinguish between objects and subjects in how we treat them. If we wake up early and make a cup of coffee, we don’t worry about the inconvenience to the kettle. But we try not to disturb other people. We don’t treat people as objects, we acknowledge their will and desires. We consider the effect our actions have on them, and then adapt our behaviour. We don’t leave our dirty dishes in the sink if we know it annoys our roommates.
Attachment toward matter is self-referential, because we engage with matter to please ourselves. Material objects can’t be pleased or reciprocate with us; there’s no will there to respond. We can direct our will toward other people and a real response is possible. But it’s only partial, because they’re finite, changeable and impermanent. Even the deepest human love is limited by what a finite person has to give and how long they’re here to give it.
Attachment is a form of love. The problem isn’t that we love or that we’re attached, it’s that we love things that can’t reciprocate in the way we need them to for lasting joy. Think of trying to love someone who doesn’t or can’t reciprocate. It’s love, but it’s tinged with grief: a limited love that can’t find its fulfilment because the direction is one way. Love requires response and return to fulfil us.
We can’t fully love humanity in the abstract, or the highest good as a principle. We can admire it in a detached way, but we can’t find joy unless the object of our love can reciprocate. An impartial object can produce alignment, but not love. For consciousness to deepen and intensify there must be overflow, and the will must be directed toward something that can respond. It’s this responsive relation of mutual wills that can create intensification.
In the universal will we find a response that removes agitation. That response isn’t yet a reciprocation, because what’s being related to isn’t approached as something that can respond. The highest good can’t be grasped and held like an object, it can only be participated in. Love is the most complete form of that participation. The will gives itself freely to what it recognises as good and the object of its love responds. Love isn’t one good among others; it’s the mode in which consciousness fully participates in the good itself.
A musician playing alone expresses the overflow of their perfection, but there’s no exchange. When musicians play together the melody only completes itself once the other answers it. There’s a call and response and the notes are enhanced by the response of the other.
Each is expressing their own creative flow, but the reciprocation creates something neither could produce alone. An answer that changes what comes next is the difference between expression and relationship. This is why nothing impersonal can receive it. A room can receive a melody, but only another musician can answer one.
The fullest and most dynamic expression of consciousness is a love that overflows. Nothing impersonal can receive that overflow, it must have a heart that can be moved by it. Love requires a presence that can receive and reciprocate.
If the ultimate ground of consciousness was impersonal, personality would be an afterthought, something the foundation produces rather than something built into it, and love couldn’t be ultimate. But love isn’t an afterthought, it’s the deepest longing of the soul. Like hunger, it’s a signal that points to something real. The deepest reality must be a person, and only the infinite can offer a personal and individual response.
What it means to say the Absolute is personal
When we say the Absolute is a person, we shouldn’t think of a finite ego that’s a larger or more powerful version of ourselves. The Absolute as one person among many would make it one item within reality, and the Absolute isn’t a being like you or me. It’s the ground on which all things stand and the necessary foundation of all that exists.
Nor does it mean an impersonal force, law or energy. A person in the fullest sense is a centre of knowledge, will, and love. The Absolute has these features not as psychological traits, but as the ground from which all finite expressions derive.
Something personal and capable of reciprocating isn’t something that you’re absorbed into, it’s someone you relate to. The goal of relationship isn’t to merge into the Absolute. This means the individual subject isn’t an obstacle or an illusion, but a necessary participant.
Relation is part of what consciousness is, not an accident. A will needs an object; love needs someone to receive it and participation needs something to participate in. The Absolute isn’t consciousness that lacks something. Whatever is intrinsic to consciousness is also intrinsic to the Absolute because the Absolute is the fullness of consciousness.
Relation is part of the Absolute as well. An ultimate state that dissolves relation or individuality doesn’t fulfil consciousness. It negates it. An object can be described from the outside, but a person must be addressed.
Once consciousness at its fullest can receive love rather than just be accurately described, the orientation has changed. There’s no way to speak of a person without speaking to him. There was never a question of whether we relate to him, our only choice is the nature of that relationship.
Why the Absolute is hidden
The Absolute is the source of everything in existence. Everything exists relative to the Absolute, which means all things stand in some kind of relationship to him. Relationship to the Absolute isn’t one feature of existence among others but the condition of existence itself.
Relationship is unavoidable and so we must already be in some kind of connection, whether we’re aware of it or not. Our only choice is what form the relationship takes and how we relate. The Absolute is personal, but since we have free will, we choose how to relate to him.
The nature of that choice matters, because the relationship we’re capable of isn’t merely functional, it’s personal. And that means we’re capable of love. For love to be reciprocated it must be between persons. Love must be freely given, love coerced is no longer love, but something else entirely.
The Absolute isn’t hoping for a response from us, there’s already some kind of response. His love toward us is already flowing, constant and unconditional. His capacity to give it isn’t changing, our reception of that love is the variable. His love meets us where we are.
Think of a parent who calls their child, remembers birthdays, helps when needed but their adult child is absorbed in their own life. They only call when they need something and don’t pay attention to the parent or reciprocate that love. The parent’s love hasn’t changed, it’s not in question. What’s missing is the reciprocation. The child can engage as little or as much as they choose, and that determines the substance of the relationship.
Freedom must include the possibility of refusal or withholding a response. That possibility of refusal isn’t only a feature of human love, it means the nature of the Absolute must include room for a refusal to reciprocate. This freedom isn’t a limitation of the Absolute. It’s an expression of his nature as love that has consequences for understanding our situation.
A personal relationship is always responsive. The Absolute responds to us according to how each individual chooses to approach him; he reciprocates on our terms. When there is refusal and withholding of a response, the relationship with the Absolute doesn’t disappear. It becomes distant.
If we ignore or deny him, he respects our choice and remains hidden. The silence of the cosmos isn’t the absence of the Absolute but a restraint of his presence. Divine hiddenness isn’t evidence of the non-existence of the Absolute; it’s evidence of non-coercive love.
Physical reality is the external face of a deeper conscious reality, it’s not something separate. It’s the same reality seen in its purely external features. Which means that any relational fact has to display as a structural, spatial fact at the physical level, because it’s one reality being described from two vantage points.
The vast reaches of space and the unimaginable distances of the universe are the concrete form of our relationship to the Absolute: the vastness of space expresses the experiential distance of our relationship and the cosmic silence is our relational stance. This is the hiddenness of the Absolute.
It’s as distant a relationship as it is possible to have. We don’t even know if he exists, and we have no reliable information about him.
These are the conditions of our existence in this world, and they’re the outward form of our orientation toward the Absolute. This orientation doesn’t require reflective awareness. Even beings who can’t consciously reflect on the Absolute still participate in a relational orientation, because the structure of consciousness expresses a direction of will. Our orientation mostly operates beneath conscious awareness, the way a habit does.
This orientation isn’t merely an abstract metaphysical stance, it affects the felt quality of our experience. Our experience depends on the object it’s directed toward and its capacity for response. Occlusion is the limiting form of relationship. It’s something like when we say “he’s dead to me”. Not that he is dead, but our relational orientation excludes him.
If this is the most distant relationship possible, and we already exist in that state, what would it mean to move closer to the Absolute?
