…to know that in being ourselves we are more than ourselves: to know that our experience, dim and fragmentary as it is, … sounds the utmost depths of reality. – A. N. Whitehead
In the previous post, I shared an absurd, yet profoundly meaningful experience. I use the word absurd intentionally, for such experiences are not fully rational. But they aren’t illusions either. Rather, they unveil the depths of reality, and not all of reality is rational.[1] And so, we continue our exploration of the nature of experience, both individual and the larger experiences we are invited into. That word “invitation” opens up another significant area, namely desire. Desire is another word for how we feel the future and are drawn to invitations.
The movements of desire, the experience of our unique selves, and the awareness of union are all woven together. Within the river of desire, two currents provide a creative tension: The desire to be unique and the desire to belong. These two currents correspond to the very nature of reality, which is both a whole and a multiplicity, both one and many. It’s easy to see why these two desires can cause tension, for we belong based on what we share in common, but we are unique based on what we don’t share in common. However, your uniqueness does not have to contradict your belonging.
To recognize our unique, discrete, individual existence is a perspective, a way of attending. To recognize the whole, interconnected, inseparable nature of reality is an even more valid way of attending to our world. Both are true, but they do carry different priorities. Let me explain. We’ve become used to thinking of bigger things being constructed of smaller things. So, the building blocks come first, and then the larger structures. This mechanical metaphor is, however, inadequate to represent the nature of reality, for in reality, particulars develop from the whole. We first have a universe, a context in which galaxies, solar systems, and planets develop. In the case of our planet Earth, we have biological life developing subsequent to the formation of the planet. On the most fundamental level, we have quantum particles, the smallest building blocks we know of, but they would have no existence without quantum fields, fields that span the universe. Discreteness emerges from the whole. Individuals come into being through community. Your individual uniqueness arises from the undifferentiated wholeness of reality.
From Abstract Ideas to Transformed Experience.
Don’t let abstract ideas distract you – these insights can transform your experience. Our experience of reality and our understanding of reality are two dimensions of one process, similar to exercise and diet being part of overall health. Just as diet can affect your ability to exercise, and exercise can affect your appetite, so experience and understanding mutually affect each other. Both are interpretations of our world, and these interpretations overlap.
Interpretation happens within a framework – a way of referencing and contextualizing. We all operate with a personal “ontology”—a framework of reference, mostly unconscious, that tells us what is real. For most of us, this framework places a hard line between our “inner world” of subjective feeling and the “outer world” of objective fact. But what if that line is more of a permeable membrane? Is experience simply a point of contact with what is around us, or is it our most profound point of entry into the heart of reality itself? Our experiences, as limited and open to interpretation as they are, manage to unveil something true about the inner structure of our universe.
Reality, after all, has depth. It possesses an inner structure and value. Our experiences—of joy, sorrow, wonder, and connection—are not separate from this underlying reality. They belong to, and arise from, this very depth. Experience is not simply an observation but a participation in the structure of reality. To perceive this requires a certain orientation, an openness that sees beyond the surface of things. Describing this orientation, the philosopher Whitehead states: “[it] is to know that in being ourselves we are more than ourselves: to know that our experience, dim and fragmentary as it is, … sounds the utmost depths of reality.”[2] In developing his thought on the nature of reality, he came to the conclusion that experience is the most fundamental constituent of reality, writing: “final facts are, all alike, actual entities; and these actual entities are drops of experience, complex and interdependent.”[3]
Drops of Experience.
Experience, in this context, is not an exclusively human capacity. The world impresses itself upon, and is felt by, every event. Even the simplest quantum event has a decision-making capacity. In more enduring events, such as bacteria, plants, or animals, these processes of harmonizing the feelings into a unity become more complex, but they all share this internal experiential capacity. Here, we find common ground. Our human way of feeling, relating, and communicating is a powerful, if unique, echo of a capacity inherent to existence itself.
This is the core of it all: human experience is not an anomaly in the cosmos, but an exemplification of its possibilities. Humans, animals, and plants demonstrate the staggering diversity of form experience can take. Yet beneath this diversity lies a foundational reality, a common ground uniting all existence. The absurdly meaningful moment that I wrote about before was an event in which my awareness expanded beyond my individual existence and merged with this underlying reality. I’ll repeat: your unique consciousness, your particular way of feeling and being in the world, has its roots in this common ground. It is the place where all that is actual and all that is possible intertwine, finding a unique harmony in the fact of you. For all their limitations, our experiences are not just an access point to reality—they are the only access point we have.
An Ancient Intuition.
This idea of experience as both individual and universal is an ancient one. The philosopher Heraclitus wrestled with this very paradox millennia ago:
It is wise, listening not to me, but to the logos, to agree that all things are one. It is wise, listening not to me but to the logos, to agree that the one is all things.
– Heraclitus
Heraclitus, and many philosophers since, have recognized that reality is both a unifying harmony and a multiplicity, both a recurring pattern and an unceasing flow of novel events. We experience reality as both one continual flow and as a multiplicity of events intertwined. Unity and multiplicity are not mutually exclusive, but provide a creative tension. The one consists of the many, and the many belong to the one. “One” refers more to a unity than to a numerical singularity. Creativity can be seen as an oscillating movement between the many and the one, a pulsating incarnational rhythm in which the ‘Logos’ finds flesh moment by moment, instance upon instance.
The author of Colossians gives voice to this experience of divine presence in all creation:
He is the image [icon] of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. – Colossians 1:15-17
The passage refers to both a multiplicity (all things) and a unity (held together): The Son is the firstborn of all creation – first of many. And simultaneously, all things are held together in him. The crescendo of the thought comes in verses 26-27, namely, that the one in whom all things are held together – is in you! This is meant to be more than a doctrinal preposition; it’s meant to lure you into an experience, an experience in which the whole universe comes alive within you.
Meister Eckhart said it this way: “God is giving birth to his son now and eternally. What does it profit me if the father gives birth to the son, unless I bear him too?” Creation is a process in which God gives birth to Godself in us, and through us expands God’s own actual existence. In this co-creative process, we give birth to God.
The existentialist theologian, Paul Tillich, wrote:
The name of this infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being is God. That depth is what the word God means. And if that word has not much meaning for you, translate it, and speak of the depths of your life, of the source of your being, of your ultimate concern, of what you take seriously without any reservation. Perhaps, in order to do so, you must forget everything traditional that you have learned about God… – The Shaking of the Foundations
We exist within this great enfolding and unfolding described by the 15th-century theologian and philosopher, Nicholas of Cusa, where “God is the enfolding of all things in that all things are in Him; and He is the unfolding of all things in that He is in all things.”
This philosophical and theological vision of a unified reality finds a surprising and powerful parallel in modern science. The theoretical physicist David Bohm took inspiration from Cusa in developing quantum theory.[4] Quantum field theory can provide some helpful insights into the unity and distinctiveness of reality. As mentioned earlier, it encompasses both the largest and smallest phenomena in our universe. On the largest scale, it identifies fields that span our entire universe, and on the smallest scale, it identifies quantum particles within these fields. Everything we experience physically – all material – consists of these quantum events. However, here’s a fascinating insight: these “particles” have no substance in themselves; they do not exist independently of the universal fields. These particles are more like nodes within the network of non-material fields. They are bundles of energy (drops of experience) that only have individual existence because of their union with the field. Here we have a scientific theory that correlates with the philosophical insight that reality is both one and many.
How does this relate to my individual experience? Grasping this unity-in-diversity is not merely an intellectual exercise; it is an invitation to experience our own lives, not as isolated fragments, but as integral, unique harmonies of the cosmos. Any particular experience I have is a unique internal harmonization of the world I belong to. Or seen from another perspective: it’s the universe individuating itself, creating novel instantiations of its fields of potentiality. Or as Iain McGilchrist writes, “experience is participation, a fusion of one’s own awareness with awareness in the world.”[5]
Conclusion.
If we can soften our sense of boundaries, if we can allow ourselves to trust our world enough to feel its depth, it will open up a space of profound experience and transformed understanding. For the depth of reality is not only a philosophical concept but a space of encounter within you. In this space, you learn that although the boundaries of self serve a purpose, they are only possible because of a more foundational truth – you are part of something… someone, that unifies all existence. Everything within this universe finds a unity (Colossians), enfolds itself (Cusa), within this drop of experience (Whitehead) that you identify as yourself. In being ourselves, we are truly more than ourselves, for our essential sound is part of a cosmic symphony. Don’t let the boundaries of identity become so prominent that they hide the depth of your true belonging.
[1] The irrationality of reality is a central idea of Wolfgang Pauli, a quantum physicist. See, Kalervo V. Laurikainen, The Message of the Atoms, Springer – Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1997, pg. 54.
[2] Whitehead, Alfred North. Science and the Modern World, 18.
[3] Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality (Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Edinburgh During the Session 1927-28) (p. 18). Kindle Edition.
[4] Then, when Wilkins commented Bohm’s claim that the idea of enfoldment and unfoldment also seems to be present in Hegel, Bohm replied: “Remember, I mentioned Nicholas of Cusa with his Implicatio, Explicatio, and Complicatio.” – Interview of David Bohm by Maurice Wilkins on 6 March 1987, American Institute of Physics, available at: www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohrlibrary/oral-histories/32977-10
[5] Iain McGilchrist, The Matter with Things, Volume 1. (Perspectiva Press, 2023), 106.
