In search of the More

There are many ways of thinking about the mystery that the philosopher, William James called 'the more'. Some of us think of it as a supernatural personal being, a creator God who exists 'out there', who is separate from the world he created. Some see it as it as an impersonal, universal Ultimate Reality, a deeper dimension of reality which is the infinite, unseen essence of everything that exists. Some regard it a benign universal spirit, force or energy which suffuses everything in the world and some see it as a particular state of being which they regard as the highest dimension of our humanness - 'the further reaches' of our human nature as the humanistic psychologist, Abraham Maslow described it.

There are also many ways of naming 'the More'. Some of us speak of God or Goddess; some of Allah or Yahweh; some of Brahman, the Eternal Buddha, the Tao or the Spirit; some of the Holy, the Sacred, the Divine or the Transcendent; and some of spirit-force, of Isness, of the Source, of the Ground of Being or simply of Being.

'I believe there is one river and that we need to... honor each ship that sails that river and each person who meditates upon its shores. Call this river the sacred, the supernatural, the spiritual realm, the dimension of Being, the deeper psyche, the higher self, the
farther reaches of human nature, or whatever you prefer. All
the names... are simply our feeble efforts to grasp infinity.'

David Elkins

All of these ways of thinking about the More are attempts to capture something of the nature of the same sacred mystery. They flow both from our spiritual experience and from our fundamental human need to make sense of and find meaning in it. Attempts to grasp hold of the nature of the More are, however, fraught with difficulty. We may come to know a little of this other reality but it is essentially beyond our capacity to know it fully. It is 'something other', something beyond our normal human perception. The more we try to tie it down with our religious creeds and teachings, the more it eludes us.

And sadly, those creeds and teachings sometimes obscure rather than illuminate the ultimate mystery to which our sacred consciousness awakens us. All too often, we have used our our minds to create 'a god' in our own image rather than trusting our sacred experience to reveal that which transcends all of our human ideas and concepts. The god we can imagine is always a god too small.

The truth is that there is no one right way of thinking about the More. There are no ‘right answers’, no ‘absolute truths’. There are only people like us trying to make sense of our spiritual experience in a myriad of different ways. Perhaps the reality is that there is truth to be found in all of these ways of thinking about the More. Perhaps it is both personal and impersonal, both within and beyond us, both of the same essence as humanity and yet ‘more than’ it, both a way of seeing reality and the way that reality shapes our way of being in the world.

What I have learnt along the way, however, is that the More is not a question to be answered, a puzzle to be solved, an entity to be defined or categorised. It is a mystery to be encountered, a reality to be embraced. And I have learnt that it is alright to sit with not knowing.

In this website, I have chosen to speak mainly of 'the More. In part, this is because it is one of the names that holds meaning for me personally. However, it also has a number of advantages. It is a name that is inclusive enough too for most if not all of us to relate to. It is gender-neutral and can be used to speak of a personal God, an impersonal reality, a spiritual force or energy or a dimension of being. And it is also a name that captures the strong sense we have that we when we encounter the More, we are catching a glimpse of something that is ‘more than’ or greater than the everyday reality our normal human consciousness perceives.