Faculty of Will

All that which ye potentially possess can, however, be manifested only as a result of your own volition. Your own acts testify to this truth.

(Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah: 149)

Since religion as Revelation, the Word of God, is a source of knowledge that embraces all human consciousness, it can be discovered by any of our higher spiritual faculties.  Which faculty leads in that discovery depends, I suppose, on the individual.  A painter may best discover nature through the faculty of sight, though of course she has other faculties which will come into play.  A musician through hearing, and so on.  I have chosen the six spiritual faculties of religion, justice, morality, intellect, will, and love as the leading faculties to discover the Word of God in relation to the establishment of peace.  These faculties are part and parcel of the essence of the rational faculty, some of its attributes so to speak, and attributes of anything cannot be separated from its essence any more than the rays of the sun can be separated from the sun itself.

These faculties are also active in their natural state, i.e. the state prior to spiritual transformation.  But their enduring activity for good or evil, justice or prejudice, for religion or not, depends upon their transformation, which is initiated by recognition of the “Word made flesh” or His Word.  Now the divine Will and the divine Word are essentially the same thing.  A letter written on behalf of the Guardian to an individual believer states: "There is, therefore, only one way to God and that is through the realization of his Manifestation or Prophet in that age. Christ called the world of the prophets the word in the verse of 'the word became flesh' while 'Abdu'l-Bahá calls it the Will. (Lights of Guidance: 510.  That makes the first Mind also the first Will and both are the Word, the first emanation from God.

So, we begin again on a new point of the outer edge of context, launching our discussion from a different foundation, but always working toward the same center: “In essence, peace stems from an inner state supported by a spiritual or moral attitude” thus peace is already within us as an inner state—since “all were made for harmony and union.”—but it needs to be manifested.  That is, peace is something that we “potentially possess” but it can be manifested only as a result of volition.

Will can be generated by spiritual principles.  Recall, the House of Justice states: “The essential merit of spiritual principle is that it not only presents a perspective which harmonizes with that which is immanent in human nature, it also induces an attitude, a dynamic, a will, an aspiration, which facilitate the discovery and implementation of practical measures.”

But there is an interesting point with the transformation of will.  Previously, I spoke of the intellect having to undergo a transformation by reversal or inversion through humility and self-abnegation in order to attain unto spiritual understanding in the spirit of faith.  To truly understand spiritual truths, the ordinary human intellectual condition must be sacrificed and incorporated into the spiritual.  The stage of reversal is associated with any transcendent leap.  This is always accomplished and driven by an act of will.  Thought cannot will to transcend itself.  Thought cannot think transcendent thoughts through its own power.  It must be willed. While other faculties expand with their transformation, the faculty of will expands only after completely surrendering itself, willing against itself, so to speak.  That is, while the human experience is, in a sense, built upon the self-assertive exercise of will, the leap into the divine and spiritual is by giving up that will of self-assertion in another act of willing surrender to self-abnegation.  Will is the only quality that is both self-generating and that can negate itself, willing not to will, without losing itself, for that, too, is a willing.  Self-abnegation is far different from a passive surrender to things as they are or simply unfold, or a letting things happen, a lazy go-with-the-flow mentality.  The act of surrender is, too, an act of willing, what the Bahá’i Writings call “radiant acquiescence.”

In this regard let us reacquaint ourselves with this previously quoted statement attributed to the Master: “We must will to know God, just as we must will in order to possess the life He has given us. The human will must be subdued and trained into the will of God. It is a great power to have a strong will, but a greater power to give that will to God. The will is what we do, the understanding is what we know. Will and understanding must be one in the cause of God. Intention brings attainment.” ('Abdu'l-Bahá: Ten Days in the Light of Acca: 30.

            One of the best discussions of the Will is found in Hannah Arendt’s, The Life of the Mind.  She makes this distinction between thinking and willing: “Thinking and willing are antagonists only insofar as they affect our psychic states; both, it is true, make present to our mind what is actually absent, but thinking draws into its enduring present what either is or at least has been, whereas willing, stretching out into the future, moves in a region where no such certainties exist.  Our psychic apparatus—the soul as distinguished from the mind—is equipped to deal with what comes toward it from this region of the unknown by means of expectation, whose chief modes are hope and fear.” (The Life of the Mind: 35)

Will is the name of the power that has volitions.  It is connected with the spirit of inner subjective life, the spirit of faith, individualism, the power of choice, moving toward destiny, and creating the future.  But, as Hannah Arendt points out, will is also connected with hope and fear and, thus, connected with justice and morality.

Will is the power which stimulates all things into activity: the divine Will for all things lacking self-consciousness and for human beings will is their stimulus to act.

Will implies a conscious choice to do this or that, to act one way or another. All creatures except the human reality act in accordance with their nature.  Human beings alone can consciously go against their nature.  This makes will one of the chief pillars not of consciousness, but of self-consciousness.  This implies a faculty to make this choice.

While will is the faculty that generates action, more importantly, it is, too, the spontaneous power of beginning something new.  That is, in order for there to be novelty there must be new beginnings.  Yet, in regards to itself, the Will produces its own act, it is self-generating.  It is self-determined in its own nature and obeys its own laws, unlimited by any internal or external agency or object.  It is continually renewed by its own source of itself.  Because the will drives the soul toward the future and destiny, it cannot will backward.  It realizes hope and overcomes fear.

In relation to the world, Will connects the mind’s inwardness with the outer world.  It experiences itself as a causal agent, as the first cause, as causer of causes.  It prepares the ground for action to occur. 

Will says “yes” and “no” at the same time.  Whichever is the conscious choice, the other is implied.  They are always together.  That is, the will’s activity does not exclude its opposite, but brings it along, and thus, at a later time, the implied can become the actuality.  Its activity is, therefore, simultaneously its rest, making it a perpetual energy machine, for its energy is always and automatically replenished.  It is not only self-generating but also self-subsisting.

As Hannah Arendt put it: “the I-will inevitably is countered by an I-nill.” This means it is split internally and every affirmation automatically produces its own counter.  It can only check itself.  The split in the will is a contest, not a dialogue, as with thought.

This split has further implications for moral choice. I mean that command is of the intrinsic nature of willing, but, then, so is obedience.

I said that Will is the only quality that is self-generating and that can negate itself, willing not to will, without losing itself, for that, too, is a willing.  It comes out of itself.  This characteristic of negating itself yet remaining itself makes it, alone of all qualities, free to conceive ends in themselves.  This makes will a fundamental ontological quality and power.

A thought can oppose another thought, but this is not the same as stopping thought, but another thought.  The will’s negating of one of its own volitions by another volition, driving, so to speak, in the opposite direction, is like this.  In actualizing itself it overcomes that in life which, though also a part of life, negates its own life.  But the will can go farther than this.  The will can will its own death, is own paralysis, its own self-abnegation.  Yet, if the will always generates and brings along its opposite, then the act of will to will self-abnegation generates and brings that self along.  Willing its own death brings it a new life, turns it into new life, transforms it from death to life.

The will does not strive after something it does not have, but wills itself toward that thing.  It is both self-preserving and self-asserting—even the negation as an act of will, is the self-asserting itself, but this is the assertion of a higher self. 

Like every other fundamental quality, will is not just known of itself.  Will is known because we understand through logic or imagination that one could have done or chosen other than what one did, a different sequence can be narrated.  To choose is an act of intention, of will.  Volition is the link between mind and matter and knowing and doing.  Will, then, is the focal center of consciousness, for all consciousness is consciousness of difference, and the knowledge that you could have done other than what you did, or to know that you have choice beforehand, is the primal difference.  Willing gives meaning to experience.