168 Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path
concepts. If one person maintains that another’s action
wasunfree, then the first must show the thing or person
or situation in the perceptible world that occasioned the
action. If the assertion is based on causes for action lying
outside the world that is real to the senses and the spirit,
then monism cannot accept such an assertion.
In the monistic view, human action is part unfree, part
free. We find ourselvesunfree in the world of percepts
and realize within ourselves thefree spirit.
For the monist, ethical commandments, which the mere-
ly inferential metaphysician must regard as expressions of
a higher power, arehuman thoughts. For the monist, the
ethical world order is the imprint neither of a purely me-
chanical natural order nor an extra-human world order. It
is entirely the free work of human beings. Humans have to
carry out their own will, not that of a being outside them
in the world. They realize their own resolves and inten-
tions, not those of some other being. Monism does not see,
behind an active human being, the goals of an external
world executive who determines human actions according
to its will; rather, to the extent that they realize intuitive
ideas, human beings pursue only their own,human goals.
In fact, each individual pursues his or her special goals.
For the world of ideas is expressed not in a human com-
munity, but only in human individuals. What emerges as
the common goal of a human collective is only a result of
separate deeds of will by its individual members, usually
a few select individuals whom the others obey as authori-
ties. Each of us is meant to be a free spirit, just as each rose
seed is meant to be a rose.
[7]
[8]
