Does otherness resolve into sameness? The self and the other go down fighting, or locked in an embrace, they sink out of sight. And then does only one of them come up for air? Is there an intimate alienation, is intimacy itself an unsuspected alienation? One idea is that in some heightened and revelatory state you come to encounter the fundamental forces which underlie your physical existence: the will embodied in biology, in chemistry and in physics - and you find it to be fundamentally other, or indifferent to your contingent, embodied existence. This would be an internal sublime brought about through contemplation of the facts, the so-called laws of nature. But how do you recognise the otherness of the other? How do you know it's not a hallucination, a trick you are playing on yourself? That's why it is in the register of will, the will being an immediate experience of resistance of pushing against something outside, or being pushed from outside, something recalcitrant and ultimately fearsome. But to leap to the conclusion that the resistance arises from another will, that the outside is truly outside, is unwarranted unless you already know of such an other by some other means. The same problem would arise in the register of feeling. Is this Job's problem? The Other will let you know when it's good and ready. Put that aside for now and look in thought.