Preface

An accident of discovery

This book began with a single word: difference.

In 2024, while wrestling with the philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s use of the term difference, I pursued a simple etymological exercise. I broke the word down to its morphological roots: dif-/dis- (apart) + ferre (to bear). Difference, I saw, meant 'the condition of bearing apart'. A straightforward, almost architectural definition. Then, almost as an afterthought, I asked: What would its antonym be?

The answer was conference: the 'condition of bearing together'.

In that moment of linguistic symmetry, a spark jumped when I formed the phrase: the conference of difference—a 'condition of bearing together' that transforms the 'condition of bearing apart'. And in that moment, for me, the world had rearranged itself.

Everything I saw—the soup simmering (ingredients conferring), the fire crackling (elements combining), the brook flowing (water and gravity in dialogue)—was no longer just itself. It was a conference of difference. Not a static object, but an active, emergent process of distinct elements bearing together to transform reality. I realized I was not looking at a feature of the world, but at its foundational process, its metaphysical primitive. I had, entirely by accident, stumbled upon the process primitive of existence. From the perspective of Schopenhauer, I had not so much as seen anything different from what everyone else sees, but simply thought about it differently.

This was the genesis of The Gospel of Being. Over the next two years, I distilled this core intuition into 70 koans, exploring how this constant expression of creation, 'God spell' (Gospel) manifests across the fundamental domains of reality: Being, Belief, Freedom, God, Knowing, Meaning, Power, Reciprocity, Salvation and Transformation.

But a poetic framework, however coherent, is not enough. A principle claiming to be universal must withstand rigorous, interdisciplinary scrutiny. It must converse with the history of human thought and find echoes in the evidence of science, sociology and logic. This book is my attempt towards that necessary next step.

Here, I submit the Conference of Difference (CoD) as a serious ontological thesis. Using the structured lens of an Ontological Model Assessment Framework (OMAF), we will test the CoD model against the great ontological systems of East and West, from Parmenides to Badiou, from Advaita Vedanta to Quantum Physics. We will trace its presence through layered domains of existence—Physical, Vital, Social, Abstract—and examine its implications for ethics, governance, and the future of intelligence.

This is more than a personal philosophy; it is an invitation to a different way of seeing. It is the argument that at the heart of all that was, is, and shall be, lies a constant, creative, and collaborative dialogue: the conference of difference.

John Mackay (Wednesday 7 January 2026)

The Gospel of Being

by John Mackay

Discover the first principle of existence in 30 seconds.

Discover the book