A Footnote to “Why I Am Not a Materialist”

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What they’re looking for does not exist. They would rather tread enchanted grounds with beatific visions of a radical transformation of that non-existent self of theirs into a state of being which is conjured up by some bewitching phrases. That takes you away from your natural state – it is a movement away from yourself. To be yourself requires extraordinary intelligence. You are ‘blessed’ with that intelligence; nobody need give it to you, nobody can take it away from you. He who lets that express itself in its own way is natural.

I’m not in conflict with the society. This is the only reality I have, the world as it is today. Some other grand reality that man has invented has absolutely no relationship whatsoever with the reality of this world. As long as there is seeking, searching, and wanting to understand that reality (often called “ultimate reality,” or call it by whatever name you like), it will not be possible to come to terms with the reality of the world exactly the way it is. So, anything done to escape from the reality of this world will make it difficult to live in harmony with the things around.

The fundamental mistake that humanity made somewhere along the line, is, or was, or whatever is the correct verb, to experience this separateness from the totality of life. At that time there occurred in man this self-consciousness which separated him from the life around. He was so isolated that it frightened him. The demand to be part of the totality of life around him created this tremendous demand for the ultimate. He thought that the spiritual goals of truth or reality would help him to become part of the `whole’ again. But the very attempt on his part to become one with or become integrated with the totality of life has kept him only more separate. Isolated functioning is not part of nature. But this isolation has created a demand for finding out ways and means of becoming a part of nature. But thought in its very nature can only create problems and cannot help us solve them.
We don’t seem to realize that it is thought that is separating us from the totality of things. The belief that this is the one that can help us to keep in tune with the totality is not going to materialize. So, it has come up with all kinds of ingenuous, if I may use that word, ideas of insight and intuition

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Finishedman,

It seems to me like you may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. For instance, I think it can make sense to say that there are two ways of understanding any human endeavor. Let’s pick medicine. One way to understand medicine is that it reduces suffering in a basic way. Another way to understand medicine is that it is a search for eternal life, a rejection of life as it is, an erroneous subconscious (usually!) belief that if we can just somehow fix all the various ailments we have and get better and better at it until we eventually eradicate suffering completely. You seem to be approaching “thought”, “mind”, etc. in purely the latter way - and therefore rejecting it. I mean, you’ve said so:

But there is another kind of thought - or, rather, this very same kind of thinking can point in the opposite direction. It can help lead us away from delusion. Medicine is not an inherently deluded activity, and neither is thinking. It seems like you must agree, or you wouldn’t post here, etc. - you would just meditate and try to eradicate your thoughts. And yet, it seems like maybe your emphasis on the delusions of thought is so heavy as to represent an imbalance that in fact may lead towards the very same problem you so often express - a dividing of oneself from oneself, a separation of oneself from nature. Thoughts are natural, putting them together in various constructive ways is natural, and I don’t think thoughts are inherently anything, let alone deluded or bad.

With that in mind…

I think you may be exaggerating many people’s beliefs regarding mind and nature. People believe rainbows and sunsets have a “magical” quality, while at the same time thinking these are perfectly natural phenomena. But they are special to them - they are less substantial, not as ordinary as, say, a rock, and seem to be quite different, even ontologically. A rock seems to exist “in itself”, while a rainbow seems to be like an illusion - a coming together of conditions (sun & rain), to create something new and different and, again, insubstantial.

I’m not so sure about this as “history”, but I think there are some good thoughts in there nonetheless.

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There is no self, there is no I, there is no spirit, there is no soul, and there is no mind. That knocks off the whole list, and you have no way of finding out what you are left with. You may very well ask me the question, “Why do you go on telling people about the way you are functioning?” It is only to emphasize that we have been for centuries using some instrument, that is, thinking or mind, or whatever you want to call it, to free ourselves from the whole of what you call the ‘I’ or the ‘self’, and all kinds of things. That is what the whole quest of spirit is all about. But once it dawns on you that there is nothing to be free from, then these questions don’t arise at all. How that dawned on me, I have no way of finding out for myself.

The answers I give are only to emphasize that what we are left with is the functioning of the living organism. How it is functioning is all that I am trying to put across, emphasize, and overemphasize all the time. My interest is to somehow make you see that the whole attempt on your part to understand what you are left with is a lost battle.

The more the questions you throw at me the more there is a need to emphasize the physical aspect of our existence, namely, that there is nothing to what we have been made to believe. All our problems have arisen because of our acceptance that it is possible for us to understand the reality of the world, or the reality of our existence. What I am saying is that you have no way of experiencing anything that you do not know. So anything that you experience through the help of your knowledge is fruitless. It is a lost battle.

The instrument which we are using to understand the reality of our existence and the reality of the world around us is not part of this body mechanism that is there. That is the reason why I say thoughts are not self-generated and are not spontaneous. There are no thoughts there even now. If you want to find out whether there is any such thing as thought, the very question which we are posing to ourselves, namely, “Is there a thought?” is born out of the assumption that there is a thought there. But what you will find there is all about thought and not thought. All about thought is what is put in there by the culture. That is put in by the people who are telling us that it is very essential for you to free yourself from whatever you are trying to free yourself from through that instrument. My interest is to emphasize that that is not the instrument, and there is no other instrument. And when once this hits you, dawns upon you that thought is not the instrument, and that there is no other instrument, then there is no need for you to find out if any other instrument is necessary. No need for any other instrument. This very same structure that we are using, the instrument which we are using, has in a very ingenious way invented all kinds of things like intuition, right insight, right this, that, and the other. And to say that through this very insight we have come to understand something is the stumbling block. All insights, however extraordinary they may be, are worthless, because it is thought that has created what we call insight, and through that it is maintaining its continuity and status quo.

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I’m trying to understand what I’m left with? What? I’m not really sure what you’re talking about. I hope you don’t take offense, I’m not saying there’s anything necessarily wrong with what you’re saying, I mean if it works for you more power to you, but it just isn’t making much sense to me at the moment. I mean, it sounds like you’re saying you’ve had this great insight that insights are worthless. And it sounds like you’re saying thinking isn’t a natural aspect of ourselves. And some other things as well, that don’t make much sense to me. And it seems like you didn’t address my preceding post, where I discussed the difference between deluded and non-deluded thought. Finally, as an historical analysis, it seems like you’re suggesting that we should try to be more like the other animals on this planet, who don’t seem to think in the same way we do, and who don’t seem to think of themselves as separate from their surroundings. If so, should I aspire to be more like a cougar or more like a mourning dove? I assume you don’t think any such thing, but I’m just pointing out where further explanation seems necessary on your part. Again, I think it’s simple to sort out in theory, even if it isn’t typically so simple at all in practice: thinking isn’t inherently deluded. Delusion can be dispensed with; there is no good reason to dispense with thinking, though. Yes, we generally think too much, and in a confused way. We’re always chasing after something that we think will make our life better. I know that, and I think that’s what you’re emphasizing. But I don’t think it’s very helpful to think of thinking itself as a problem to overcome. Warring with oneself, having a fundamental problem with your own warts and blemishes… why bother with projects that are bound to lead nowhere? Stick to the real problems, I say. Thinking isn’t a problem, it’s our relationship to thinking that can screw us up.

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I have not read the thread, but I’d like to say that materialism is pretty dumb and old-fashioned.

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But to dismiss materialsm out of hand, we get trapped in a bind, a psychological bind. Beginning an investigation of materialism, in Georg Lukacs’s view, a middle ground between idealism and realism, used “materialism” as the key as to what has displaced an ideal center. Mind you , this was a cold war philosopher, but if we look at what is going on today, I believe , ideology is going through a necessary clarification, as much as “reality” is being supplanted by a psudo, vritual reality. Wether, virtual reality can compensate, or whatever, the “real” thing, remains to be seen, on how successful the attempt to find a middle ground in a new, virtual reality, not to displace materialism, but perhaps to complement it.

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When I use the term ‘you’ I don’t mean you particularly, rather that experiencing structure in all of us, that sense of a self. That experiencing structure has as its foundation knowledge. The movement of thought is the movement of knowledge that you are projecting onto the objects in this material world. But thought has gone on to create a life of its own and is interested in its own protection and continuity. Hence, the thought world – the world of ideas that you live in – that society has imposed on you for the purpose of maintaining the status quo. Your conscious thinking, and the knowledge that it organizes and arranges into a whole, comprises all that and we call it mind.

The knowledge you have about the mind is the mind. What I’m saying is, if it is possible for you to be free from this knowledge, then for you there is no mind. The mind and the knowledge you have about the mind are one and the same. Devoid of the knowledge, you would be on your own with no way of finding out what is there; nothing in your past, nothing in memory to turn to to guide you. There may be something like the mind, but you will never know that. It can’t become united with or of the same quality of your conscious thinking because thought is fundamentally the dull repetition of the knowledge. Iow, at times when thought is not there, mind would not be there.

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Like they used to say in the 60’s “far out” or “far in” depending on where you are.

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That thing that you call consciousness in me is conscious of itself and requires very little if any deliberate thought to keep it there. Whereas the sensual aspects of thought and its motives is of a nature extraneous to undiluted conscious. So, there is nothing much there for which something works or doesn’t work.

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Obviously, if you think of learning–an increase in knowledge–as dependent on development, growth, maturation, etc.–there will be stages, just as there are stages in human physical growth. A human baby, as with other animals, is only partially developed at birth.

But you know that. You’re both fathers. You know about developmental stages.

Why ask this question?

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We impose on a child right from its birth a series of dogmas, superstitions, language, behavior, and a framework of morals. All this can be described as the superstructure. Thus the developing child is subjected to a series of conditioned responses that finally form part of his thought system called knowledge. Such knowledge is stored in us as memory. Mankind has been submitted to millennia of these conditioned responses, thus fixing the frame of the human mind.

Liz …. You are a product of this historical mental frame. We are teaching our children that it is not they that are important, but rather how they fit into a system. A system that precludes the flowering of individuality.

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What is necessary is to understand the machinery that is functioning inside – the movement of thought. Supposing you are a child and I tell you “This is the way,” – then where are you? You experience what I tell you. This knowledge you are going to use and create a state of being and think that you have experienced reality or that you have experienced truth. But that is not the truth. That is not reality.

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You can extend this kind of analysis to physicality as well, you know. Also, to focus on this one comment of yours - you must either have a very narrow definition of mind, or a very expansive definition of thought.

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Ok… and if that insight works for you more power to you.

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I think it’s important to distinguish between stages that flower in sequence versus causes. For instance, many people put on a lot of weight as they age. But this isn’t for the most part a natural stage of development, with a degree of inevitability built in. It’s primarily caused by eating habits (nitpicking about genetic propensities, etc. aside).

I’m not sure how important this is to this particular discussion – the conversations haven’t for the most part been directly related to the argument I made in the OP. I’m trying to come to grips with what others are contributing here in order to have more general discussions about materialism.

There has been discussion of the relationship between the sense organs and consciousness – my point of view is that it makes no sense to think of the sense organs as only physical or consciousness as only non-physical. I think the development of the sense organs is the development of consciousness and the development of mind is the development of the body. I take “mind” to be a word describing a certain aspect of existence, to be contrasted with “matter” – another aspect of existence (obviously this division can’t happen without a mature conceptual (dualistic) mind. I don’t take these divisions to be ontologically fundamental. To me, it makes sense to refer to the arising of certain things at certain points in time, but it doesn’t make sense to claim that matter, for instance, is “not mind”. Even if, as the materialists say, matter “gives rise to” mind, then matter necessarily shares the same nature as mind – if it is in the nature of matter to “give rise to” mind, then all matter has a mental nature (and all mental phenomena have a material aspect). This kind of deliberation offers just a hint, I think, to some more fundamental truth about reality. Though part of it is very explicit – without thinking, not only is there no mind (as finishedman would agree), there is also no matter, no nature, no body, no anything. These categories are created by thought.

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As in, “this is the way to Boston”? If you’re a child, and you follow the directions, and you get to Boston - then the information was useful to you.

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In the material world the goal is something tangible. The instrument which you are using to achieve your material goal does produce certain results. By using that more and more you can achieve the desired results. But there is no guarantee. The instrument which you are using is limited in its scope. It is applicable only in this material area.
So, the instrument used to achieve goals of a nonmaterial nature is the same instrument. Those intangible goals that are superimposed on the so-called material goals are born out of the purely mental, because there is a division of life into material and nonmaterial. It doesn’t matter what instrument you use to achieve your goal, whether it is material or otherwise, it is exactly the same.

edit: in that other post Reality and Truth should have been capitalized.

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I agree with the bolded portion. Which is why I’m puzzled by the emphasis on “material” here and your emphasis on thinking as degraded, bad, etc. throughout your posts here. Thinking isn’t synonymous with delusion. If the directions to Boston skipped a step, you can intelligently interpolate and still get to Boston. Where is the necessary delusion in that?

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Finishedman,

Seems like you might want to make this your signature or something, otherwise your posts don’t seem to make much sense.

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For some people it’s important to “realize” why and how this happens. In fact, for some people it’s a matter of life and death.

The flower children of the sixties crashed because they went into this full blast, without understanding the why’s. Now understanding, even if just casting a shadow a-priori, may create an illusion, but at least there is knowledge of understanding this illusion. In this way they can take the superstructure to the store, and not be confused about themselves via what went wrong or who to blame.