The world will no longer be physical but, instead, mental

Well, my iMac just experienced the black screen of death.  I am glad that I have two iMacs. Why I am telling you this my blog for Monday was on the iMac that went dark.  Not too long after that, another idea popped into my head.  It was the words “materialism is not fundamental” which is essentially what Quantum Mechanics wants to say but it too cowardly to outright say it.  It would put an end to dogmas espoused by Hugo Elliott, “there exists no kind of spiritual substance or entity of a different nature from that of which matter is composed. . . .there are not two kinds of fundamental existences, material and spiritual, but one kind only. . . . (Burr and Goldfinger. eds., Philosophy and Contemporary Issues (1972), p. 259).  Truth be told we are not machines—not in the Buddha’s teaching. 

During the first part of the 20th century, the wave of mechanistic science was about to come crashing down on the West and with it the darkening of the Newtonian horizon.  The particle-material model of the universe was suddenly bedridden. The new kid on the block, Quantum Mechanics, seemed to be saying that the world we commonly experience through our senses is really an appearance which has no objective existence independent of the observer who may turn out to be very important.

The accepted belief that matter refers to all that exists outside of and independently of the observer remains a tentative theory in the face of Quantum Mechanics.  It may well prove in the future that the observer is not only extra-physical but creates our physical world in which matter is rather something derivative.

And if this is true, it doesn’t mean that our world is less real for us and that living in such a fictional or māyā like world is not without suffering.  Even if tomorrow some physicist said that our reality is a fictional creation of consciousness, which means it is fundamentally immaterial, but is real enough for all of its conscious agents, life as we know it would still go on as usual.  Darwinian fitness would still captivate us and be a major part of our life.

Thousands of years ago many believed in another fictional world.  It was a world in which the earth was flat and the planets, including the sun, circled the earth.  What is more, both types of knowledge worked.  Some would even argue, and rightly so, that we still accept the sun rises and sets although it doesn’t really do that.  Later this fictional world turned out to be illusory. 

From the perspective of Buddhism the world is an illusion and so is our psychophysical body which we adhere to in the belief that it is our true self although it is not.  It is all an illusion relative to enlightenment but still very real when our self remains, unenlightened, attached to the psychophysical body and knows no other way of existing.

Buddhism is the next phase of human wisdom which is far above the primitive words of Hugo Elliott.  We will look back upon our primitive beliefs like we once did understanding the illusion of the flat earth.  We will see that bigger picture that we are spiritual creatures and gain control over appearance.  The world will no longer be physical but, instead, mental.

Comments

[n. yeti]

David B.:

Still trapped in Yama’s cauldron even after all those clever words? What a pity!

Here’s some friendly advice: find a way to feel without feeling.

But if you try to reason with that bastard, you will surely burn to a crisp.

[david brainerd]

"If suffering were ultimately real how could it be ended through dhyana?"

If the oven is really hot, how can I cool off by exiting the oven?

[smith]

https://www.ligonier.org/learn/conferences/orlando_2004_national_conference/aseity-of-god/?

[smith]

adasatala: very beautifully written. i imagined it, it resonated. close encounter. thank you for sharing such intimacy.

david b.: i think that it is not that matter is not real, per se, rather it is that matter is conditional- dependent upon the unconditioned spiritual. therefore it is not primary but secondary- caused/temporary.

yeti; excellent question.

[n. yeti]

David B.:

If suffering were ultimately real how could it be ended through dhyana?