The gross matter-spirit opposition confuses more than clarifies. If our Western science has proven anything, despite all its limitations, it is that what we used to call "spirit" is less spiritual, or to put it another way: that we have called spiritual things that have a component closer to life and soul. On the other hand, matter has turned out to be less "material," something less obvious than what we take for granted. Theories about matter today give us such an abstract representation that it does not correspond to any intuition that has to do with the senses, to the point that if we want to define what is the material universe we have to use mathematical constructions. However, in practical terms, the matter-spirit opposition supposes a dogmatic mutual rejection of ontologies. Scientists and most of the philosophers of the analytic tradition (Western is no longer an adjective that applies to this group of thinkers) reject the spirit as naive, as "a way of speaking", something typical of ignorance inherited from the past. The innocuous extravagances of the spiritual practices of the masses are tolerated as infantile forms of folk psychology. On the other hand, those who believe in the centrality of the spirit, despise any scientific thinking and consider materialistic arrogance to be the sign of the intrinsic ignorance of the scientific ontology. Curiously enough, they both depart from beliefs: either in the power of axiomatic systems or in the power of sheer will to control and transcend nature.
The
ascetic proclaims:
"I thought: 'Suppose that I, clenching
my teeth and pressing my tongue against the roof of my mouth, were to
beat down, constrain, & crush my mind with my awareness.' So,
clenching my teeth and pressing my tongue against the roof of my
mouth, I beat down, constrained, & crushed my mind with my
awareness. Just as a strong man, seizing a weaker man by the head or
the throat or the shoulders, would beat him down, constrain, &
crush him, in the same way I beat down, constrained, & crushed my
mind with my awareness. As I did so, sweat poured from my armpits.
And although tireless persistence was aroused in me, and unmuddled
mindfulness established, my body was aroused & uncalm because of
the painful exertion. But the painful feeling that arose in this way
did not invade my mind or remain.” (1)
The scientist says:
“In
the most straightforward sense, what is wanted is a unified theory of
how the mind -brain works . We want a theory of how the mind -brain
represents whatever it represents, and of the nature of the
computational processes underlying behavior. The collective effort to
devise such a theory will be constrained by empirical facts at all
levels, including neurophysiological , ethological, and psychological
facts. In addition , it will be colored by pre-theoretical hunches
concerning what a theory could look like and what are the basic
principles of mind -brain operation.” (2)
In
both approaches the mental purpose, whether using instrumental
rationality (Science) or a logos based upon the inspired thought and
will of our ancestors tempered by austerities (tapasya), is to find a
single foundation for Reality, but after having controlled first
nature, either by sheer will or by the power of thinking. In both of
them the problem of experience is addressed: the control through will
of the body by the ascetic and the control through mind of the “body
of the world” by the scientist are in fact giving a lot of credit
to the experience of life in this world as the key to the
understanding of Reality. In a sense, the materialist has an easier
task, for the denial of spirit as mere ignorance of the past of
humanity, if accepted by proof of the better control upon matter that
science allowed, opens up a strong monism that can offer an
integrated view of Nature and Human (no matter the insufficient
psychological image produced and the meaningless universe it implies
as long as technology allow us the control of nature).
We encounter different problems in both approaches. The denial
of our past as a mere childish mistake raises an ontological problem:
what is the purpose of ontological error? And beyond, how can we
declare to be a mistaken worldview the everyday life mind set that led the way to
the supposed truth of Science. How can truth evolve out of ignorance? Maybe
the answer to these questions needs a deeper reflection upon the ways
of Life and Intelligence than those proposed by the rigid denial of
materialism and the vital negation at the core of ascetic
spirituality. On the other hand, the denial of matter an nature
empties this life of meaning, and in a way proclaims it to be a
mistake, an ontological error, the work of cruel forces that condemn
humans to an endless wheel of suffering.
Sri
Aurobindo’s reflections upon this problem stated in his book “Life
Divine” are worth reading and pondering.
“(...) It is
necessary and helpful that man should test separately, in their
extreme assertion, each of the two great opposites. It is the mind’s
natural way of returning more perfectly to the affirmation it has
lost. “(3)
It is evident that the benefits provided by the two
extreme denials of the materialist and the spiritualist have been as
important as the problems generated by them. The approach to the
physis from entities devoid of life and consciousness, which operate
mechanically based on cosmic rules of the game, such as those
proposed by the materialist, has allowed a previously unthinkable
control over the uncertainty and precariousness of our survival on
this planet. We are still unable to form an all-encompassing mental
image of the materiality of this universe, we again find ourselves
with insoluble antinomies such as those proclaimed by Kant in
relation to the validity of our knowledge, but the physical medium on
a Human scale is manipulated with some ease. On the other hand,
asceticism has made it possible to establish a distance between us
and our most basic physiology, a buffer that separates us from the
animality and bestiality of instincts. Despite the fact that this
control is neither generalized nor does it integrate daily life with
spiritual life the distance gained allowed the flourishing of moral
ground for a freer foundation for human life. If we escape to
empyrean skies, like the ascetic, we dissolve all our problems. But
at the same time, we declare the absurdity of Human existence and
depreciate the general movement of life.
In both cases the lost
affirmation is the proclamation of the wholeness of nature, the
wholeness of life and mind, a wholeness that includes and
acknowledges our refusals as focusing moments but not as final
goals.
“On the road it may attempt to rest in the intervening
degrees, reducing all things into the terms of an original
Life-Energy or of sensation or of Ideas; but these exclusive
solutions have always an air of unreality. They may satisfy for a
time the logical reason which deals only with pure ideas, but they
cannot satisfy the mind’s sense of actuality. For the mind knows
that there is something behind itself which is not the Idea; it
knows, on the other hand, that there is something within itself which
is more than the vital Breath.”(Life Divine. p.p. 10)
The
materialist, like any other Human, is subject to basic emotions and
complex emotions. The mechanical explanation of the most basic ones,
such as that made by neuroscience, cannot satisfy the feeling of
incompleteness that we get from an exclusive approach in these terms
to the psychological complexity of humans. The formal scientific
proclamation that the meaning of its explanations awaits us in the
future, in an asymptotic future that we never reach, is of little use
for the anxieties of existence. The meaning of our lives is either
here and now or there is no meaning that we can call permanent and
universal. On the other hand, the sense of incompleteness offered by
the spiritual ascetic vision closes the way to any integrative
construction of meaning for life. Both the materialist and the
spiritualist express an inflated and controlling consciousness,
repressing the vital impulse even when they recognize its value and
function (as is the case with vital energy in the spiritualist view).
The sense of incompleteness is deepened at a more intuitive and
everyday level by a lack of spontaneity in our emotional responses
and in our mental constructions, by a castrating rigidity that
emanates from a spiritual ego, by a cut with the unconscious. Both
the spiritual and the materialist egos naively believe themselves
capable of fitting the complexity of the universe into its
calculations and games of contemplation.
“Either Spirit
or Matter can give it for a time some sense of ultimate reality; not
so any of the principles that intervene. It must, therefore, go to
the two extremes before it can return fruitfully upon the whole. For
by its very nature, served by a sense that can perceive with
distinctness only the parts of existence and by a speech that, also,
can achieve distinctness only when it carefully divides and limits,
the intellect is driven, having before it this multiplicity of
elemental principles, to seek unity by reducing all ruthlessly to the
terms of one. It attempts practically, in order to assert this one,
to get rid of the others. To perceive the real source of their
identity without this exclusive process, it must either have
overleaped itself or must have completed the circuit only to find
that all equally reduce themselves to That which escapes definition
or description and is yet not only real but attainable. By whatever
road we may travel, That is always the end at which we arrive and we
can only escape it by refusing to complete the journey. “(Life
Divine. p.p. 10-11)
The encounter with That, the Tat of Vedanta,
is the encounter with the Real on its own terms, not just ours, for
our terms are built on very limited energy and lack. Tat, the
mystery, has only been solved in the delusions of an oversized ego
that believes that its myths are final. Tat, the Numen, is not
definable, it is apeiron, and the spiritual ego and the scientific
ego do not accept any indefinable that is not either a logical
principle or a theological principle. But Tat is beyond any principle
since it is the substance that sustains any principle as its
condition of possibility.
“It is therefore of good augury that
after many experiments and verbal solutions we should now find
ourselves standing today in the presence of the two that have alone
borne for long the most rigorous tests of experience, the two
extremes, and that at the end of the experience both should have come
to a result which the universal instinct in mankind, that veiled
judge, sentinel and representative of the universal Spirit of Truth,
refuses to accept as right or as satisfying. In Europe and in India,
respectively, the negation of the materialist and the refusal of the
ascetic have sought to assert themselves as the sole truth and to
dominate the conception of Life. In India, if the result has been a
great heaping up of the treasures of the Spirit,—or of some of
them,—it has also been a great bankruptcy of Life; in Europe, the
fullness of riches and the triumphant mastery of this world’s
powers and possessions have progressed towards an equal bankruptcy in
the things of the Spirit.Nor has the intellect, which sought the
solution of all problems in the one term of Matter, found
satisfaction in the answer that it has received.” (Life Divine.
p.p. 10-11)
Materialism and spiritualism are not only the two
great psychological traditions that have submitted their theses to Human experience and development for the longest time, but they also
represent the basic points of view of Human intuition: the one that
starts from the senses and seeks through them the objectification of
the Real, and the one that denies the validity of the senses and
seeks the witness of the experience, that is, the subjectification of
the Real. The materialistic and the spiritual thesis proclaim a false
monism of consciousness in that extreme ontological monism.
Consciousness (brain-mind in terms of the materialist) is Real as
both say, but the unconscious is not Unreal as they both proclaim, we
should add. Life is not reducible to a physical-mathematical game of
mechanistic dimensions without castrating all its complexity and
beauty. Furthermore, an investigation into the structure of axiomatic
systems, as the one we followed on the footsteps of Kurt Gödel
proves otherwise. Neither is life reducible to a mere dream of the
Numen, of Tat, without following an analogous process of castration of
its complexity and beauty. If we do, we will realize that something
is missing in human in our human existence, the healthy mindedness of
spontaneity and trust in the Mistery that surrounds us. The inocence
and honesty of accepting the force of love, harmony and beauty. The
epistemological deep feeling of belonging to the Universe, the
openenness to unity and continuity, to the easy experience of finding
ourselves in an Open Road.
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