THE STUFF OF THE WORLD IS MIND-STUFF
We are living in stimulating and revolutionary
times. For, even as we watch, the Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm is
collapsing in the ocean of the new physics, "matter" is being swept away
by "wavicles," and scientists are beginning to acknowledge what the poet-seers
have always known: that physical reality is metaphor, that the external
world and all of its components are subtle yet elaborate webs thrown upon
the formless, meaningful forms created from no-thing-ness . . . that matter
is metaphor for Consciousness — which is the only real stuff knowable about
existence, in fact is the only stuff of the Universe.
Physicist and astronomer, Arthur Stanley Eddington
(1928) phrased it: "The stuff of the world is mind-stuff."
More recently, University of Minnesota physicist Roger S. Jones (1982)
unveiled a position which he calls an "idealistic reevaluation of the physical
world" (p. ix). He writes
I reject the myth of reality as external
to the human mind, and I acknowledge consciousness as the source of the
cosmos. It is mind that we see reflected in matter. Physical
science is a metaphor with which the scientist, like the poet, creates
and extends meaning and values in the quest for understanding and purpose.
(1982, p. ix)
Even more recently, anthropologist Armand Labbe
(1991) summed it up at a Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness
conference saying, "Ultimately our physics . . . is going to demonstrate
that essentially there is no such thing as matter. All there is,
is mind and motion."
Granted, this is an extreme position, a strict
Idealist stance. But it is the only truly supportable one, in light
of what we know from the new physics. That would be enough in itself
to cause us to reflect on it. But this perspective is also supported,
even demonstrated, by the discoveries of the "new psychology" as well.
But more about that later.
It is ironic that it would be the most "materialistic"
and "hardest" of the sciences that would be leading the charge against
the primacy-of-the-physical-world postulate (and, unfortunately, leaving
the rest of the sciences — both social as well as natural sciences — behind).
The discoveries from quantum physics, though some of them almost a hundred
years old now, are, only with difficulty, being assimilated into the other
sciences. For the most part, they are largely ignored; science going
along 'as if' . . . that is, as if the Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm
were still viable, as if the physical world was really "objective"
reality, as if the mind could validly be considered an epiphenomenon
of brain activity. So the old paradigm holds sway despite its inadequacy.
This is understandable, however. For
truly acknowledging these newer perspectives requires a reformulation of
theoretical positions, a rethinking of the Universe in much the same way
that astronomical theories needed to be reformulated after the Copernican
revolution. What we do not need are theories that disfigure themselves
in trying to incorporate some (not all) of the new information and new
perspectives in the way of the convoluted theories of the pre-Copernican
astronomers who refused to accept the newer paradigm postulations.
This book, to the contrary, will attempt to
consistently present a new-paradigm perspective.
In doing so we will need to employ perspectives
that traditionally have made their philosophical home, in Western philosophy,
at the address of Idealism, and more specifically, the subcategories
therein of Panpsychism and Pantheism. These viewpoints
are the dominant ones in Eastern philosophy, however. And most recently
they reemerge — in "modern science," of all places — under rubrics such
as holographic.
PRIMITIVE PHILOSOPHY
Nevertheless, it is interesting that in the Western
traditions these viewpoints have often been denigrated by referring to
them as "primitive philosophy." It seems that when Western civilization
broke from the trajectories of the other civilizations of the planet, it
needed to establish its distinction and difference as radically as possible.
This is a common pattern in change. We
notice this behavioral style in the upwardly mobile corporate executive
or artist who feels the need to adopt a lavish lifestyle in order to hide
her humble beginnings.
We notice also its relation to the behavior
of scapegoating. We observe this aspect of it watching our executive
become a Republican and begin to "bad mouth" the same social programs and
social class that nurtured her earlier on. We might call it the "Clarence
Thomas syndrome."
Nevertheless, the importance of this tendency
cannot be overstated in Western philosophy. We see it reaching its
peak in the medieval Renaissance in Europe, especially in the rise of Rationalist
philosophy. Glorifying himself with the regalia of "Reason," Western
man (the masculine is necessary here for it was characteristically a male
phenomenon) ascended the throne in the castle of Nature and deigned to
cast his eyes below him on all the rest of living things, nay, on the rest
of all of Creation.
From such imperial heights Western man deduced
the workings of the Universe — utilizing his purportedly powerful tool
of Reason — and conceived how he should apportion and determine all that
he surveyed. For surely his perception and apprehension of a thing
was akin to possession . . . he reasoned conveniently.
Thus adorned and fortified, Rational Man went
about subduing all that came before his view. Letting nothing as
trivial as philosophies, traditions, cultures, and the peoples who embodied
them stand in his way; nor even, in this century, allowing the complete
elimination, for all of eternity, of millions of species of living things,
evolving out of the mists of billions of years, obstruct him in the least
from the attainment of desires, regardless how trivial. Thus he "succeeded"
to such an extent that he threatens now even his own existence.
It is only now that his own demise is at hand
that Rational Man stops to reflect, to look back upon what he's wrought,
to re-evaluate his goals, his trajectory, his path.
In so doing he discovers his scapegoating tendencies.
He stands horrified at his reddened hands, bloodied by his extermination
of entire cultures, entire races, entire species of life. "Why did
he do it, white man?" asks the rock group Steeleye Span in their song,
"White Man":
Some sing of their glory,
You tell the true story,
Most men they don't need it,
White man he kills for it.
They took to the seas,
Searching for a land
That they could call paradise,
Stealing the breeze that carried them toward
the sun.
With lust in their eyes,
They found a land,
And said "We found paradise,
Think of the Lord, and look at the prize we've
won."
We know who they were,
They were the ones who killed their brothers
to steal from others.
We know who they were,
They were the ones whose sons and daughters
are doing it still. . . .
And in their hearts,
What did they feel?
Did they think they had the right to steal
Another man's land
Who had no name
Oh, they didn't think he'd feel the pain.
So they sailed away from their own country
To another man's land far across the sea.
And they stole that land from the people there,
And they called that land Australia.
Why did he do it, white man. . . .
They sailed away, one winter's day,
To a sunlit land that was far away,
And they stole that land from the people there,
And they called that land America.
Why did he do it, white man. . . .
And in their hearts,
What did they feel?
Did they think they had the right to steal
Another man's land
Who had no name.
Oh, they didn't think he'd feel the pain.
. . .
(from "Portfolio," Steeleye Span, 1988)
In the wake of this new realization a new humility
is necessarily born. Both of these are nurtured further by the Westerner's
own sciences — which have overturned his cherished premises, requiring
visions of the truth quite at odds with what was used to get him to this
pass, and, coincidentally enough, quite akin to that which had been thrown
away, beat back, persecuted, and even killed in its embodiment earlier.
This radical reversal, this mushroom-like returning
to our roots, reappraisal of our origins and foundations, may be the thing
momentous enough and radical enough to save us, to abort our countdown
to extermination. (For surely a "Boy Scout" or "Civic League" approach
to tackling the problems that beset us is perhaps worse than nothing in
its deluding us into thinking we are accomplishing something, when it is
major efforts and radical changes that are required.)
Yet, as difficult as this reversal will be
in the lifestyle changes, the efforts required in the domain of attitudes
and conditioning — in terms of assailing the millenniums-strong fortifications
of culturally conditioned ego — may verge on the near-miraculous.
People do not change easily, if at all.
Still, we are aided, only fortuitously, by
some of our own devices. We are goaded also by the specters of our
own dissolution and by their lieutenants of epidemic disease who, sent
ahead, are even now making their way among us — our sentinels too often
sleeping, too infrequently and much too feebly signaling the alarm.
There is evidence that we are aided also by
unacknowledged powers — seen and heralded only by the relatively few.
All things considered, by the grace of God (and perhaps that solely), we
might make it.
Still, we must apply ourselves. We must
make the effort to see clearly, to see fairly, to break through our cultural
conditioning, to reach out to all those living/nonliving, to all that is
threatened by our misproliferation of deeds.
So it is that this book seeks to be part of
that great reversal, that primal renaissance. In so doing
it will unavoidably overturn many of our comfortable illusions. But
it will attempt to do so on the basis of the evidence, and it will attempt
to leave the Mystery where it properly belongs.
Still, considering this intention to lay to
waste or to reverse so much that is part of Western conditioning, so much
that is unquestioned as universally true, and common-sensically indisputable,
for many people this may be a painful book to read. I have no solace
for that, save that of the vision of the harmonious age, the primal renaissance
emerging from all this current pain and confusion. That is a vision
whose soothing silhouette will hopefully appear increasingly closer as
we proceed — summoned by our yearning, self-inquiry, and effort — to hold
our hand and guide us, even as we simultaneously observe our familiar cultural
edifices crumbling about us.
But let us begin where it is necessary.
Let us start by lowering our banner of being the pinnacle of cultural evolution.
Getting a little humbler and peeking beneath the veil of pretentiousness,
we may begin the journey downwards.
CHAPTER ONE REFERENCES
Davies, Paul, and Gribbin, John. (1992).
The Matter Myth: Dramatic Discoveries That Challenge Our Understanding
of Physical Reality. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Eddington, Arthur Stanley. (1928). The Nature of the Physical World.
London.
Ferris, Timothy. (1992). The Mind's Sky: Human Intelligence in a Cosmic
Context. New York: Bantam Books.
Kuhn, Thomas S. (1970). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Labbe, Armand. (1991). "Consciousness versus awareness in the light of
classical Eastern perspectives on the nature of transcendence." Paper delivered
at the 1991 Annual Conference of the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness,
March 21, 1991.
Nerlich, G. C. (1967). Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882-1944). In Encyclopedia
of Philosophy, 458-460.
Sheldrake, Rupert. (1991). The Rebirth of Nature: The Greening of Science
and God. New York: Bantam.
Steeleye Span. (1988). White man. From the recording, Portfolio.
Newton, NJ: Shanachie Records. Audio recording.
Copyright © 1999 by Michael Derzak Adzema
Comments? E-mail me by clicking on: mickel@primalspirit.com
Mickel Adzema