#immaterialism

George Berkeley

[Just as I was about to post this, I discover that Rupert Sheldrake and Bernardo Kastrup have been exchanging differing ideas on this very topic. They’re planning on holding a live streamed discussion, so I’ll be curious to see whether they cover the same points I did below. The conversation is being held through the Pari Center, and is scheduled for January 21st, at noon, EST. The link is here, but you probably have to be a member of the Pari Center: https://paricenter.com/event/is-idealism-enough/?mc_cid=cc2f178c81&mc_eid=fbce978b0c

 Questioner (Q): Is there a material or immaterial basis to everything? Imaginary Philosopher: I wouldn’t ask that. It creates a false dichotomy and presumes too much.

Q: You don’t think it’s an important question? IP: I think we urgently need to question the small visions driving us towards a cliff. Materialism is a blindingly short-sighted vision that degrades our relationship to earthly life. But I wouldn’t focus on an answer.

Q: Why not?

IP:  Any answer to this question is a form of reductive materialism itself, creating dichotomy and conflict. Positive certainty is destructive. We end up thinking we’re absolutely right about something, and those who hold an opposing view become enemies. Opposing views needn’t be in conflict. Materialism and Immaterialism are only what we see when facing different directions. It’s similar to microscopic  and macroscopic visions. The microscope and the telescope don’t argue with each other. Each has limitations, which are partially completed by the other. Q: Are you saying it’s both? IP: Yes, that, and more, they’re all limited.

Q: What are the limitations of both views? IP: Imagine the absurdity of visiting a doctor because your face is stuck in a frown. The materialistic doctor examines the face, and concludes that the cause of the frozen frown is a combination of changed patterns in blood flow, muscular tension, and temperature, recommending muscle relaxants. Such a doctor would dismiss “sadness” as a cause, because the existence of an immaterial state of mind would be pure conjecture. There’s no material proof of a mind that feels sad. This may seem absurd, but this is how a typical scientist approaches the study of the material world. We measure the physical attributes of the world and don’t even bother to wonder if these complex systems of order indicate an immaterial intelligence of the earth itself. Materialism limits our vision. But if we adhere to an opposing viewpoint – that only mind or spirit is real – then the body and the earth itself fade in importance, appearing merely as discardable clothing obscuring the spirit, or as mere illusions, or inanimate shells.

Western culture seems to be vacillating between these two extremes. An abstract Platonism that led to a Sky God divorced from earthly life, becoming a puritanical hatred of the body, which are all different forms of idealism.

And then this strange scientific materialism, which also degrades matter and mines the earth as if it were inanimate.

So, both viewpoints are limited.

Earthly life has been demeaned by both extremes, because we lost a “vision” of sacred matter — a materiality unsevered from the immaterial.

Q: Isn’t this vision of “sacred matter” another competing belief?

IP: Yes, it could degrade into another material fetish of a belief. Do we necessarily move from a belief in materialism or a belief in some form of immaterialism to a belief in “sacred matter?” Many believe that we can only move from one positive belief to another, that it’s impossible to relate intelligently to the world without a symbolic structure that guides us. But this belief is also limiting.

Is it possible to not merely question each belief from a new position of belief, but to question the whole category of “belief”, so that one is not merely thinking about previous forms of thought, but relating to every belief with unvested interest, or ultimate uncertainty?  

Q: Where would we find the passion to act in such a state of disinterest? IP: It’s not disinterest; it’s unvested interest. A probing uncertainty. In fact, any belief in a creed is less passionate than a probing uncertainty. That may seem absurd at first. But if you relate to the world in the absence of a belief in “dead matter” and the absence of a belief in the “transcendence of matter”, then by default you relate to a material world that is no longer severed from the mystery of being. And that’s a more immediate and engaging relationship than a relationship to an abstract belief. It may not be as overtly emotional and defensive and angry, but more heartfelt. Rather than believing in the sacred, we can probe our way into a deepening sense of wonder. Wonder replaces the passions of belief.

Q: Many philosophers would say that we can’t make any sense of the world without belief. I mean, if everything is a story, then stories like Idealism provide coherence.

IP: “Everything is a story” can be understood in many different ways. If it is posited as a description of the nature of reality, then we’ll feel compelled to focus on symbolic forms, as if our only contact with the world is through this filter. Then even private thoughts will be driven seemingly “by nature” towards never-ending internal speech and a need for firm knowledge. And then the seemingly mostly empty void of silence or symbolic-free awareness will become merely a resting place, or at most a fishing hole for hauling new structures of belief to the mapped shore. But if “everything is a story” instead describes a limitation in human thought – not reality itself – then we begin to see another form of intelligence superseding symbolic knowledge, or story. An unmediated form of intelligence becomes accessible that seems as impossible and immaterial to many philosophers as earthly intelligence seems impossible to materialistic scientists. Then silence reveals deeper layers that can recognize the merest inception of form and its implications, a still point in the turning world, as Eliot described it.

Q: But wouldn’t we still need some kind of stabilized structure of belief to guide us?

IP:  It depends on what you mean by “need.” Do you mean, we need to focus on forming a coherent story of reality in order to find stability and meaning? Or do you mean that a coherent and stabilizing story will necessarily form as long as our perception remains an open-ended probe that is impassioned by wonder?

In other words, do we need to focus on forming a myth or story to lead us? Or, do we need to keep asking the big questions, and trust that coherent stories will follow?

I tend to go the second route, because coherent stories form by themselves as long as the probing passions remain active. I think we need to allow the stories that inevitably form to be guided by uncertainty itself, not by a search for answers.

Q: So, how do we answer the big questions without putting too much stock in the answers? IP: I’m saying we need the big questions, not the answers. A necessary working hypothesis will form on the periphery of our questions, like a comet’s tail. We don’t have to focus on building one, because that provokes too much rationality, ties us too tightly in the filter of symbolism.

Q: Most people would consider any question that can’t be answered a meaningless waste of time, wouldn’t they?  IP: Yes. Big questions are treated like mosquitos that need to be swatted dead under a creed, or lured into big or small cages of an answer. Big ones like Idealism. Or small ones such as life should be practical or about business success, status, power, having fun, friends, family, etc. Some of these small answers will be important; family is important. But the small circle suffers if it can’t be linked to the larger circle of life.

Q: Aren’t people simply trying to remain humble in refraining from asking too much?

IP: We think we’re being humble in focusing on immediate concerns, when all we’re doing is forming a positive conclusion about what really matters, which is the absence of humility. Or, we think there’s humility in relying on the popes, preachers, scientists, and “leaders” of various sorts to answer those questions for us, which is only voluntary subjugation to an arrogant fool most of the time.

But the answers will always be riddled with holes. It’s through these holes that the big questions re-emerge. They’re trying to dislodge us from our stupid conclusions. If we answer them, evolution stops.

Q:  How can we ask something without seeking an answer?

IP: We don’t ask the questions; they interrogate us. We’re not leading the charge here; we’re being pushed to wonder by a perpetual collapse of what we thought was real. When our one-sided answers are undermined, we’re forced to surrender what we thought was real.  

This surrender to uncertainty is what we call, in retrospect, a question. But we didn’t really ask it, it asked us. And surrender isn’t a choice. It’s a dead end that finally makes itself known.

Q: So, how do you handle a big question like, “is there a material or immaterial source to everything – is there a God”?  I mean, you still seem to be saying that there’s an immaterial origin to life, aren’t you?

IP: I said that the forms I perceive are limited snapshots of a more fluid and immaterial perception. That’s not a description of the nature of reality, but only the limitations inherent in forming fairly concrete words.

So, silence gives birth to a verbal idea. That silence is more immaterial than the noisy idea.

And then the idea is quieter and more immaterial than the clacking keyboard and material shapes that land on the page.

Immaterial forms precede, exceed and descend into material forms. At least as far as human perception goes.

Q: Doesn’t this imply Idealism?

IP: Does the idea of an immaterial source make that source real? All we end up with is the concrete idea, which is not immaterial. It substitutes a material idea of immateriality for the real thing. And they’re not even close to being the same thing. So, the more convincing the idea, the more we tend to be misled. At least when we’re trying to talk about actuality.

Q: If you can’t draw a conclusion, what happens?

IP:  Both sides of the dichotomy begin to sort themselves out. The true and the false in both become visible.

That means Materialism reveals itself to be somewhat correct.

Every idea, including Idealism itself, is a form of meaning. Without this tendency towards materialization, no communicable meaning can form. No symbolic or practical meaning.

And at the same time, these materializing vantage points are creative or inventive, and arise without precedence. So, they essentially arise from Nothingness or immateriality, conjured from a magician’s hat that is infinite in its potential, because the source is open-ended to the point of being formless and empty.

So, form can only exist against a backdrop of a deeper formlessness. Without conclusive end. Q: Doesn’t that mean formlessness is a deeper source?

IP: How could any form of an answer hold meaning? The formless or open state of mind would disappear and you’d be confused into thinking you knew something you didn’t. The only coherent answer would be like an answer to a Zen koan – an action that confirms an open state of mind, not a mere idea. All I’m able to find are anomalies that undermine both sides of the lens (the concave and convex) as conclusive answers. From this merged perspective, immateriality isn’t the progenitor of materiality, any more than Heads is the progenitor of Tails.

The lens can spin farther towards materiality or towards immateriality. If we spin it towards immateriality, then, for instance, matter is exceeded in immateriality by measure; measure is exceeded by analysis; analysis is exceeded by presumptions underlying our analyses; presumptions are exceeded by insights into our presumptions. But what extends beyond the negative interruptions of insights? Perhaps what is called “meditation” or “proprioception of thought” (Bohm) – an uninterrupted flow of insight. And beyond this, perhaps a primordial simmer of Schrodinger cats in utero, a silent, infinite potential, which is a fancy way of representing an extension of ever more immaterial transformations beyond summary.

These are descriptions of limitations of perception that extend infinitely towards more subtle form. Sure, it’s as if there were a source attractor that is “purely immaterial”, but this source is unreachable by human perception without annihilating itself in solipsism. I mean, without the birth and death of forms, everything becomes inanimate, not merely immaterial.

So, materiality and immateriality could be regarded as shadow twins that can’t remain opposed to one another and need to be alchemically re-united.

Q: This sounds like a competing form of Idealism that strives to remain a working hypothesis and not a conclusion?

IP: It’s not an attempt to define the nature of reality. It says the one answer can’t exist without the other, so it only corrects a problem of double-vision. It only says that reality itself can’t be conflated with what we see through either dichotomous lens.

Every attempt to pinpoint the nature of reality dissolves because anomalies are constantly knocking them flat.  For instance, the competing dichotomy between free will and determinism dissolves in the face of “insight”, which is an anomaly to both sides of the argument, being neither freely chosen nor pre-determined.

“Insight” isn’t even a working hypothesis, but only an anomaly or negative insight that breaks the stalemate between these two opposing positive claims and opens a deeper question, what is freedom?

So, opposing answers dissolve into open questions, which may or may not take the form of a working hypothesis.

Q: By naming anything, including “insight”, aren’t we creating a dichotomy with something else, such as “ignorance”? How do you avoid dichotomy?

IP: A dichotomy only exists as a stubborn refusal to surrender staked positions to an anomalous insight.  Insight is being open to ignorance, so it’s not a dichotomy. Unless it becomes a creed. Then it’s no longer a real insight.

Any perspective that transcends or unifies matter, mind and energy will not simply be a new idea, but a new way of holding these ideas, so that they don’t stop the question from unfolding farther into the endless mystery. It would be a new way of being, not a belief. 

 Q: In short, then, you simply don’t value metaphysics?

IP: I do. We need to relate to the larger reality of the cosmos.

But metaphysics doesn’t need to follow science in allowing theory to degenerate into a search for answers. Like Hans-Peter Duerr says, “science also speaks only in parables.”

So, metaphysics could use theory in the way David Bohm discussed it – as a kind of “theater”, a way of staging or framing a particular vantage point – a creative perception, not a window into how things actually are. Metaphysics could become more poetic, or mythic in the broadest sense, sharing only that non-literal quality. Metaphoric in the broadest sense too. Not metaphor as a figure of speech distinct from simile. Not metaphor as a symbol, but as a freedom from the conflation of idea and actuality. Seeing the limitations of the metaphor as well as its coherence. It’s this negative insight that brings us into contact with something non-symbolic and actual. A constant jolt of uncertainty that provides its own stabilizing orientation.

So, metaphor in the broadest sense is a way of seeing through the filter of thought and not getting stuck in that filter. Whereas, claiming that everything is metaphoric is mental materialism. It’s an argument that gets stuck in its own filter.

Q: Idealism also speaks about everything being a metaphor. So how can this be “mental materialism”? IP:  The assertion that everything is metaphoric isn’t metaphoric itself.

Claiming that actuality IS metaphor (or mind) establishes only the material idea of metaphor (the content), but it prevents the function of the metaphor. It creates a dichotomy between thought and thing, construct and being.

In other words, ideas have to actually be metaphors, and not just map metaphors as a good idea. Otherwise, we confuse map and territory.

Q:  So, you’re not a metaphysicist?

IP: I’m a metaphysicist only in my need for a meaningful relationship to a cosmic dimension. But the cosmic can’t be found in my ideas of the cosmic order. It exists in my relationship to the limits of these ideas.

The cosmic erupts from the ruins of mental materialism. We get drawn into the territory of the cosmic by being stripped of certainties and forced to wonder.

It’s the failure of our firm grasp of the world which alludes to the existence of a cosmic dimension. If we answer a question like, ‘What Is Real?’, the cosmic dimension closes; the wave function collapses to a mapped location, which is not the cosmic territory itself.

Q: Then what role do maps play?

IP: Maps are not the problem. They are still necessary in a provisional sense. It’s our relationship to maps that is the problem. Map-making becomes more creative when we aren’t stuck to them as staked positions. So, they change shape. Insights erupt from the disintegrating edges and hidden holes in the maps, immediately editing the map by the very realization of their limitations.

So, we have to be alert to how the maps fall apart, rather than focusing on solidifying maps. It’s like a change in magnetization, which changes our entire nature or way of being at once. A positive to a negative magnetization.

Evolution happens at these ragged edges, where the map stops and the territory begins.

Q: So, what is the territory? What lies off the map?

IP: If you want words to provide a direct experience of actuality, ask the poets first. They will not be able to direct the instrument of poetry very easily in any rational inquiry – that would betray the nature of poetry. But the words themselves will be an unmediated encounter with a living thing, the poem itself. It’s like abandoning the map entirely for an excursion. But it tends to disparage map-editing as too rational. Of course, that depends on the individual poet. But it tends that way I think. Nevertheless, as a way through the filer of consciousness to the actual territory of being, it’s as effective as music

Nevertheless, I don’t want to reject the map as an oppositional dichotomy. I want to retain a stronger relationship between the rational and poetic. And that seems to require merging negation (punching holes in maps) with a way of positing hypotheses that is metaphoric and playful.

I’m going to attempt to write my way into the experience of actuality (into the first layers of meditation) in a separate essay, but I don’t want to open that subject now because it’s too much. This interview is almost done.

Q: How can a conversation be “done”, if we can’t end in a conclusion?

IP: By completion I only mean a full articulation, which requires an ending. Every eruption of order from the apparent void has to complete itself in order for its full shape to be perceived, in order for it to ripen and set seed. But this isn’t a static conclusion, it’s a death that confirms the eternal formlessness out of which it arose and into which it sinks.

There’s no dichotomy between form and formlessness. Without limited lifespans, eternity wouldn’t know herself. We just won’t find a word capable of bridging that union.

Q: So, what do you want a reader to take from this discussion? IP:  We can’t speed up our growth. But we can surrender our resistance. It won’t speed anything up, but the brakes will be removed.

As far as the subject of idealism goes, my criticism was twofold: On a functional level, it’s magnetized too positively, pulling the inquiry in a contradictory material direction. This leads to a confusion of map and territory. My only criticism of the content of the idea is that it reduces material reality (the earth itself) to a mere after-thought.

I know Buddhism is generally called another form of idealism. And I think in practice it has often become that, so I never pursued it. But to me, the Buddha himself was not an idealist, because he called on the earth to be his witness, unifying the material and the immaterial.

But to me, he is not a fetish of belief, but only one example of a passing place-holder for that freedom from a sticking point. A freedom that belongs to the collapsing and surrendered perspective itself, which belongs to everyone and no one.

That’s why an inquiry into oneself is an inquiry into the cosmos. They are one and the same beneath the surface of the map.

It’s a perspective that seems to have no interest in the ultimate nature of the world. It concerns itself with the practicalities of a perception cleansed of the shadows of dichotomy. What follows is a creedless faith in what constantly exceeds every form.

That’s not an answer, only a momentary vision that erupts whenever we contact by negation a world larger than any positive conclusion.

Other essays that cover portions of this material in more detail: Freedom As an Absence of Free Will and an Absence of Free Choice Practicing a Prismatic Approach to the Mind/Matter Dilemma