I write about consciousness, and that word which means so much to some but seems empty when you analyze it, namely spirit. When talking about consciousness, it’s complicated because we are talking about ourselves as consciousness, yet as you know, self-reflection requires a mirror. Without a mirror, we can’t actually see ourself. It gets even harder because not even a mirror will show you consciousness, only the body.
Consciousness is talking about itself as consciousness. The eye doing the seeing cannot see itself. That’s the problem. There may be a blind spot when it comes to conscious self consciousness.
When we talk about spirit, or spiritual, things become even more complicated. What on earth does this word even mean? It’s so abstract, untouchable, invisible, like a mirage. We can allude to it, but no one can see it. Ancient texts talk about it as if its as real as anything we see around us. Yet no one can point to spirit, what to speak of heaven or god. All abstract concepts.
Philosophy and math is also abstract of course, but you can still use it. What can you do with spirit? It’s more ephemeral than a rainbow, which is mere light. Spirit is an idea, a theory of something supposedly non material, therefore eternal, unchanging and real.
The ancient Sanskrit and other texts talk about it as being the original ground from which all else manifests. It is the opposite of matter. And all that we see is matter, so spirit is like the Tao. As the old wisdom says, words cannot capture the Tao. What is described as Tao is not the Tao, and all that kind of thing. Very mercurial. More subtle than water or air, or even thought.
From the mundane point of view, everything is material, made up of matter, in a material universe. But then what is thought? It is a by-product of consciousness. What is consciousness? It is the by-product of life. The only way to describe life is by saying it is the opposite of death. It is existence, to be. I think therefore I am, as Descartes once thought, stating the obvious. So is thought material? You can’t grasp it. Or can you? By putting any thought into words, you are capturing it. So it must be material.
So what is spirit? It’s an abstract concept, said to defy matter by being eternal as opposed to temporary, not under the laws of nature and matter, like the law of entropy, or ultimate decay. We have no examples of anything made of spirit or spiritual, so it remains an abstract theory, a thought, an idea, a material idea about a state that is non-material.
Now according to the philosophy of spirit, the more one advances in consciousness, the more one can understand about all these abstract concepts that are rarer than thought and imagination. This statement in itself is abstract because if we are not advanced in consciousenss, how will we recognise someone who is? How will we know that what they say is advanced or regressive?
We like to see symptoms, like literal proof of advanced consciousness, like miracles for example. If someone comes along and starts performing magic or miracles, then we might think they are advanced, but not in spirit, only in material science. Because miracles and magic are only symptoms of a science which we do not yet know of.
They do not need a reference like spirit. The word science will explain anything in the material world. The science of making things appear and disappear, or curing illness, or even bringing the dead back to life, all these skills have already been exhibited by scientists and doctors. No miracles there.
There is talk of people who could conjure up stuff out of thin air instantly, as if bringing it from afar. We don’t see anyone doing it but there are stories of it happening. Yet that mystic ability by yogis is also a science.
Spirit means the afterlife, and includes the before life too, as the same thing. Only the life in the middle is said to be material, temporary and subject to entropy and the other laws of nature. But all the eternity before and after is said to be spiritual, except if you have many incarnations of lifetimes, though that is a different subject.
Then you get the school of thought that explains that matter is to be renounced and spirit embraced. And that the more advanced one becomes in spirit, the more they renounce matter and material enjoyment. The more they negate life and everything in existence, the better they are. A paradoxical concept.
I met a Buddhist monk in Taipei city once some years ago, while on holiday there. He stood in the busy city street in his robes holding a begging bowl in front of him. The tallest building in the world (at the time) was nearby, called the Taipei 101. I approached him, being interested in matters of consciousness, aiming to give him a donation of some money. I took out the Taiwan bank note and moved it toward his begging bowl, asking him – “May I give you a donation?”
To which he replied, “No”. I asked more than once and he replied to the negative each time, so I withdrew the bank note and walked away. That was the end of it. He never received my donation. It was strange, until I thought about it afterwards.
He was doing the usual Buddhist monk practice. He was so renounced that he did not even outwardly accept my money. But then I realized that it was all a game. The etiquette is usually for the donor to insist, and for the monk to reject that material energy, and for the donor to insist even more and to just give the money to him, despite his protesting that he did not want it. But I didn’t know the etiquette, so took him at face value. And he lost out in the donation that day.
That is one school of thought, found in Buddhism and Adwaita Vedanta, that matter is illusion and that spirit is the only real and eternal thing. The Sanskrit term is Brahma satya, jagad mithya meaning spirit is eternal and real, while matter or the world is false. So if you want to appear advanced in spirit, then you renounce matter and pleasure. That’s what the monk was showing me that day in Taipei. Maybe he will get his reward in spirit when he dies, I don’t know. I have no experience of life after death that I remember. Only rumours.
On the other hand, you get the school of thought that says
“The bricks, stone and wood used in the construction of the temple are spiritual, just as the Deity, although made of stone, is not stone but the Supreme Personality of Godhead Himself.”
This philosoophy is not Adwaita, or non-dual. It is Dwaita, or dual. And the culmination is a school of thought that synthesizes the two, called achintya bedhabeda tattva or simultaneous dual and non-dual, inconceivably. This is deep.
This school of thought says that we can take matter and transform it into spirit by utilizing it in the service of spirit. We can spiritualize matter. So the monk who knows this philosophy would happily take my donation and use it to build his temple to the gods. He wouldn’t renounce it. This school goes on to say that if you are on the spiritual path serving your god, then nothing is matter, everything is spiritual because you have dovetailed it into the service of the eternal.
As a result, a spiritualist can accept all matter and appear opulent since they are using all that wealth in pure activity of spirit. That’s the philosophy. Very convenient. You use matter as your stepping stone to build your stairway to heaven. You can imagine how this can justify anything. And it removes the distinction between the matter and spirit. It removes the need for this abstract idea of spirit altogether.
So even this body can be used in the service of spirit, so should not be negated. There is no mithya or illusory energy, everything is spiritualized. Matter may be temporary, but still spiritualized, it’s contradictory but that’s how it’s described. Make sense of it if you can. It’s all word jugglery and abstract ideas nayway.
Yet abstract ideas are what drive physical actions in our life. So ideas and philosophies carry weight and have consequences in the material world. Nevertheless, it shows how we can use philosophy to justify anything if we can juggle the logic to fit our perception of reality. The proof of validity will be in the outcome here on the ground because we have no way of monitoring any future outcome in the afterlife. Does your philosophy result in a better life for all? Does it create a better world? That will be the judgement.
Apparently you need to give up personal material enjoyment if you are aiming to be advanced in spirit. Yet if you are advanced in spirit, and have given up or lost the propensity to enjoy for yourself, and are in service to an invisible abstract idea called god, then you will be blessed with all the material opulence and facility to serve that abstract concept of spirit or god. Because you don’t want it for your own pleasure, but for your god’s pleasure.
So there you have it all in a nutshell. It boggles the brain, all this paradox and contradiction. The way that can be described in words is not the way. You did it your way, and I did it my way. It’s all just a game anyway.
image: source