Materialism And Reality

Hey Assaji,

I agree with what you say. You talk of human control over reality as an attempt to be god-like in similar terms as myself;

Through fear of death the human mind tries to avert it in an unceasing attempt to gain unlimited control of reality. With it's ever deepening levels of control it is trying protect itself from death through attempts to dominate the 'external' phenomenal realm, and, in essence, it is trying to become God through the power, and control, it seeks over reality. It does this because of its ignorance to its own true nature, and to the true nature of reality; neither of which can truly be separated.

The split within the human mind is inflicted upon us from early childhood. The division begins with that of 'inner' and 'outer', and therefore 'self' and 'other'; this is the source of the minds fear, and therefore bid to gain control over a chaotic external reality. This control continues to deepen as we continue to differentiate and label all of phenomenal reality, based on a distorted dualistic, binary, system of 'good' and 'bad'.

The problem is that this fragmentation of reality is forever causing us to try to escape into the supposed 'certainty' of the ever deepening levels of the control, order and rigidity, as a means of escaping a chaotic, unpredictable 'external' world. We try to impose more and more order over the chaotic world as an attempt to hold it in place and to protect the 'self' from harm. We do this in outright blindness of the fact that reality is a natural balance of order and chaos, which the human mind is throwing out of balance. Order and chaos are two sides of the same coin, and so as order increases so does chaos; this effect is inescapable! There is no escape from chaos, but the fragmented human mind cannot see the integral nature of such apparent duality; it does not see that even its chaotic repressed 'negative' thoughts and emotions - which it projects onto others - are part of itself. And this is why we find ourselves where we are today, bordering on the edge of total global chaos, which is the direct result of our out-of-control desire to control our reality.

Put simply the human mind does not see that there is no separation between it, and the rest of reality; it does not see that there is no separation between order and chaos. Because the mind fears the death of its small self it is trying to become God, and to impose its own will over the the Will (or Way) of reality; all along never realising it already is one with the whole of reality.

The only solution is for the individual to awaken to the true nature of reality, and then to free themelves from the rigid constraints of the mind. This entails returning to the natural balance between order and chaos, in which we encounter the Way which is empty of all extremes of nihilism and eternalism, order and chaos.

This is something I am very interested in, and I have set up a discussion pod called “The Antidote” to try to gain an understanding of how we can overcome this problem of the human bid for order and control which is inviting global chaos into our lives. I have centred it around Spiritual Anarchism, which simply means that it is accepts all taditions thought (spiritual, political, scientific), and yet, like emptiness, is not bound by any one of them. It is ultimately an effort to work towards a world free of the constraints of the human mind.

This is something you may be interested in, and should you wish to join the discussion I believe your insights will be invaluable. I have already posted two essays on this subject, both of which I think you will find of interest.

You can find this pod here: http://pods.zaadz.com/spiritual_anarchism

Namaste,

Andy ;o)