Already in the deepest antiquity, it became clear that the desperate and practical striving of every person to figure out what to do in life ultimately rests on the most fundamental of theories, on the fundamental question - where he is, in other words, what is the innermost nature of the world around him, and, hence, our role in it. This is the subject focus of the discipline called ontology, or metaphysics (the difference between them is not recognized by everyone). Since the same hoary antiquity, two opposite interpretations of the main ontological question about the source and basis of the existing world have taken shape: materialism and idealism. Despite the apparent simplicity of these concepts, they are not so obvious and for the most part misunderstood.
In simple terms, idealism asserts that what is happening in the world, its structure, development and emergence are determined by some goal-setting will - a creative, and usually rational, beginning or principles. Materialism, on the other hand, explains the structure, formation and emergence of the world as an unwilling substrate, from which, at a certain stage of natural development, will and reason can arise. In idealism, the primary is will, life and the individual in one way or another of their understanding - it is they who create and define the tangible world. In materialism, on the contrary, it is the inanimate and non-volitional that is primary, which randomly (that is, without goal-setting) forms the entire perceived world and can also give rise to life, will, reason as one of its forms. Although the Greek natural philosophers (Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, etc.) and the Stoics are traditionally ranked among materialists, the available texts indicate that the origins (“fire”, “water”, “apeiron”, “air”, “pneuma”) were understood by them metaphorically and idealistically, as individuals are elementary carriers of will, creative goal-setting instances.
Without any exaggeration, ninety-nine percent of all thinkers, until very recently, were idealists. It was only in the 19th century that the opposite camp began to noticeably arrive, and since then in the West the share of educated people of idealistic views has steadily continued to decline. Today, even in the most religiously fanatical country of the Western world, the USA (only 3% of complete atheists, 10% do not believe in what is called a "personal god"), according to various estimates, from 70% to 93% of scientists are materialists or agnostics. The revolution in philosophy of the 19th century, like the revolution in science and the scientific method, dealt a heavy blow to the once reigning confidence in a meaningful universe, and even more so in the god reigning over it, the immortal soul and the exclusive role of man in the world process.
It became clear that as soon as we bracketed our own wishes regarding the structure of the world and the tendency to interpret it in our own likeness, there is little more reason to believe in intelligent beginnings of life than in magic beans, fairies and leprechauns with pots of gold. Of course, our nature, thirsting for ontological privilege, protests against the conclusion inevitably following from scientific materialism about the insignificance, finiteness (extremely fast!) And fundamental meaninglessness of human existence. But the mind itself, even cold and sober and carried as far as possible beyond the bounds of feelings, often looks at the materialistic picture of the world with almost the same distrust as at the traditional idealistic ones.
Indeed, the story is about the spontaneous appearance of the perceived world in the course of a big bang and its continuous accelerating expansion, about an infinitely complex multiverse, who knows how and why originated from lifeless interacting bricks, about a stone ball rushing into a black hole through the endless spaces of space, inhabited by intelligent primates, seem more surreal than any fairy tales of our ancestors. It sometimes seems that it would be easier to believe in a gray-haired old man throwing lightning from the sky-high heights, or in a flat Earth resting on the backs of three whales, than in the fact that this whole story does not hide some kind of double bottom, some underlying the perceived order of the volitional and, in one sense or another, the rational principle. This feeling is in essencecompletely unsupported by facts - and the accompanying skepticism of reason does not leave many of the most hardened materialists and agnostics, including the greatest of scientists. It is about him that Einstein carefully writes in the following words ("In what I believe"):
Alas (or thank God, I'm joking), we do not know how things are "in reality" and it is unlikely that this situation will ever change. Nevertheless, the void where the answers should be is too painful, and if we cannot fill it with knowledge, we are allowed to speculate - as carefully as possible. While the abusing marijuana Elon Musk is waging an unquenchable debate with American nerds about whether we all live in a computer simulation, I would suggest taking a different path in search of an answer to the main question of ontology, starting from the undoubted family ties of man and the rest of the world, for we are all molded from one dough. Sometimes this connection excites the imagination and is shrouded in a kind of romance, like, for example, the fact that everything we see around us, from a ring on a finger to another person,was created in the depths of stars dying in an explosion (almost all chemical elements are heavier than helium). But, perhaps, being in some sense brothers and sisters of extinguished heavenly bodies, their flesh of flesh, we are united with the rest of the universe by an even more intimate relationship?
This point of view is not new at all. If the greatest thesis of Western philosophy was of an ethical nature, the Delphic "Know thyself", then the main postulate of Eastern philosophy, I believe, was the great Hindu "Atman is Brahman", that is, the individual is the Absolute, the part is the whole, "I" is "It", the drop is equal to the ocean and the ocean appears in the drop. One of the sources of this insight seems to be the observation of the emptiness of our consciousness, as discussed in the previous letter. The experience of introspection, the spiritual path followed by Hindu thinkers, leads to the interpretation of our consciousness, our inner space as an empty stage on which the perception and ups and downs of life unfold, which are mostly beyond our control.
We then begin to reflect on the fact that other people, as long as they exist, are the same empty space, the same scaffolds onto which the world emerges, that we and they are essentially identical and are the light of consciousness in which Brownian movement of the world process. Finally, we involuntarily begin to imagine a universal observer, containing the emptiness of consciousness, not limited by the individual, by a separate ray of light, but encompassing the entire universe as a whole and simultaneously. He, this universal observer, the Absolute, cannot be anything other than a universal agent, everything that happens, happens in him and is done by him, everything that he is aware of is also himself. He is the same ocean, identical to the drop, we are drops, identical to the ocean,- such is the meaning and intellectual genealogy of the great “Atman is Brahman”.
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Two and a half thousand years later, Martin Heidegger describes the same relationship through the concepts of Dasein and Seyn (being). Da-sein, literally “here-being”, represents the “opening of being”, a concrete manifestation and embodiment of the Absolute through human “consciousness”. However, Heidegger, like the ancient Hindus, succumbed to the temptation of anthropocentrism even in a situation of denying it. Making the Absolute a universal and only doer, as well as an observer, it nevertheless gives an exorbitantly and unreasonably inflated role to man and presents the situation as if there is a contact, a meaningful interaction between the historical process on Earth and the Seyn element, falls into mysticism. This favoritism, preserved from the religions and philosophies of the past, flatters our pride,but it has nothing under it and brings insoluble contradictions and anthropomorphism into such a beautiful picture.
A person, and probably any perceiving life, really appears to be a cosmically unique phenomenon, but this does not mean at all that we are in someone's favorites. In contrast to the inanimate, all life, in religious terms, is the descent of "God" to earth, here being (Da-sein), the opening and disclosure of a new point of self-observation. Even without possessing a monolithic personality, we are an empty mirror into which the Absolute can see itself through its individual manifestations. Does he need this or anything at all? I doubt it. If this old card player and solitaire gamer is in love with something, I suppose it is variety, since it is precisely that variety that is lacking in the ever-changing metamorphosis of the universe. Perhaps that is why in the human world, as in the physical world, there are so many contrasts,and the temperature of the water in the shower sometimes treacherously jumps from red-hot lava to arctic ice (I know, you do this …). In order to stir up such a jaded viewer, it takes strong tools and periodic personal, historical and natural disasters. However, even jokes aside, the best thing we can do with our life, being the gleam of being and the mirror of the Absolute, is to please the old man with a good show. Since Brahman is Atman, he is we, this means helping ourselves to see something good in this mirror.being the skylight of being and the mirror of the Absolute, it is to please the old man with a good show. Since Brahman is Atman, he is we, this means helping ourselves to see something good in this mirror.being the skylight of being and the mirror of the Absolute, it is to please the old man with a good show. Since Brahman is Atman, he is we, this means helping ourselves to see something good in this mirror.
© Oleg Tsendrovsky
