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Divine Matter This is a thought experiment of mine. It is in essence a speculative text meant to spark some new ideas and not something I necessarily believe to be utterly true. When I wrote this text I was very much aware of the fact that I didn't really know what I was writing about, but I thought that I better pretended that I did so the text would become more entertaining. The main idea is to primarily use a materialistic point of view to prove the concept of a divine universe. Part I: Matter Matters There are those who claim that what we experience is nothing but an illusion. Life is but a dream and beyond this ordinary state of existence there exist a more grand reality. Some of those who claim to have pulled the curtains aside and have had a glimpse of this utter reality also claim that they have chosen not to merge with nirvana because it would be unethical to do so as long as there are people left in this realm of pain and suffering. But how can this be? Are they telling the truth? If they believe themselves to be truthfully, how can we know for sure that they are right and not simply deluded by some mystical experience acquired from the use of some mind altering practice such as for an example yoga or meditation? Since the western minds holds the objective truth in such high esteem, such questions has to be dealt with before any bonding with eastern philosophy could take place. But these kinds of questions are not new to westerners. There is a long tradition of natural science criticizing the Christian church, of relying too much upon subjectivity and too little on objective truth. A truth which could be defined as objective is to many a real truth. The subjective truths is nothing more then a truth which is only true for the carrier and only while not being subject for change. But since this is true for all of us, how then could it be possible to say that anything is objectively true? For the natural scientist these questions are answered by the use of a methodology which does not rely on a subjective perception of reality, thus mechanical tools are used. By conducting repeatable experiment and measuring matter, the world is understood as a material world working accordingly to some underlying principles which we in our daily life are unaware of. The physicists use math and experiment with matter in order to find their Holy Grail; the main underlying principle which they hope to capture and describe in the theory of everything. At the heart of natural science is the study of matter. Using highly advanced tools they have come to the conclusion that all the objects we see in daily life, well actually all objects in the entire universe, are made out of particles. Some claim that even particles can be broken down into even more strange and abstract things defined and described as strings. I find that taking this materialistic point of view to its extreme and applying it to the understanding of the world, as a thought provoking intellectual experiment. First begin with picturing the world as constituted by matter, just as the physicists claims it to be. This implies that it is not only the cars, apples and the sun that is made out of matter; even the human body is a physical phenomena. As an example one can take the blood that flows in our veins, the blood being matter in the form of a fluid. Another example is the tissue which is made of large quantities of carbon and other kinds of atoms. If one would take a closer look one would find that even the brain cells are matter. In this materialistic perspective the consciousness must be thought of as a product of the material brain. Several discoveries have been made that supports this notion. One such discovery is the discovery of the serotonin molecule which is believed to be a major contributor to mental health. Depressed people may consume anti-depressant medicines such as SSRI which in return alters their brain chemistry and thus how they feel and how they think about the world. The reason why this works, accordingly to the materialistic dogma, is that the serotonin molecule has such properties that it can fit in the receptors of brain cells thus affecting how the brain cell functions. So accordingly to this understanding of the brain and when taking the materialistic point of view to its extreme, feelings are nothing else but a configuration of matter. Consequently all mental phenomena must be thought of as being configuration of matter and thus this must be true even for self awareness. Even though it might sound alien at first, it can also be thought of as the most obvious thing. When we go to sleep the brain starts to function in another kind of way compared to while we are awake and we loose our self awareness. These changes in the brain can be measured in several ways and one such was is the measurement of brainwaves. Since the brain is matter and matter is a part of the universe, your awareness must logically be a part of the universe being aware of it self. Since you are not the only one being self aware this implies that the parts of the universe that is self aware, aren't necessarily aware of each others. Actually the only reason why you believe other people to be self aware is that you interpret them as being so. If your friend travels to the other side of the world, you can not be sure that this person is still alive until you speak to each other on the phone, communicating your self awareness to each others. So is the universe by its configuration of its matter producing several minds seemingly unrelated to each other. But could it really be that matter is everything? Since we know that we do feel things and have thoughts, then how do they fit with the concept of materialism? When sticking to the materialistic perspective where awareness is a configuration of matter, awareness and the specific configuration of matter would logically have to be one and the same; if the configuration of matter is awareness then awareness must be configuration of matter. This kind of understanding suggests that awareness and matter are just two ways of thinking about one and the same thing, thus giving birth to different kinds of studies and ways of understanding their essence. While the suggested notion only really merges two well known phenomenon's, instead of producing something new, this kind of reasoning may twist our entire way of thinking about our self. Instead of thinking upon us as being parts of the universe who are self aware, we could as well think of ourselves as parts of the universe that are unaware of its grand self. Such an understanding would bond pretty well with the thoughts of those who talked of our life being mere illusion. But if this is true, why then do we believe this illusions to be true and why do they feel so real? Maybe one could answer that question with another question: why is it that you feel that you experience something real while you dream and then consider that as a lesser reality at once you wake up? It is of course that you believe that to be real, which creates the most profound feeling of experiencing reality. You have nothing to do but to believe what you feel, because your feelings are in their essence what you believe, or the same thing put as a question: how do I know that I am self aware? Because it sure feels like I am and there for I must be! Accordingly to several religious disciplines the ego has an important part to play when it comes to keeping the self intact. From the materialistic standpoint the ego could be thought of as a configuration of matter which encompass part of the folding of the universe, i.e. the brain, and knit it altogether thus creating the overall feeling of the separated self. This is why it is considered a major spiritual achievement to transcend the ego. When no longer being limited by the ego one would see the separated self as an illusion and thus the self centred way of understanding the world would cease. In this new way of interpreting the world, everything would be telling you the same thing; that the essence of yourself is the universe itself and all are one and the same and therefore inseparable. But then again accordingly to the materialistic way of thinking about it, this experience of unity would still be a configuration of matter. Consequently one has to draw the following conclusion that one can not become more at one with the universe then what one already is. So in a strictly material sense, when one dies one does not become more at one with the reality then compared to when one lives. Part VI: True Nature of Everything As argued previously in this text all experienced phenomena are configuration of matter, and therefore configuration of matter is the same as awareness. But why do we become self aware in the first place? That is what the physicists, maybe unknowingly, try to fit in their description of their theory of everything. Something that the physicists would have to include in their theory of everything is the facts that changes are taking place. When extrapolating this and when taken to its most extreme it could be argued that the universe as we know it ceases to exist when it changes its configuration of its matter, only to once again become. But what principle is it that causes this kind of process? Maybe an explanation can be found in the idea of the existing and not existing. Logically the two extremes require one another. Existence can not be understood without its opposite. However things can not fully exist and not exist at the same time, and when the object in question is the entire universe, i.e. everything which is, this becomes a paradox. However there is a solution for how to understand this and that is by integrating a third component; the relation between the two extremes. It is this third component that enables the possibility of a duality and it manifests itself as change. Since the two opposites gives rise to each other but can not be true on their own, the change will always be and the change in itself becomes end ends at the same time. Accordingly the universe could be thought of as being that very change, a flux between existing and not existing, thus the universe ceases to exist in order to once again become and every time slightly similar to what it was before, yet something entirely new. This means that the universe could be defined as something which gives birth to itself. A phenomenon such as this could be said to have a self repeating property similar to that of a fractal. The questions: when was it created and when will it end, would find its answer in the present moment; the now. Consequently ones own true nature would therefore have to be neither something or nothing, but the very thing which we normally refer to as change. Part III: A Leap of Faith Thanks to natural science and psychology we know that the brain is nowhere near being able to capture all information in the given environment. Natural science teaches us that we simply have to make due with a finite number of senses, capturing only some of the different aspects of the physical reality we exist in. Psychology then teaches us that much of the information that is relayed through the senses never is brought into our awareness. From this perspective the brain could be thought of as a limitation mechanism. Interestingly this is most often not the case and the brain is instead something that is being thought of as a production device; feelings, thoughts and awareness being end products of the processes in the brain. There is however nothing logically wrong about seeing it as a limitation device. Most scientific conclusions drawn about how the brain works can exist in coherence with the notion of the brain as a limitation mechanism. This way of thinking does however open up new ways of understanding the relation between the mental world and the external world. As previously argued they are in essence one and the same but when seen through this new perspective, mental phenomenon's are not the possessions of the brain but limited parts of the world being experienced. Consequently our awareness could be thought of not as a product of the brain but as a limited experience of a much greater awareness which existed before our brain was first developed. But if this is true, then why are we not always experiencing this grand awareness? The answer would logically have to be that we most certainly already are aware to some extent, but that we are simply not aware to the fullest extent of it. One reason why this is might have to do with memory and how we use it. The good thing about memory is that it allows us to re-experience as for an example past events and so we may gain some important Darwinistic advantages. On the other hand the memory structure also defines how we will remember the past. As an example one can think of a person who by an unfortunate accident suffers from memory loss. This person may not recall himself or herself as having been aware before the accident, although this most certainly must have been the case. Another example could be the dreaming person who while being dreaming is aware of the dream, but who have forgotten all about the experience long before lunch time the following day. What this argument implies, is that you experience yourself to be, what you are somewhat forced to, remember yourself to be and therefore not necessarily what you truly are. If all of this is true it would portray those who claimed to have pulled the curtains of illusions aside and seen the true reality of things, as being true to their words when they say they have actually witnessed something real and not just experienced an internal phenomena unrelated to the physical reality. It would also explain why so many spiritual disciplines emphasize a strict practice of awareness practice and why one of the most thought of techniques is the practice of directing awareness onto itself. Part IV: Concerning Illusions Those who have experienced the utter reality or ones own true self and returns to speak about the illusorily characteristic of the world, are often met with scepticisms. They find that it is hard to convince people that their experiences are nothing but illusions. This might be because people find it hard to accept that what they experience as real as being something which doesn't exist. However when applying the idea of the brain as a limitation mechanism, this concept becomes intellectual graspable and actually even hard not to agree with oneself. Given that the brain in essence limits, that which you are experiencing as real must consequently be both real and a limited experience; which in return implies that the experience is not all encompassing and therefore could be called an illusion. It is important to understand that in this context the word illusion shouldn't be thought of as something which doesn't exist. The illusions are real, that which the illusions refer to are real and the only reason why they should be thought of as illusions, is that they are limited experiences. This could be exemplified with a coin. If you see the head of the coin, you see the coin and the picture portrayed on its surface. But when you are looking at the head you can not simultaneously see the tail. Since you can not see all sides at the same time, what you see is only a portion of what is and your experience could therefore be called an illusion. Another example of how to understand the notion of illusion could be found in how we use the word when we refer to the tricks of the illusionists. The illusionist's expertise lies in creating illusions, but interestingly they never show us something which doesn't exist. What they do however, is to show partial aspects of the world which is and then hide those parts of the world which spoils the experience of seeing magic in action. So while they are showing something which is real and true, they don't show is the whole sum and a sense of magic or illusion is created. What all this boils down to is that it is possible to consider that, which we experience, as something which is real and be right about it, without this being in conflict we the fact that what we are experiencing is nothing but illusions. Part V: Brining It All Together This text has argued that we in essence are change and that we are a part of a much larger awareness. Since awareness is a part of the universe and the universe is change, awareness must also be the change. So we are in essence a change which is a part of a much larger change, which in return is all in all one and the same change. One way of describing this to make it somewhat more comprehendible is by referring to the qualities of that of a fractal. Such a construct repeats itself endlessly and since all parts contain all other parts, it is only the applied duality like perspective that creates the experience of diversity. With this said the grand awareness must consequently be understood as being the universe itself and the reason why fail to see this in our daily life would have to be that we simply lack the ability of applying the proper perspective. No perspective produced by the universe could encompass the whole and itself. Fortunately, since all parts contain all other parts, an outlook isn't really needed and that gives that a non-perspective would produce the desired effect. So by not putting anything into perspective the grand unity of it all would reveal itself. The only way of doing this would be by not giving into dualism and the only way of doing that would have to be by becoming change itself. Since our true nature is change, all one have to do is to realize ones own true nature. This is would be done by becoming what one already is; change. From the subjects point of view this experience of becoming at one with everything, would be just that. When approaching the horizon of duality the acceptance of change would approach the very same horizon and finally when crossing the border, one would cease to exist as a something, since one would become everything and thereby nothing in particular. For someone witnessing this personal transformation, he or she would probably first see the person embracing life to the fullest extent of it and then, when the person closes in on the horizon, communication would simply not be possible. An interesting reference could here be made to some religions where it is a simple question of ethics, not to integrate oneself with the unity of everything to the fullest extent of it, as long as there are beings left experiencing suffering. So in order to finally summarize it all: everyone is already divine and the true nature of matter has to be divinity. Part VI: A Brisk Comment I find it hard to believe much of what I have written above, but even so I find this an intriguing thought experiment. As an example I find it interesting that physicists now a day consider matter as something much more translucence, then what they did back in Aristotle's time. What once was considered the study of the solid and unbreakable has become the study of immaterial vibrations in string theory. Also the much of the natural phenomenon in the world, such as the lightning bolts, rivers, mountains and so much more can be described as having fractal properties, i.e. self repeating characteristic. When thinking about the world as being in a constant flux between becoming and ending, I can not help that the well known Yin and Yang symbol comes to mind. The symbol which portrays the unity of duality and describes the both sides as being inseparable from one another and the way the two relates to each other. Taken further it raises some interesting perspective on how to understand those who come back from deep meditation or maybe yoga practice, and talk about the illusive characteristic of realty. As in the preaching of Buddha, there are parts of this text which could be interpreted as having morbid undertones. However morbid interpretations are far from being aligned with the embracing of life to the fullest extent of it and should consequently be disregarded as false understanding. Finally I find it kind of funny that the materialistic standpoint taken to its most extreme finishes itself off in this thought experiment, by the matter becoming the same as a divine substance; the all encompassing unity. If you enjoyed this page you might want to have a look at this: Interpretation, Matrixel, Scribbling.