Sticks and Stones

One of the ways in which we become very, very well-adapted to living in a physical environment is that we tend to ignore or minimize those messages we hear frequently enough so that they’re familiar but which, at the same time, don’t hold a threat of harming us. If someone reads a lot about spiritual matters, the eastern doctrine of Maya, thus that the world is an “illusion,” rapidly loses whatever thought it might have originally occasioned. It does not seem to be borne out by direct experience. Here the typical reaction is that of Dr. Johnson who, in reaction to hearing Bishop Berkeley’s idealism labeled, by his friend Boswell, as impossible to refute, kicked a stone with great force and said: “I refute it thus.” Funny, yes.

Doctrines of this type are difficult. How can something solid be an illusion? What is rarely offered, by way of counterpoint, is that our most immediate experience of life, self-awareness, is absolutely immaterial. The thought process that went through Dr. Johnson head, the impulse that set his foot in motion, the words he formed before he spoke—all three of these had zero substantiality. So we do have, as it were, two different but equally real experiences of reality. One of these you cannot kick—but you can’t kick without it. And the dead stone that got the kick cannot for the life of it (which it lacks) cry “Ouch!”

Okay. For materialists thought and will and feelings, indeed self-awareness too, are all material. But they haven’t proved their case at all. Hence I ignore them.

Now these doctrines arise from actual experience. It is the experience of the contrast between two worlds, a spiritual and the physical, that gives rise to them. Once the spiritual has really been experienced in a genuine way and for long enough so that it sinks in, the world of matter is discounted, as it were. It is shown to be, in terms of real value, so very much inferior to the material world as to take on the aspect of illusion. Simply to label it thus, as illusion, is not a very sophisticated way to make the point—but the person experiencing the contrast also realizes that it can’t be proved without the experience.

The contrast between the physical and the mental however, are accessible to all of us—and serve as a point from which the hoary old doctrines may be examined. We all of us, virtually all of the time, are living in our minds, not in the physical world. Having one’s tooth drilled might be the exception that proves the rule. And where our minds originate is a great puzzlement. But reasonable reflection on it does suggest several things. One is that mind is vastly superior to matter. Another that it must come from a realm quite different than the one we inhabit now. So there is a mild case, at minimum, for a higher world. And those who have experienced it assure us that it is more real, more solid, than sticks and stones and bones.

Illusion? Why ever not? But the word must be applied with a modifier: relative. This world is relatively less substantial than the subtle world where our minds originated—and where they are bound again. Meanwhile our brains are organized to look out for sticks and stones—and to value only immediate threats and immediate gratifications. It is this, our excellent adaptation, that make us kick the stone or bang the table to make a limited if dramatic assertion of our own superiority.