Materialism Arguments.
When your mind and heart are truly open abundance will flow to you effortlessly and easily.
Question:
Hello Deepak, For the past while I have been really struggling with the idea of materialism (everything just being in my head). I know from personal experience the benefits of a spiritual practice, but what’s the point if it’s just all in my head? I try to reassure myself that there is a higher reality by reading books by prominent spiritual figures, but then I will read an article on materialism by a prominent atheist with prestigious credentials, and I will fall into a cycle of anxiety, doubt, and confusion. Who am I to prove them wrong? Do you have any advice on how to internalize and analyze these arguments without feeling this way? And how to really trust that I am not alone in the Universe?
Response:
Materialism tries to explain our subjective experience by assuming an unprovable premise as fact—namely that there is a distinct boundary or difference between inside (experiencer) and outside (experienced thing). No one has ever found that boundary. No one has ever felt or seen that difference. When you eat an apple, apart from all your mental concepts and history and old beliefs about what an apple is and what an eater is, the raw experience itself is just sensation. Underneath all our social/cultural programming of subject/object, space and time and language, our basic experience of life is like an infant in which we experience everything holistically in ever-present awareness. All the concepts, beliefs and philosophizing is superimposed on this basic reality. Spirituality, or more specifically non-dual awareness is not a belief system or philosophy based on ideas. It starts with the self-evident experience that “I am.” If you are reading this now, you are. The statement “I am reading this sentence,” requires “I am.” That recognition and feeling of “I am” is the presence of awareness. It’s now about trusting someone or some idea, it’s only a matter of recognizing what is already the case – I am. That is something that no philosophy can disprove or undermine, because any argument always requires the presence of awareness—the very thing they seek to disprove. The statement, “I believe there is no such thing as awareness, assumes the very thing they are denying. You can’t believe or disbelieve anything without awareness. You may want to read my recent book You Are the Universe.
Love,
Deepak
