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Please note that some text below was written by the feeling-being ‘Peter’ while ‘he’ lived in a pragmatic
(methodological), still-in-control/same-way-of-being Virtual Freedom before becoming actually free. |
Materialism
Materialism: The doctrine that nothing
exists except matter and its movements and modifications. Also, the doctrine that consciousness and will are wholly due to the operation of
material agencies. A tendency to lay stress on the material aspect of the objects represented. A tendency to prefer material possessions and
physical comfort to spiritual values; a way of life based on material interests. Oxford Dictionary
Peter: Who said that being comfortable, safe, warm, well fed,
well clothed, well informed, well entertained, healthy, etc. creates our misery? How many people in the world haven’t got even a basic
material level of shelter, food, water, education, medicine, etc – and is this not real misery?
This nonsense about the evils of materialism is put out by those miserable souls
who have a vested interest in human beings believing that existence on earth is essentially a suffering existence – because it always has
been, it always should be. All of spirituality, both Eastern and Western, teaches that human existence is essentially a suffering existence and
also that ultimate peace is only possible after physical death – i.e. anywhere but here and anytime but now. Added to this, the modern day
religion of Environmentalism preaches that there is far too much material comfort and its believers actively work to deny others in less
developed countries the material comforts they themselves enjoy.
I started my search for freedom peace and happiness on the understanding that
despite the fact that I had been successful in ‘real’ world terms I was neither free, nor peaceful nor happy. For me the question was ‘How
come I have everything I could desire and yet I was neither happy nor harmless?’ I discovered that to blame materialism for human malice and
sorrow is to believe the spiritual viewpoint that life on earth is ultimately unsatisfactory, and to see physical comfort and sensual enjoyment
as a sign of indulgence and evil.
What I eventually discovered was that the answer lay in an area considered by all
to be impossible to question – the very feelings, emotions and instinctual passions that humans beings hold so dear.
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Richard: What I experience is neither ‘existentialistic’
(materialism) nor ‘theistic’ (spiritualism) ... there is a third alternative: ‘actualistic’ (actualism) To be actualistic is to be living the infinitude of this fairy-tale-like actual world with its sensuous quality of magical
perfection and purity: where everything and everyone has a lustre, a brilliance, a vividness, an intensity and a marvellous, wondrous,
scintillating vitality that makes everything alive and sparkling ... even the very earth beneath one’s feet. The rocks, the concrete
buildings, a piece of paper ... literally everything is as if it were alive (a rock is not, of course, alive as humans are, or as animals are,
or as trees are). This ‘aliveness’ is the very actuality of all existence ... the ‘actualness’ of everything and everyone. We do not
live in an inert universe ... but one cannot experience this whilst clinging to immortality.
I am mortal.
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This is an opportune time to vitalise any sincere study of actualism with a
pertinent observation: life is neither a random, chance event in an otherwise empty and meaningless universe (the materialist experience) nor
the deliberate, determined expression of a malicious/loving and sorrowful/compassionate divinity (the spiritualist experience). Rather it is
due to the inevitable emergence of its intrinsic character that this physical universe is spontaneously personifying itself as a sensate,
reflective and apperceptively aware human being: as such the universe is stunningly conscious of its own infinitude.
To paraphrase/plagiarise: both materialism (aka western dualism) and spiritualism
(aka eastern non-dualism) miss something essential; they have seen and scrutinised what has happened, and in each their own way how it has
happened (movingly expressed in trillions of words), but they are shutting their eyes to this which makes human life possible, this which is
here to be lived now.
Which means that there is no fundamental significance in regards to people, things
and events if humans miss the actuality of this moment in eternal time at this place in infinite space whilst being the particular form
perpetual matter is organising itself as; for such people remain embedded in either the huge surface crust of everyday reality or the massive
subterranean core of Divine Reality.
In actuality it is the magic of the perfection of the purity of the infinitude this
physical universe actually is that peoples are unwittingly trying to analyse or subjectify; only when a person eliminates the human condition
in its entirety can the factual significance of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being living in the world as-it-is with people
as-they-are, be directly experienced and thus intimately known.
This experiential understanding is beyond anyone’s wildest dreams and schemes.
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