boris
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- Oct 1, 2019
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I heard him say the soul is there before the body, but I can't find it. I think it was a Timpone interview from last year.
I think this should somewhat clarify the confusion (from about 58:00 on):
Ray Peat: "Wilhelm Reich [...] he has said the people who identifiy with what Freud called the Super Ego, they would put all life in spiritual things and that makes them see the body as a worthless lump. And matter versus spirit is an absolute contradiction in that Freudian thinking that Wilhelm Reich emphasized over and over, that matter itself is the source of experience and knowledge. And it's a deformation of personality that makes people think about matter as something else, something outside of consciousness and knowledge, the [inaudible] idea that the thing in itself is unknowable, where Blake and Reich would say that "the genius of matter is what knows." [...] some places Blake said there's no body distinct from the soul, but other places he identified the body with energy, what he was denying was that there is this inert nature behind what we experience as nature. There is no such thing as a thing in itself, which is this inert passive matter."
John Barkausen: "He's saying it's all energy"
Ray Peat: "Yeah, the substance out of which we and the universe are made is something which you can call poetic genius or energy ...or matter, if you don't get the wrong understanding of what matter means."
In here he says the consciousness is a quality of matter. @haidut there quotes a what appears to be a Vedantic or Advaita Vedanta quote, but then moves on to turn the whole idea upside down, arguing that consciousness is a property of matter. Then Peat says "it is proper to think of consciousness as a substance" which in fairness is roughly my view. I can not quite pin down his view, but it does seem to consider matter primary and the cause of experience which is the opposite to my view.
I think this should somewhat clarify the confusion (from about 58:00 on):
Ray Peat: "Wilhelm Reich [...] he has said the people who identifiy with what Freud called the Super Ego, they would put all life in spiritual things and that makes them see the body as a worthless lump. And matter versus spirit is an absolute contradiction in that Freudian thinking that Wilhelm Reich emphasized over and over, that matter itself is the source of experience and knowledge. And it's a deformation of personality that makes people think about matter as something else, something outside of consciousness and knowledge, the [inaudible] idea that the thing in itself is unknowable, where Blake and Reich would say that "the genius of matter is what knows." [...] some places Blake said there's no body distinct from the soul, but other places he identified the body with energy, what he was denying was that there is this inert nature behind what we experience as nature. There is no such thing as a thing in itself, which is this inert passive matter."
John Barkausen: "He's saying it's all energy"
Ray Peat: "Yeah, the substance out of which we and the universe are made is something which you can call poetic genius or energy ...or matter, if you don't get the wrong understanding of what matter means."
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