The Nature of Reality - Materialism v Idealism

boris

Member
Joined
Oct 1, 2019
Messages
2,345
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.

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."
 
Last edited:

Beastmode

Member
Joined
Feb 7, 2017
Messages
1,258
Me:
Do you think with robust metabolism, strong coherence (brain and heart) with intention alone; people can facilitate healing in another person? (close by or at a distance)

Ray:
Intentional healing does exist. Anything that doesn’t have a guild, or union, or corporate organization always tends to be excluded from normal reality.

I will ask him to expand on this. I know people who do this type of work, and outside something woo woo, I wonder if there's a good scientific explanation how this might occur. Seems like those who push this idea don't have the science to back it up. Someone like Ray, with his science/biology/etc understanding, would be great to validate something like that.
 
OP
Hugh Johnson

Hugh Johnson

Member
Joined
Mar 14, 2014
Messages
2,648
Location
The Sultanate of Portugal
Me:
Do you think with robust metabolism, strong coherence (brain and heart) with intention alone; people can facilitate healing in another person? (close by or at a distance)

Ray:
Intentional healing does exist. Anything that doesn’t have a guild, or union, or corporate organization always tends to be excluded from normal reality.

I will ask him to expand on this. I know people who do this type of work, and outside something woo woo, I wonder if there's a good scientific explanation how this might occur. Seems like those who push this idea don't have the science to back it up. Someone like Ray, with his science/biology/etc understanding, would be great to validate something like that.
There is plenty of science. Bengston method has been studied with mice a lot, and Skeptiko podcast has interviewed a lot of researchers.

Energy healing tends to work better on animals though. Humans tend to get cancer and other illnesses as result of misuse of catalyst such as anger.

As far as a scientific explanation, it's because there is nothing but consciousness taking form. Why should consciousness not be able to affect consciousness?
 
Joined
Nov 26, 2017
Messages
251
@boris

Thanks, that was really interesting.

My email to RP:

I am not religious at all. I am struggling very bad right now trying to deal with my father's death. He was nowhere close to being ready, and he was taken prematurely due to the hospital's terrible procedures. They unloaded so much medicine into his body, and it could just not take it. Do you believe that our soul or consciousness lives on somewhere, or are we just pure fertilizer?

His reply...
Rupert Sheldrake, Max Freedom Long, Andrija Puharich, Michael Persinger and Albert North Whitehead have described reasons for thinking that consciousness is in some ways objective and “exterior,” not simply a bodily state. Persinger’s talk “No more secrets” is an introduction to some of the implications.


More from RP:

I think the main idea is that, because of the way that things are interconnected, each of us existing in and for others, we call it telepathy when we share consciousness through space, and call it "former lives" and "after life" when we share consciousness across time. Family members and close friends sometimes share consciousness telepathically, especially when the “receiver" is asleep and dreaming, and the same receptive state seems occasionally to be in contact with them when they have died. The physical basis for this objective consciousness would be something like a vortex, a whirlwind or resonance, in the “neutrino sea,” or “luminiferous ether” or subquantal medium.
 

Beastmode

Member
Joined
Feb 7, 2017
Messages
1,258


Rupert Spira makes here the case that we should proceed from consciousness, and abandon abstractions like matter as the foundation of reality.

He definitely represents non duality more clearly than anyone I've heard. Also has a way of guiding an individual, regardless where they are, to a better understanding as well.
 

Cloudhands

Member
Joined
Jan 11, 2019
Messages
988
"The dualistic conception of matter as distinct from energy and consciousness is a constrictive illusion put in place by the forces of empire, and the living reality would be freed from the inert husks of the wrongly conceived natural world".
-RP
 

Cloudhands

Member
Joined
Jan 11, 2019
Messages
988
"The dualistic conception of matter as distinct from energy and consciousness is a constrictive illusion put in place by the forces of empire, and the living reality would be freed from the inert husks of the wrongly conceived natural world".
-RP
How do you respond to this? You say that matter and energy should be distinct, and ray peat seems to think that this view you hold is only an illusion. Unless your statement only differs semantically and you actually agree with him. To me all of the discussion of which aspect of reality is the most fundemental is odd. Like "which part of stuff does stuff stem from" just seems weird like, its all just stuff and there are different aspects which can be focused on, but me changing my focus doesnt make whichever aspect im focusing on more real or fundamental than another aspect. Perhaps im just confused tho.
 
OP
Hugh Johnson

Hugh Johnson

Member
Joined
Mar 14, 2014
Messages
2,648
Location
The Sultanate of Portugal
How do you respond to this? You say that matter and energy should be distinct, and ray peat seems to think that this view you hold is only an illusion. Unless your statement only differs semantically and you actually agree with him. To me all of the discussion of which aspect of reality is the most fundemental is odd. Like "which part of stuff does stuff stem from" just seems weird like, its all just stuff and there are different aspects which can be focused on, but me changing my focus doesnt make whichever aspect im focusing on more real or fundamental than another aspect. Perhaps im just confused tho.
I and all the nondual thinkers think that there is only consciousness. I do not think that matter and energy are separate, rather all things are consciousness taking form. I do not consider matter to have an existence independent of consciousness. You are bit confused, sorry.

I agree with the quote. It is other things I disagree with, namely the existence of matter outside of consciousness. I consider matter a mere activity of consciousness, like all things.
 

Cloudhands

Member
Joined
Jan 11, 2019
Messages
988
I and all the nondual thinkers think that there is only consciousness. I do not think that matter and energy are separate, rather all things are consciousness taking form. I do not consider matter to have an existence independent of consciousness. You are bit confused, sorry.

I agree with the quote. It is other things I disagree with, namely the existence of matter outside of consciousness. I consider matter a mere activity of consciousness, like all things.
Okay no worries i see your POV now and you and I both agree, it was just a semantic jargle. I dont see how anyone could see it any differently to be honest. I think people who think matter is the basis of all things wont come onto this forum much, considering their POV is quite authoratative. A materialist POV is kind of stubborn in the sense that it takes on an institutionalized view point and holds that these ideas must be true since authority points to it. I think the fact that empirical evidence (emphasis on empire) is the basis of hard science (hard implying the tangible nature of material) has become the only institution to be taken seriously and considered infallible is a good example of this attitude
 
OP
Hugh Johnson

Hugh Johnson

Member
Joined
Mar 14, 2014
Messages
2,648
Location
The Sultanate of Portugal
Okay no worries i see your POV now and you and I both agree, it was just a semantic jargle. I dont see how anyone could see it any differently to be honest. I think people who think matter is the basis of all things wont come onto this forum much, considering their POV is quite authoratative. A materialist POV is kind of stubborn in the sense that it takes on an institutionalized view point and holds that these ideas must be true since authority points to it. I think the fact that empirical evidence (emphasis on empire) is the basis of hard science (hard implying the tangible nature of material) has become the only institution to be taken seriously and considered infallible is a good example of this attitude
Plenty of highly intelligent people hold different views. Peat is a materialist of some kind, and most people in the world have dualistic belief system.
 

Serge

Member
Joined
Sep 4, 2020
Messages
179
I have the idealist position, aka nondualism or Advaita Vedanta. This is the simple idea that there can only be one fundamental reality.

We can build a castle from a pile of clay. What's the "fundamental reality", the castle or the clay? The only fundamental thing about this question is that it takes an individual human being to ask it. But an individual human being is a product of Maya. An illusion. So is the question, let alone answer.
Also, the only "real" reality, the Brahman, would need a mechanism to create small illusory realities like you and me. Why and how would the nondual bother?
 
OP
Hugh Johnson

Hugh Johnson

Member
Joined
Mar 14, 2014
Messages
2,648
Location
The Sultanate of Portugal
We can build a castle from a pile of clay. What's the "fundamental reality", the castle or the clay? The only fundamental thing about this question is that it takes an individual human being to ask it. But an individual human being is a product of Maya. An illusion. So is the question, let alone answer.
Also, the only "real" reality, the Brahman, would need a mechanism to create small illusory realities like you and me. Why and how would the nondual bother?
Castle is the activity of the clay. The metaphor does not work all that well. A screen is a better metaphor. While is seems like the is movement and things on the screen, in actuality the screen is unchanged, and all the appearances on it are the activity of the screen. The actual reality is nothing like the screen, there are no actual folders that you open. Of course in this case you are the screen.

As far as why, it can not be rationally argued here. My view, which is somewhat outside of the scope of the thread, is that the reason for creation is the desire of the one creator (that would be consciousness) to know itself. Alan Watts put it this way: If you could dream any dream you wished, you would have all kinds of adventures. But they would become boring quite soon. So to really get into it you would forget that you are dreaming and would actually live your life as if it's real.
 

Parsifal

Member
Joined
Aug 6, 2015
Messages
1,081
Plenty of highly intelligent people hold different views. Peat is a materialist of some kind, and most people in the world have dualistic belief system.
I've always thought that Peat had a vitalist view, which is different from materialism.
 

Similar threads

Back
Top Bottom