What comes first? Mind or Matter? Thought or Object? Consciousness or Reality?
The answer to these questions is not easy. But there is an answer, or at least one that brings us closer to understanding who and what we are. Within that understanding is a place of healing and transformation for the individual, for humanity, and for all earthly life (animate and inanimate). The answer, such as it is, can bring an end to existential unhappiness (Who am I? What am I?), societal division, war, hatred, exploitation, and destruction. This is what we all want, if only idealistically. But we have been utterly helpless to change the trajectory of our existence from the moment the first stone was cast by brother against brother.
Humanity is stuck in its own biblical origin story. This is where separation began. Separation from "source" (however we name it --God, energy, nature...). The expulsion of humanity from "oneness" and descent into fear and uncertainty. Then the rise of a panoply of dualities created to make sense of it all. Hard-core dualistic beliefs about existence and reality: good and evil, right and wrong, winners and losers, deserving and undeserving, heathen and righteous, rich and poor, strong and weak. Dualities and divisions, and hierarchies, and scales. Shades of colors, levels of intelligence, class and caste, beauty and plainness and beastliness. It is an unending cascade of divisions that we believe must be so! We are born into a world of institutions that uphold these beliefs as sacrosanct and we teach our children the same.
In our time (in my time: 75 years), we have made great strides toward getting back to source. That is, to a greater state of oneness and connectedness with all that is--man and beast, man and nature, man and woman! Well, some nations in some hemispheres under some governmental structures have made strides toward a more ideal society: inclusiveness, equality, democratic institutions, environmental activism, rule of law, etc. In the seventy-five years before that, and in the hundred and fifty years before that, and in the 2000 years before that, people of each time made great strides in civilizing human society, or so they thought.
But, here we find ourselves, still burdened by social divisiveness, weapons of mass destruction, constant warfare (nation against nation; ethnic hatred; power for power's sake), poverty, exploitation of the environment, inequality, injustices, egregious acts against one other, political movements that that sow division-with-intention. It is exhausting in a way that stirs feelings of hopelessness, resignation, disaffection with those who feign to be our leaders, and isolation from all that is.
Once again, problems as old as our own creation stories. The fall (separation), the consequences (fear of scarcity and vulnerability), the rise of solutions steeped in the language of dualism (the good will survive, the bad shall perish). Each generation creating duality upon duality upon duality ad infinitum.
How Do We Answer the Unanswerable?
Is it really useful to discern what came first --mind or matter? Or to distinguish between a reality of oneness or one of duality? The answer is yes, otherwise we continue down a path of false assumptions about reality that limit any true change or evolution of the human condition.
I'll posit three different perspectives below that might help us transcend many of our core beliefs about reality and reach toward a new era of personal and societal experience. One perspective comes from a psychologist and holocaust survivor (Viktor Frankl), another from a current-day philosopher of non-duality (Rupert Spira), and the third from a disembodied spirit (Seth) channeled through medium Jane Roberts in the 1960s and 1970s.
Viktor Frankl
Life is purposeful up to the very last breath.
(The Doctor and the Soul)
A phrase that is hopeful on its face, but could be troublesome for those who strive a lifetime for a sense of purpose. Nevertheless it is an idea that is full of hopefulness and meaning.
Seth
We are all of good intent.
(A Seth Book: The Nature of Personal Reality)
Human beings are born into this world with good intent and from a place of pure love. What could be more beautiful to imagine than that. But Seth goes on to say that we are born into families with pre-established core beliefs and basic assumptions about our own existence, many of which go unexamined for lifetimes and even millennia. They become roadblocks and limitations to innocent, open, new souls born into our world knowing who and what they are and where they have come from. They must learn that "I am separate from everything that is not me." They are told that human nature is inherently good, or not so good. They are forced into a concept of time that goes in one direction only. They must know that the world is a dangerous place and that we are in a struggle for survival. Many of our core beliefs are accepted not as "beliefs" but as reality or truth. Yet they are just that --beliefs-- and not necessarily attributes of reality.
Rupert Spira
(The Nature of Consciousness)
All that is known, or could ever be known, is experience. Struggle as we may with the implications of this statement, we cannot legitimately deny it. Being all that could ever be known, experience itself must be the test of reality. If we do not take experience as the test of reality, belief will be the only alternative. Experience and belief --or 'the way of truth and the way of opinion', as Parmenides expressed it in the fifth century BCE --are the only two possibilities.
Whether mind perceives a world outside of itself, as believed under the prevailing materialist paradigm, or projects the world within itself, as is believed in the consciousness-only approach., everything that is known or experienced is known or experienced through the mind.
Consciousness is the fundamental, underlying reality of the "apparent" duality of mind and matter. Overlooking , forgetting or ignoring of this reality is the root cause of both the existential unhappiness that pervades and motivates most people's lives and the wider conflicts that exist between communities and nations. Conversely, recognition of the fundamental reality of consciousness is the prerequisite and a necessary and sufficient condition for an individual' s quest for lasting happiness and the foundation of world peace.
Here, then, is the beginning of an answer in our individual lives.
Be courageous enough to examine your own core beliefs about reality and your place within it.. Allow yourself to trust as "real" those experiences that don't fit the mold of long-held beliefs and assumptions. Be open to the feeling of an "inner" knowing that resides within all of us. Be ready to explore that inner space., that inner self with joy and a creative mind. Our fundamental nature is spiritual. We have simply forgotten that fundamental truth.
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Experience Transcends Belief