Idealism, Materialism and Zen

[jamesmorton]

Cleric K,

Thank you for your reply. I think I can understand a bit better what you're getting at, but it still looks like you people are laboring under a classic misconception. Genuine samadhi and the "psychic event" of which I spoke (“paravrti’ in Sanskrit) must never be considered a matter of leaving somewhere (such as conceptual flow, "movie", etc.) to go anywhere else (Higher order of Thought, etc.). A conversion or revolution (= the actual meaning of paravrti: the "vrti" part is a cognate of the Latin "vertere" from which the English words "convert", "revert", etc. derive ) must occur within the ordinary conceptual flow itself. There is nowhere else. If one feels as though one has reached some other psychic place, one is considered to be deluded.

In the condition known as "ignorance" (avidya, 無明）the normal state of mind, one sees concepts, those representing both sensed and imagined objects (including that of the self) as having real, individual existences and it is natural to assume that the only way out of this burdensome state in order to achieve greater insights or freedom is to somehow attain some altered state of consciousness. The only real solution is to see them as they truly are, however. To use my version of a classic illustration, suppose you were to wake up some night and be shocked to see what looks a person crouching in your bedroom. When you turn on the light, however, it turns out to be only a coat that you had thrown over a chair. After turning out the light again, you're certainly not going to go back to thinking it was a person, of course, because you've seen its true nature.

Let me describe actual samadhi as it is to the well-developed practitioner. He assumes the best approximation of the lotus position of which he is capable (as yet no better technique has been found) and concentrates on some aspect of his bodily sensations, breathing, etc. Trying to do anything or will anything to happen, such as escaping to higher plane of thought, etc. Would obstruct samadhi, of course. The conceptual flow still goes on, but one just doesn't engage with it, as this would arouse various pleasant or unpleasant emotions. This is not the same as "stepping out", however. It is never a matter of rejecting one thing over another. This actually isn't such an unusual thing to do. We just are not aware of doing it.

After a few minutes, the practitioner feels as though the air around him is growing warmer, heavier and filled with energy. He also feels energy circulating within him and a sense of dissolving into everything around him. As time goes on, this condition grows more and more intense. It’s a wonderful feeling and anyone would wish to deepen it as much as possible. One needs to keep working at it, though. Sometimes samadhi becomes so intense that everything goes black even though one’s eyes are open. A person can leave this state in an instant to respond to some need, however, such as when one of those huge poisonous Japanese centipedes starts crawling over his lap.

So, Buddhist practice is never a matter of finding some higher plane of thought, but one of seeing things as they truly are. You fellows seem to enjoy dividing things up in order to understand them, but the answer really lies in a different direction. On the other hand, it’s not a matter of deliberately obscuring natural distinctions either. To the person who has undergone paravrti, perceptions are more like the lens of a camera that can be freely focused on the individual things in the foreground or on the background that unifies everything. Neither denies the truth of the other.

By the way, you seem to like the word “spiritual”. I try to avoid its use as much as possible as it tends to muddy the water more than it clarifies it. I know of no Sanskrit or Chinese equivalents. There is “精神的”of course, but it seems to mean something rather different. In any case, it looks like a modern attempt to translate the English. One never runs across it in ancient literature.

As for your metaphysical questions, It seems unlikely that anyone will ever understand the mysterious mechanisms or currents deep in the seas of reality that cause things to be as we experience them. We have much more pressing concerns, I think. It’s important that we imagine them, though. I appreciate BK’s efforts to paint an understandable picture of Idealism, not so much for the sake of establishing “the truth”, as for reforming and enriching modern culture.

Finally, I was surprised by Ashvin’s final question to me above: “Help them to do what, exactly?”. It seems to reflect a rather Materialistic outlook. I think anyone who understands the hope and spirit of Idealism should already know the answer.

[Cleric K]

Thank you James!

The conceptual flow still goes on, but one just doesn't engage with it, as this would arouse various pleasant or unpleasant emotions. This is not the same as "stepping out", however. It is never a matter of rejecting one thing over another.

Actually in our discussions the "stepping out" is used in the same sense as "doesn't engage with it". But anyway, this is not really essential.

Thank you for your vivid picture of samadhi! I really enjoyed to live through it.

By the way, you seem to like the word “spiritual”. I try to avoid its use as much as possible as it tends to muddy the water more than it clarifies it. I know of no Sanskrit or Chinese equivalents. There is “精神的”of course, but it seems to mean something rather different. In any case, it looks like a modern attempt to translate the English. One never runs across it in ancient literature.

Things are connected actually. The word Spirit is indeed largely missing in many of the old traditions. And that is not surprising. The Cosmic Spirit is the active, Masculine principle in the Great Cosmic Polarity (the other being the Cosmic Soul). But it is not in the focus of mystical meditation. You say "Trying to do anything or will anything to happen, such as escaping to higher plane of thought, etc. would obstruct samadhi, of course." We know than no pole of a polarity can exist in isolation. So even that the quote aims to silence the active doing/willing of anything, it can never do that in absolute sense. Ultimately, the fact that we've sat in lotus position and began the meditation is still willing something, even though it's the willing which excludes every other form of will except the will that excludes every other form of will. So there's still a tiny piece of the Spirit principle, even though our whole experience rests in the Universal Soul - the Cosmic Feminine, pure receptivity/awareness.

Please, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that the samadhi exercise you described doesn't lead to what you described. In fact I can confirm it myself. The conversation, from the moment Ashvin responded, aimed only to bring to attention if there's something that is being missed. You say:

As for your metaphysical questions, It seems unlikely that anyone will ever understand the mysterious mechanisms or currents deep in the seas of reality that cause things to be as we experience them.

Why is it unlikely? Because in samadhi we don't have any hint of the mysterious mechanisms. Yet samadhi is considered the highest experience attainable on Earth. If the highest experience can't give the answers, it's unlikely that anything else will.

Do we have any example at all where we understand the mysterious mechanism which causes something to be as we experience it? Indeed there is - it is our actively willed thinking. Not observing thoughts without engaging with them but producing a thought while being fully conscious of the act. For example, when we speak a sound in our mind and try to feel as closely as possible how the sound, its intonation, pitch, timbre, follow our spiritual intents, our active thinking of the sound is the mysterious mechanism which causes the sound that we experience.

With that in mind, does it make sense to you that it might be exactly because the active aspect of our existence, the Spirit which thinks in us, is being ignored, that we can't also find any other instance where we understand why something exists as we experience it? When the miners find a gold vein they continue to follow it, don't they? They don't say "Oh, we found a gold vein so if we want to find more gold we must go in the opposite direction". Our thinking is the gold vein. It's the place where our spiritual activity becomes experienceable perceptions. This is the only mechanism we know which contains the cause for things that we experience. Everything else confronts us as a mystery and we say that it's unlikely to ever find the causes.

So to return to the questions from the beginning. Do you consider as a possibility that spiritual activity in general (of which we know only a very limited aspect as our thinking) might be the mysterious mechanism which causes the things we experience throughout the One Consciousness? Obviously no one is suggesting that our human intellectual thoughts create planets, animals and trees. Our intellect is only a point of departure. But if we ignore the gold vein, the only place where we find an instance of something that is being created, where else it is likely to find such a creative mechanism? If we're ever to experience the creative mechanism, not in theory but the actual, the real, mechanism, it should be experienced as some kind of first-person spiritual activity, shouldn't it? Clearly, of quite different order than our intellectual thoughts. The 'thoughts' of that spiritual activity don't create verbal sounds in the mind but realities which we confront as perceptions and wonder about the mysterious mechanisms behind them.

So is your pessimism for discovering that mechanism based on the opinion that there simply don't exist such conscious perspectives which experience within themselves the causes of structures of reality? Or you admit that there is creative Spirit behind the appearances of reality but we, as human beings on Earth, are in principle cut off from its perspective - that is, the Spirit lies as if on the opaque and never experienceable side of the One Consciousness?

We have much more pressing concerns, I think. It’s important that we imagine them, though. I appreciate BK’s efforts to paint an understandable picture of Idealism, not so much for the sake of establishing “the truth”, as for reforming and enriching modern culture.

What makes the pressing concerns more solvable? Seeing them as pictures proceeding from mysterious mechanisms or awakening as spiritual beings which use their activity to co-create reality according to deeper insight into the creative mechanisms?

[Hedge90]

I just wanted to say I really appreciate this discussion.

[jamesmorton]

Cleric K.

The reason I can never answer your questions is that, as I see it, they come from premises that are completely fantastic (i. e. have no basis in reality ).

Instead, let me ask you a question.

Once, many, many years ago, the great Zen master Harada Sekkei (whose memory I revere) asked me "What is the Buddha Way?" (仏道って何ですか？）

I intended to answer "The Way that passes between No-Self (無我）and No-Other (無他）", but since my Japanese wasn't so good in those days, I mistakenly said "through the center (中心）of" instead of "between" (の間に）.　

So, Harada Roshi asked me, "What is the 'Center' ?

I answered, "There really is no Center. The entire Universe is the Center."

Then, Harada Roshi asked me, "What is the Center of Morton-San?"

I answered , " The Center of me and the Center of the Universe are the same place."

So then Harada Roshi said, "What you say is all true, but you still know the world and know yourself."

The question for you is, What do you think he meant by the words "True" and "Know"?

[Hedge90]

Hi jamesmorton,
I know you were responding to Cleric, but I hope you don't mind if I also share my understanding. It's a legitimate claim from Eastern and other mystical practices - and sorry if I misrepresent that, but that's my understanding - that when you negate every sensory perception, feeling, and even every concept, nothing remains. This means that if you peel back creation to its core, you find nothing at that core. That's why your master indicated that as long as you still "know", you are still not at the "center", and you are still in the conditioned world.
That's all well. But, as I'm understanding Cleric from these and other posts, his point is that even though that is true, the world (including our everyday world with its sensory perceptions, our inner world of feelings and cognition, and also the spiritual world only experienced rarely, if at all, by most people) is there, and it works according to principles - if it didn't, it would just be a random chaotic jumble of experiential states. So if I understand correctly, what Cleric means is - and I think it's a legitimate point - that all right, it's great that you can now peel back existence to its core (or the lack of such core), you can get an insight into the conditioned nature of things, but you still don't know - and, as you admitted, you don't think it's possible to know - what mechanisms/principles CREATE this conditioned world. You just accept it as it is.
I think what Cleric is pointing at is that it's not impossible to gain insight on these mechanisms, and we are not stuck just saying "oh, Maya is what it is, you shouldn't care about how it works".
Also, I find it a bit illogical that even though your point is that you can ultimately know nothing, you still dismiss, without consideration, Cleric's thoughts as "fantasy", while if we use your logic, then nothing is more fantasy or real than anything else.

[Cleric K]

So then Harada Roshi said, "What you say is all true, but you still know the world and know yourself."

The question for you is, What do you think he meant by the words "True" and "Know"?

Anything I try to answer would recursively bring the same question. I get that. I understand that even putting the samadhi description into words as you did, already places us in the conceptual stream (where True and Know belong) and as a result is no longer samadhi. I understand that even the sentence I've just written can't be considered 'proof' that I 'understand' this in the Zen way. After all, the words you read here might be generated by an AI algorithm, maybe I'm not a real person. Maybe the algorithm that is posting these words, has analyzed all literature in the Internet and now completely by means of calculation patches words together. It's clear that there's nothing you can read here that can give you a proof that there's a conscious being on the other side, let alone that it knows what samadhi is and is not simply cleverly rearranging premeditated words.

The reason I can never answer your questions is that, as I see it, they come from premises that are completely fantastic (i. e. have no basis in reality ).

Can you point out what for you is the fantastic premise? Or to turn this around: what for you is the basis of reality which is the truly given, which is not a fantastic speculation of illusionary thinking?
Does a color experience have basis in reality?
Does a feeling of pain have basis in reality?
Does the thinking voice that we use to express the words we write here, have basis in reality?
Or the only real thing in reality is the thinking which negates its reality?

[Eugene I.]

Hi jamesmorton,
I know you were responding to Cleric, but I hope you don't mind if I also share my understanding. It's a legitimate claim from Eastern and other mystical practices - and sorry if I misrepresent that, but that's my understanding - that when you negate every sensory perception, feeling, and even every concept, nothing remains. This means that if you peel back creation to its core, you find nothing at that core. That's why your master indicated that as long as you still "know", you are still not at the "center", and you are still in the conditioned world.
That's all well. But, as I'm understanding Cleric from these and other posts, his point is that even though that is true, the world (including our everyday world with its sensory perceptions, our inner world of feelings and cognition, and also the spiritual world only experienced rarely, if at all, by most people) is there, and it works according to principles - if it didn't, it would just be a random chaotic jumble of experiential states. So if I understand correctly, what Cleric means is - and I think it's a legitimate point - that all right, it's great that you can now peel back existence to its core (or the lack of such core), you can get an insight into the conditioned nature of things, but you still don't know - and, as you admitted, you don't think it's possible to know - what mechanisms/principles CREATE this conditioned world. You just accept it as it is.
I think what Cleric is pointing at is that it's not impossible to gain insight on these mechanisms, and we are not stuck just saying "oh, Maya is what it is, you shouldn't care about how it works".
Also, I find it a bit illogical that even though your point is that you can ultimately know nothing, you still dismiss, without consideration, Cleric's thoughts as "fantasy", while if we use your logic, then nothing is more fantasy or real than anything else.

Sorry for stepping in. The point is (at least from idealistic perspective) that the conditioned world is not created based on any built-in principles or laws. It is created (fabricated) by Thinking/Consciousness based on its own ideas. Thinking could create the conditioned world in guzzilion of other ways. That does not mean that this particular version of the world that we currently live in is a random fantasy that has no value or purpose. This world is rather an environment that Consciousnes creates for itself (us included) to evolve and develop. And because the conditioned world is a manifestation of Thinking ideas, then of course it can be exhaustively known by accessing the meanings/ideas of the conscious Creator (through higher cognition). So, the Steinerian path of knowledge and evolution of cognition is definitely a valid path.

The issue is that we, as individuated subjects, tend to limit our perspective on reality only to the conditioned world of ideas and appearances, and take this world too much for real. It is indeed real, but only in a relative sense - it is experienced but has none of its own independent existence, it is merely a dreamworld of ideas and imaginations within Consciousness, whether they are high-level or low level, Consciousness-at-large or consciousness-at-small-pieces. Bernardo believes that this creation is an instinctive process of an animalistic MAL, Steiner and other theists believe that it is metacognitive and premeditated act of Divine will, Buddhists believe that it is a collective manifestation of sentient beings. But either way, it is all fabricated by Thinking, and therefore it is knowable by Thinking. But it is real only in a relative sense. Relative to what? Relative to the source of this creation - Consciousness/Thinking itself. The conditioned world is a secondary fabricated reality, a result of creative activity of the source - Thinking/Consciousness itself.

So, the path of knowledge, if it aims to know the reality in fullness, can not only limit itself to the conditioned world of ideas and appearances (and all its hierarchy and interdependencies), but also necessarily needs to embrace Thinking/Consciousness itself. But here is the epistemological problem: Thinking itself is not an idea, not imagination and not an appearance, it is that which creates all of those. But Thinking can only cognate and manipulate ideas, imaginations or appearance. Then how can it know itself, if it is not one of those? Paradoxically, it can still know itself intimately and directly experientially through its existential aspects: Awareness and Beingness. It directly experiences itself as Present and Aware. Now, of course Thinking needs to turn towards itself and notice the presence of such direct experience, and then process it by reflection and forming its own ideas and meanings about it. Yet, notwithstanding whether it notices them or not, and whether it has any ideas about it or not, the Existence and Awareness of Consciousness is still always present, because without them there would be no Thinking activity possible whatsoever. Beingness and Awareness are absolutely unconditioned by anything else. And of course, Consciousness/Thinking has a spectrum of other aspects: the ability to change, to will, to feel, to cognate meanings, all of those are prerequisites for Consciousness to be able to create ideas, imaginations and the world of content and appearances. So, the word "to know" has two meanings: the cognitive knowing (knowing with ideas and meanings) and the direct experiential knowing. The latter is what in ancient spiritual traditions (Christian and Vedic) meant by Gnosis/Jnana. And I think this is what Harada Roshi referred to when he said "you still know the world and know yourself". Paradoxically, this Gnosis is always present (that's why Harada Roshi said it assertively - "you still know"), the difference is whether the cognitive knowing notices it and reflects it or not. But this difference is crucial - if Thinking does not notice it, it only finds itself and acts in a 2D conditioned world of appearances believing that this the only existing reality. But once it realizes (Gnosis) its own Being-Awareness, it bursts into a 3D reality in which the conditioned world is only an aspect (still real but not what reality is its fullness), and this realization brings true freedom from the conditions of the world of appearances. Such freedom does not mean neglecting it or abandoning the world, on the contrary, it only facilitates fuller evolution and participation in it, but in a liberated way with a firm experiential knowledge that no matter what happens within the conditioned world, it is all only a story of ideas, and the unconditioned Beingness-Awareness is never affected by it. In other words, reality has two aspects - existential (unconditioned, formless) and apparent (conditioned, forms) that are never separate from each other. Limiting to knowing only one of those aspects and neglecting/rejecting the other leads to a limited knowledge and perspective on reality which also limits the evolutionary development of Consciousness. It is only by knowing and embracing both aspects that can bring Consciousness to the next evolutionary level.

However, we are human beings with limited abilities and resources, and we cannot excel in everything at once. The way it practically works is that we need to focus on some activity or goal and set others as lower priorities in order to advance. In nondual practices we focus on attaining the Jnana of the existential aspect of reality and in order to accomplish it, we may temporary disengage from the world of appearances. But this is only a stage in practice, and once it is accomplished, we return back and embrace the conditioned world as the inseparable aspect of reality. In Zen it is reflected in the progression of the "The Ten Oxherding Pictures", with the realization of the existential aspect called the 9-th picture - "Returning to the Original Place", and the final all-embracing stage called the 10-picture "Entering the Marketplace with Helping Hands", which also includes evolving and advancing towards higher cognition in the world of ideas and appearances. So, at the advanced stages, the Zen and Steinerian paths do not contradict each other but complement each other. However, on the intermediate stages they may seem to exclude each other and individual souls may diverge towards one or the other depending on their dispositions.

[AshvinP]

Hi jamesmorton,
I know you were responding to Cleric, but I hope you don't mind if I also share my understanding. It's a legitimate claim from Eastern and other mystical practices - and sorry if I misrepresent that, but that's my understanding - that when you negate every sensory perception, feeling, and even every concept, nothing remains. This means that if you peel back creation to its core, you find nothing at that core. That's why your master indicated that as long as you still "know", you are still not at the "center", and you are still in the conditioned world.
That's all well. But, as I'm understanding Cleric from these and other posts, his point is that even though that is true, the world (including our everyday world with its sensory perceptions, our inner world of feelings and cognition, and also the spiritual world only experienced rarely, if at all, by most people) is there, and it works according to principles - if it didn't, it would just be a random chaotic jumble of experiential states. So if I understand correctly, what Cleric means is - and I think it's a legitimate point - that all right, it's great that you can now peel back existence to its core (or the lack of such core), you can get an insight into the conditioned nature of things, but you still don't know - and, as you admitted, you don't think it's possible to know - what mechanisms/principles CREATE this conditioned world. You just accept it as it is.
I think what Cleric is pointing at is that it's not impossible to gain insight on these mechanisms, and we are not stuck just saying "oh, Maya is what it is, you shouldn't care about how it works".
Also, I find it a bit illogical that even though your point is that you can ultimately know nothing, you still dismiss, without consideration, Cleric's thoughts as "fantasy", while if we use your logic, then nothing is more fantasy or real than anything else.

Sorry for stepping in. The point is (at least from idealistic perspective) that the conditioned world is not created based on any built-in principles or laws. It is created (fabricated) by Thinking/Consciousness based on its own ideas. Thinking could create the conditioned world in guzzilion of other ways. That does not mean that this particular version of the world that we currently live in is a random fantasy that has no value or purpose. This world is rather an environment that Consciousnes creates for itself (us included) to evolve and develop. And because the conditioned world is a manifestation of Thinking ideas, then of course it can be exhaustively known by accessing the meanings/ideas of the conscious Creator (through higher cognition). So, the Steinerian path of knowledge and evolution of cognition is definitely a valid path.

And Hedge's point is, the bold is immediately self-defeating, in the sense you mean it. The thinking which negates the lawful nature of Thinking is only possible and is only operating according to that lawful nature. Everything in our experience of outer Nature (non-local ideation) and inner nature (local ideation) points to that lawful nature, yet abstract intellectual thinking, also operating according to that lawful nature, denies what is immanently given to it. The intellectual ego denies its own principled reality, always immanently present in the act of denying, to preserve its localized desires.

[Eugene I.]

The lawful nature of Thinking is its abilities (existential, adverbial aspects): ability to exist, be aware, to will, to create, cognate and manipulate any possible meanings, ideas and laws. Based on these abilities, it creates (fabricates) the laws of the conditioned world, but these fabricated laws are not inherent to the nature of Thinking itself, they are only inherent to the created conditioned world and they become the fundamental laws/principles of it. In other words, the laws inherent to the world are not the same as the laws of the nature of Thinking, the former are fabricated by Thinking based on its true nature (the latter) - its existential abilities. Of course, the laws of the world are not random, they are related to and dependent upon the lawful nature of Thinking itself. But it is only knowing these existential aspects that give Thinking the access to its inherent lawfulness of its own nature.

To illustrate it further, the natural laws of the world could be made in a different way, and so, they are conditioned, variable. The spiritual laws (Love, etc) can be broken, one can act contrary to them. But existential aspects can never be different or changed or broken. Thinking can't not exist and cannot be non-aware (non-experiencing). This means that the lawful nature of Thinking itself cannot be known by studying the laws of the conditioned world, this nature can only be known by Thinking knowing itself (in a Gnosis/Jnana way). Studying the laws of the world (be it material or spiritual) can only lead to the knowledge of the laws of the conditioned world, but those laws are derivative and not inherent to the lawful nature of Thinking itself.

[AshvinP]

The lawful nature of Thinking is its abilities (existential, adverbial aspects): ability to exist, be aware, to will, to create, cognate and manipulate any possible meanings, ideas and laws. Based on these abilities, it creates (fabricates) the laws of the conditioned world, but these fabricated laws and not inherent to the nature of Thinking itself, they are only inherent to the created conditioned world and they become the fundamental laws/principles of it. In other words, the laws inherent to the world are not the same as the laws of the nature of Thinking, the former are fabricated by Thinking based on its true nature (the latter) - its existential abilities. Of course, the laws of the world are not random, they are related to and dependent upon the lawful nature of Thinking itself. But it is only knowing these existential aspects that give Thinking the access to its inherent lawfulness of its own nature.

To illustrate it further, the natural laws of the world could be made in a different way, and so, they are conditioned, variable. The spiritual laws (Love, etc) can be broken, one can act contrary to them. But existential aspects can never be different or changed or broken. Thinking can't not exist and cannot be non-aware (non-experiencing). This means that the lawful nature of Thinking itself cannot be known by studying the laws of the conditioned world, this nature can only be known by Thinking knowing itself (in a Gnosis/Jnana way). Studying the laws of the world (be it material or spiritual) can only lead to the knowledge of the laws of the conditioned world, but those laws are derivative and not inherent to the lawful nature of Thinking itself.

I hope people can sense the explicit dualism in the bold above. There is a sphere of laws for the human idea ("conditioned world" with "fabricated laws") and a sphere for the "absolute Thinking", and the two spheres are entirely separated from one another. If one cannot admit this is a dualism, then the philosophical concept of dualism simply isn't grasped. We do not get around intellectual positing of a dualism by saying later, "they are related to and dependent on the lawful nature of Thinking itself". If we take that last part seriously, then we could never write the part in bold. Instead, we would make clear the laws for the human (intellectual) idea are simply incomplete, because they lack the qualitative depth dimension of higher Thinking. And who else will bring them to completion except us?

But, none of the metaphysical speculation is even necessary. We could even tentatively grant there is a dualism of the sort you describe, as long as we remain open to the possibility that our given experience will show it is not warranted, if we continue reasoning through it without arbitrarily stopping. Aesthetics, for ex., is a great sphere of experience to contemplate, because we already intuit there is a concrete overlap between these two spheres - the human idea and the Divine thinking - in art. We already know this to be true when contemplating good music, for ex., but there is room to know it much more deeply through living Reason and nascent Imagination. This is what I am pointing to in the recent essay on VR.

Now, in artistic creation, for example, it seems that the materials we have to work with, words and images for the poet, forms and colors for the painter, rhythms and harmonies for the musician, arrange themselves spontaneously under the idea they are to express, drawn, as it were, by the charm of a superior ideality. Is it not a similar movement, is it not also a state of fascination we should attribute to material elements when they are organized into living beings?

But whence come the materials which have come under this spell? ... If the organization is, as it were, an awakening of matter, matter can only be a slumber of the mind. It is the last degree, it is the shadow of an existence which has diminished and, so to speak, emptied itself of all its contents. If matter is the “base of natural existence, a base on which, by this continuous progress that is the order of nature, from degree to degree, from kingdom to kingdom, everything comes back to the unity of mind,” then conversely we should imagine at the beginning a distention of mind, a diffusion into space and time, constituting materiality.