Immaterialism

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"Ecce est percipi" roughly means "to be is to be perceived".

According to this thought, matter is not real. Everything is mind.

To a Taoist, everything is one, and it is our mind that creates duality. So, as far as the universe is logical (A vs. not-A), the universe is mind. Specifically, the mind of God.

When you are looking to believe something for logical reasons, you are looking for Godly reasons.

When you are looking for practical applications, however, materialism is the way to go.

Quite simply, there is nothing that a materialist says that an immaterialist cannot, and that is incredibly useful.

This world we live in is an illusion on many levels,
Not only is reality more like a simulation but even if you believe the world is real it will holds many illusions.
Things look good on the outside but when you get them you realize it wasn't what it seemed.
Look at pictures of celebrities without make-up for an example of illusion at its lowest level.

I have heard many tales of people who buy expensive sports cars and get bored of them in a few minutes.

Words are pointless without the action to back them up.

You mean, think about things that you care about. I'm sorry, but I will not be bullied for presenting different beliefs.

I'm not sure how you expect me to reply to this. It sounds a ridiculously stupid thing to say on a philosophy forum, where we have nothing but words. But, you are the second person to tell me to stop talking in so many posts.

Reality is like a thought, because it is one.

Some people who disagree with me believe in dualities like "mind vs. matter" or "matter vs. energy". There's no way to prove that such dualities encompass everything that exists; reality is not a false dichotomy, and chances are "matter vs. energy" is a false dichotomy.

But, we do know that we never experience anything outside of consciousness. The fact of immaterialism is proven by the impossibility of disproving solipsism.

I have told you only that words without actions are pointless, and that practicality dictates a materialist's point of view.

Don't lie about me, and don't infer that which was neither stated nor implied.

You aren't being consistent. Do you believe that words in this philosophy forum are pointless? They do not lead to action. Stay consistent when you reply.

Anyway, how does immaterialism mean impracticality? Those are different things.

For right or wrong we interpret this world as a very solid, tangible, and real place. Being that's the case I have to phrase my thoughts accordingly.

When it comes to conscious activity the immaterial manages, manipulates, and and imprints data onto the material. The material in and of itself seems to adhere to rather rigid rules, rules to which imagination in any external agency seems to be either prohibited in any overt manifestation or the suggestion lends itself that higher level consciousness may not be 'out there' in the objective realm outside of things that can carry something along the lines of a neurological or computational charge.

it's profoundly interesting to me that a person can do something like change the entire flow of their life (state change - I won't debate determinism/freewill here) by their decisive and willful use of imagination. We don't have an analogy for this outside of sentient life which accordingly is cause for its own meditation. Similarly if you think of the tree of life you could think of Kether flowing into Tiphareth, flowing into Yesod, and all of that happening from the source of the flicker of consciousness out to our fingers, toes, tongues, etc. when it's finally grounded in Malkuth. I know in my BOTA monographs Paul Foster Case and Ann Davies talk consistently about the flow of cognition and imagination outward and what got me looking into esotericism to begin with was the realization that I could imagine my way out of a lot of really bad reactions to things - reactions that I didn't want to partake in per say but to consider myself and my value fully strapped to the external world, what it thought of me on average or where it was taking me, lets just say I didn't have many particularly good choices under that regime. The very realization that my imagination and willful change of tone could extract me from bondage to some really destructive lines of logic said a lot.

I don't know that I'd ever want to assert a 'reality is this' in a one-liner because even if it were the container truth there's still wheels with wheels and a lot of things that don't lend themselves to a homogeneous image or explanation at ground level. Still, I think it's critical that as we sort of organize the chaos of the human condition and still the social waters that we do our best to account for everything because there's still so much we simply don't know and for now it's lost in the same fog that we tend to consider as being the waste heap of the irrational.

Let me ask a couple of questions
-you accept that other people are real but just part of God's mind?
-pain is just a thought, but you know that certain behaviors allow you to avoid pain
So by adopting these behaviors you are kind of admitting that there is some quality?

I am persistently fascinated at the capacity of language to describe actual worldly phenomenon.

That is why I find questions of materialism imaterialism rather boring.

We all know how accurate common sense views of the world are⸮
Reality is everything that exists. God is also everything that exists. Reality is God. It's not my fault if someone doesn't know what I mean by Reality and what I mean by God. I'm very precise.


Yes. I also accept that I am part of God's mind. The condition of existence is being a part of God, and God is all mind.
Just as certain behaviors allow you to avoid pleasure. A stoic would do away with both.
What do you mean? Can you give an example?


The English language is terrible at describing logic and metaphysics. I focus on the difficult parts.
I'm not really that interested in knowing that you don't intend to post in this thread.

I agree with your philosophy because of my study of astrology, in India this philosophy is intertwined with astrology.

I'm kind of New to Taoism so I wanted to ask you something that bothers me about it.
My basic question is that if everything is God then everything must be good? (Including disease,accidents,fire)

In other words,what is the point of suffering?

In general, good and bad times are simply consequences of life. Evil is only evil because we have good to compare it to, and vice versa. This is the duality of nature, and Tao is Nature.

"God" is a rough synonym for "Tao", but only by the pantheist definition of God.

Thanks
You are right,
Even the Dalai Lama admits to yelling at people sometimes, so it seems like even the people who preach that you shouldn't react badly do it themselves.

In all fairness, I agree with most of Taoism. But, I took to Bishop George Berkeley completely and unequivocally. I read his corpus over the span of a single weekend, and I'm usually a ridiculously slow reader.