Every culture develops a set of basic assumptions about the way things are and the way things ought to be. They are the invisible water we swim in: Things so "obviously true" that no one bothers to question them. Yet when we look back through history, many of these foundational certainties look rather peculiar and even utterly unfounded to later societies (which, to be fair, are busily constructing their own collection of peculiar and unfounded assumptions to be deconstructed by future generations).
Consider the sheer variety of what humans have taken as "common sense." In hunter-gatherer and ancient societies, it was simply taken for granted that places and spaces were indwelt by spiritual forces and that the world was literally "full of gods". Move forward into the empires and monarchies of history, and people were utterly convinced of the "Divine Right of Kings". It was assumed that God (or the gods) specifically handpicked one inbred aristocratic family to rule over everyone else, and that questioning the king’s tax policy was tantamount to cosmic treason. Even the bright minds of the Enlightenment and Victorian eras had their invisible crutches: For centuries, physicists were certain that space had to be filled with an invisible, weightless jelly called "luminiferous ether" just so light would have something to ripple through.
Then there are the widespread everyday assumptions that can be downright hilarious in hindsight. For over a millennium, the height of Western medical science assumed that human health was governed by four bodily fluids— or "humors"— meaning that whether you had a fever, a bad mood, or a head cold, the obvious solution was to drain a pint of your blood or cover you in leeches. For centuries, Europeans assumed that bathing in water would open your pores to pestilence, that bad smells literally were disease, and, when the locomotive was first invented, that traveling at the breakneck speed of thirty miles per hour would cause a woman’s uterus to fly right out of her body.
It is easy to chuckle at leeches and the Divine Right of Kings from our perch in the twenty-first century, assuming we have finally traded myth for pure, objective fact. Yet we too have developed a rather peculiar habit of thinking in our own culture:
We take it for granted that "matter" is the real, the concrete, the basic. And we think that "mind"-- consciousness, inner life, the flow of inward experience that constitutes "me" and "you"-- that this is abstract, constructed, and fundamentally unreal. The modern assumption is that Mind precedes from Matter and is a function of Matter.
But if you sit back and examine this assumption, it is really odd. As odd as our other cultural assumption that abstract money is "real" value, while real people are disposable in the quest for profit. But I digress. Let's get back to Matter and Mind:
Ask anyone what Matter is, the answer comes back as confident and common sense. Matter is stuff. Solidity. Walls. Dirt. Flesh.
Well enough. But what are those really?
Molecules. Collections of atoms. Everyone knows that.
So indulge me: What are atoms?
Well they are collections of subatomic particles: Protons, neutrons, electrons. These are a little hard to understand. But they have mass and charge and positions in spacetime. But it is... uncertain and complicated. Werner Von Heisenberg tells us we can know either their position or their velocity, but not both at the same time.
Well, that seems interesting. Especially the fact that we cannot know where a subatomic thing is if we know where it is going, and we cannot know where it is going if we know where it is. That's very unlike common sense "Matter". But if you don't mind: Is that it? Is there more to these particles, or are they base level matter?
Well, actually, no. They in turn are made of collections of smaller, more fundamental particles with weird names. Quarks. Gluons. Fermions. Bosons. And a host of others.
Really? And what are these particles like?
Well, they don't exist in the way you might think. Some of them don't have mass or charge. But they have "spin" and exert "force" on other particles. And they all exist in a superposition as BOTH particles and waves, until you observe them, and then they collapse into EITHER particles or waves.
Wait, what? I have never seen matter behave like this. How is this so?
Well... it's hard to explain. It takes a lot of math to understand. But perhaps the best way to think of it is this: Fundamental particles are like multidimensional strings or membranes occupying 11 or more dimensions as probabilities for what they could be. And then when they are observed, this probability curve collapses and they are experienced as "real" and "substantial".
Wow. This is really abstract and counterintuitive. Especially since we think of matter as concrete and common sense. All that is solid and stable evaporates leaving behind a phantom of pattern and probability. Matter seems to dissolve into Math. And Math can only be grasped by Mind.
Some even say that Math is a function of Mind, a construct of Mind, a product of Mind. In fact, if you really get into discussions with physicists about the nature of spacetime (where Matter "exists") they will say that spacetime itself is-- either in whole or in part-- a construct of our Mind, our observation, our experience. Without Minds to observe, spacetime is not how we experience it. It may not even "exist" at all, except as a collection of potential states of being waiting for a Mind to actualize.
Meanwhile, Mind and consciousness seem so abstract at first glance. And yet, it is Mind-- experience, thought, feeling-- which is most immediately real to us. My inward flow of experience-- my sense of "I" and "me"-- is far more direct and real to me than any abstract explanation of what matter is. For instance: Ask someone about the experience of Blue or Love or Frustration or Mozart or the texture of burlap on the fingertips. All of these are immediately recognizable and visceral and concrete. We know immediately how they "feel", even if it has been years since we felt them.
And while experience can be unpacked and discussed and analyzed-- like math and science and literature and history-- the immediacy and directness of the experience is still there to reflect on. Quite unlike abstract particles and esoteric maths which are not immediately available except to a few savants who experience them directly, much like most of us experience color and sound. And if someone does not have an experience-- say of Mozart's 5th-- then we take them to the symphony and they have direct experience of the concrete thing itself. All that to say: Experience is primary. Mind precedes Matter and is the concrete cradle that abstract Matter must dwell in.
The French existentialists put this in a way that is perhaps overly abstract: "Existence precedes Essence". But digging past the elitist vocabulary, the meaning is concrete and direct. How we exist and what we experience in our lives is immediate. All other essences or abstract principles we derive from that immediate existence-- whether physics or philosophy or money or politics-- are secondary and derivative of existence and experience. What is fundamental is Mind-- consciousness, thought, feeling-- and all else is a product of the Mind's experience.
So contrary to standard modern assumptions, I have no doubt Mind is concrete and primary, while Matter is abstract and derivative. But this directness does raise an abstract question for me: If I am a Mind, and I experience in you all the marks of Mind, then it seems like there are a plethora of Minds: Persons or selves or souls who have an inward flow of experience and a personal identity of "I" and "me". And all of us Minds together have a unique value and primacy beyond a world of abstract Matter. If something like this is the case, then is there some Mind that experiences all of us as we experience ourselves? Is there a Consciousness in whom all conscious beings exist, who experiences our thoughts and feelings and "I/me" through us?
That is what the entire history of human spiritual experience seems to be pointing at, in various ways unique to their culture and history and language systems. Call it Source or Spirit, God or Allah, Brahman ot Tao, or whatever other Name we put over the Mystery to give it shape. Perhaps there is a Mind-like Ultimate Reality of Consciousness in which all other realities inhere, and from which our world of spacetime emerges. And for me, that makes it worth pondering whether all of us and the whole world of Matter might be made by and for Minds to experience, and may in turn flow from a Mind who experiences all of it in Themself.
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