The Illusion of Materialism

The following excerpt from an article on the illusion of reality gives great insights into what we DO NOT know about the world in which we live. The complete article is on http://www.integralscience.org/materialism/materialism.html

Even though it was written 10 years ago, time has only added to the validity of the information. The WAKING GOD TRILOGY talks of the illusionary world in which we live. It show us that dogma has invaded our minds to such an extent that we have let others keep the veil of truth from our minds. We are approaching a time, 2012, when many traditions tell us that this veil will be lifted. We are further told that what we choose as our vision, will be our reality. We can create a new earth and a new heaven. Rid yourself of the dogma and let your mind open. Science is now, even though scientists will not admit it, verifying ancient mystical truths about the true nature of the Universe. Let WAKING GOD help you get through the most insidious of dogma's, religion. Discover that we do live in an intelligent world and that we are truly co-creators of that world.

The Illusion of Materialism
How quantum physics contradicts the belief in an objective world existing independent of observation

Copyright 1999 Thomas J. McFarlane

www.integralscience.org

Center Voice: Summer-Fall 1999
www.centerforsacredsciences.org

The Center for Sacred Sciences was founded on the belief that the testimony of the mystics of all religions is compatible with the evidence of modern science. This compatibility, however, is often far from obvious, largely because the modern scientific tradition has attached itself to a materialistic cosmology which is inherently antagonistic to spiritual insight. This cosmology, also known as materialism, asserts that matter has independent objective existence, and that all phenomena, including those of the mind and consciousness, are ultimately reducible to the motions of matter. The development of quantum mechanics, however, has shown that materialism is actually incompatible with modern science.

The purpose of this article is to explain in detail exactly how quantum physics contradicts the materialistic account of the universe. As we will see, quantum mechanics demonstrates that the world as we commonly experience it does not, in fact, have an objective existence independent of its observation. In the words of Niels Bohr, the pioneer of 20thcentury quantum physics,

An independent reality, in the ordinary physical sense, can neither be ascribed to the phenomena nor to the agencies of observation.1

This remarkable claim is entirely compatible with the claims of the mystics. For example, consider the following fundamental teaching of the Center for Sacred Sciences:

The appearance of an objective world distinguishable from a subjective self is but the imaginary form in which Consciousness Perfectly Realizes Itself.2

In the same spirit, the third Chinese Zen patriarch, Sengtsan, teaches us:

Things are objects because of the subject [mind]; the mind [subject] is such because of things [object]. Understand the relativity of these two and the basic reality: the unity of emptiness. In this Emptiness the two are indistinguishable and each contains in itself the whole world.3

The mystics and physicists, therefore, both make the outrageous claim that the materialistic belief in an objective world independent of observation is a delusion. Or, in Buddhist terms, all objects are empty of any inherent existence. Since this claim is in blatant contradiction with both our ordinary experience and conventional worldly wisdom, our natural response is to dismiss it as ludicrous. We might say to ourselves, "Those mystics are obviously the deluded ones who have lost touch with reality, not me and everyone else."

Although it might be easy for a modern Westerner, raised in a materialistic culture, to dismiss the radical claims of the mystics, it is not so easy to dismiss the most eminent of our physicists, who make claims remarkably similar to those of the mystics. Consider, for example, the words of Werner Heisenberg, the inventor of quantum mechanics:

The ontology of materialism rested upon the illusion that the kind of existence, the direct "actuality" of the world around us, can be extrapolated into the atomic range. This extrapolation is impossible, however.4

The Buddha, speaking about the true nature of reality, makes the following very similar claim:

There is that which does not belong to materialism and which is not reached by the knowledge of philosophers who...fail to see that, fundamentally, there is no reality in external objects.5

If we dismiss the Buddha and other mystics, shall we also dismiss Heisenberg and Bohr? These eminent physicists won Nobel prizes for their fundamental contributions to quantum theory. Perhaps no other physicists have thought more deeply about the nature of quantum physics than Heisenberg and Bohr. And they are talking about quantum mechanics, the most precise and far-reaching physical theory ever devised. It explains how the sun shines, how molecules bond together, how iron is magnetized, and why various materials are solid, liquid, or gas. It is quantum mechanics that gives us computer chips, lasers, and atomic energy. So if we dismiss quantum mechanics, we throw out the cornerstone of modern physics and the theory that provides the essential foundation for all these scientific marvels. It seems that we had better think twice before dismissing what Bohr and Heisenberg have to say about the nature of the physical world.

Put simply, they say that the objective world is an illusion. The biggest problem with this claim is that our experience, for the most part, is quite compatible with the idea that there really is an independently existing objective world. There seems to be no contradiction at all between our normal day-to-day experience and our assumption that the objects we encounter during the day are objectively real. So the problem is, if this idea of an objective world is wrong, then why does it seem so right? To shed some light on this problem and its solution, let me digress for a moment with the following thought experiment.