Originally posted by Iacchus32
Actually you are correct in the sense that if a spirit were to conform to anything, it would be a "mindly pattern." Which is why such a thing would be barely discernable to us, because we think that we're looking at a part of our own minds, which we are. And yet this is the key to unlocking the spiritual experience, by recognizing and learning to work with these mindly patterns.
And yet how about "interdependent existence?"
Well mindly patterns, the word already reveals it, have only real significance and existence in the mind and to the mind itself.
Such patterns can exist outside the mind, like a piece of music when not played and listened to, can be stored on CD or on paper.
But the enjoyment of music is not the storage in written form or recording on CD, but the actual performing or listening to music.
Music does not play or perform itself. Mindly patterns need a mind too, to become that what we call 'spirit'.
And yet who's to say that there isn't a genuine spirit behind the notion of it? Or, perhaps that this is what it's alluding to?
Whereas don't you think the spirit exists to itself as real? -- i.e., in its own "spiritual medium?" -- which, extends beyond our "natural perception" of things? ... Why not?
The idea that the world in primary instance is spiritual in essence, is a notion about reality that is indeed behind all forms of religion, and what is based on a philisophical outlook on reality which is called Idealism.
This all drops down to one of the basics questions in philosphy which is the question as to what is primary: matter or consciousness.
A primary substance or entity means that this substance or entity is not dependend on something else. That substance would be the primary thing in the world, without which the world would not exist. Everything else would dependend on the existence of that substance or entity.
We know about matter, since it forms the substance of which the ordinary things are made which we see in our daility lifes, and we know about consciousness, which is our reasoning capacity and reflection on our self and the world, etc.
Without knowing what the world in total is, we can already derive the notion that our consciousness is not the primary substance or entity of the world, since our consciousness happens to have come into existence at a certain time, at which the world itself already existed.
Another question is can it be conceived of that consciousness (in some other then human form) has existed before there was a material world?
Let us suppose there was an eternal and infinity being that existed in consciouss form at a time before the material world existed.
This consciouss being would however have to face the situation that there was no objective material world. So it could not be consciouss of anything outside, apart and independend of itself.
But for the same reason this being could not be consciouss of itself, since it could not in any way distinguish between self and not-self.
So, that excludes the possiblity of being consciouss about anything.
Which makes this consciouss being something of an impossibility.
Could it then be conceived of that the material world in total, as an infinite and eternal being, is a consciouss form of existence?
For the same reasons we already gave above, neither this being could exist in consciouss form.
Which leaves as the only possibility that on the basis of an already existing material and objective world, conscioussness in subjective form can exists, that can be consciouss of the objective world, and consciouss of it self, cause it can distinguish between itself, and something that is apart, independend and outside of it (not self).
We - the human conscioussness - are the expression and development products of the material world, in which the world exists in consciouss and subjective form, which can know about and reflect on the objective world, and can be selfconsciousness.
