Spirituality and materialism: the ways we drift away from our intuitions but connect with them again.
I have always been drawn to mystical things since I was a child – for as long as I can remember. As an elementary school student in Maryland, I remember thinking that there were higher beings watching me, the cosmos held great meaning, and that there was much more to life than the science being taught. I was born into a family of atheists, you see. Science ruled our ways. My inner truth was suppressed, and I became accustomed to keeping any suspicions of a greater purpose to myself. As I entered adulthood, the battle between spirituality and materialism intensified, and materialism won for a while.
As with all things, I believe that this was meant to be my beginning in this life. Without science, belief in the divine doesn’t seem so forbidden and wonderful.
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So, my spirituality had no enablers for many years.
In 2000, I traveled to South Africa to be an exchange student. My biggest takeaway from living in this beautiful country is that spirituality runs deep there. It faces you no matter which way you turn; from the followers of the Dutch Reformed Church to the witch doctors of the townships. Every high school in Pretoria seemed to have a story of a ghost haunting it. My host mother told me about the ghost in their house who she sensed frequently. My teenage friends told me of their sixth sense and the spirits following them. In rural areas, local townspeople explained how bright lights fly around the darkened canyons at night. Every inch of South Africa seemed spiritual. You simply cannot turn your back on this kind of thing.
I began to allow myself to believe.
In 2002, I started university in New Zealand, again traveling across the globe to find knowledge. I started by majoring in anthropology because I wanted to absorb the wisdom of ancient cultures. And I did — through Maori studies and classics. But after one semester of philosophy classes, I was hooked and switched majors.
Being around academic philosophers filled me with great joy because it felt so attainable to have answers about reality. I was quickly drawn to metaphysics and epistemology. Reality, existence, and knowledge seemed to be figured out by these people, and I wanted their confidence. I hadn’t met anyone who had explanations for all the unexplained things in life until then.
Materialism, or Physicalism (the thesis that everything can be explained by the physical), had the answers to everything that had always drawn me. The South African ghosts that I began to believe in? Not real. Past lives? There’s no such thing. Death is the end. The feeling that consciousness is more than the physical? It’s just an illusion, a trick of the neurons. We can verify our beliefs in the physical world and nothing beyond what is verifiable matters.
It was hard to let go of the idea that we are not completely physical creatures — and now I see that was a correct gut feeling to hold onto.
On some level, it felt good to be so certain of life. There’s no purpose or meaning — but hey, that’s okay, because we are being practical, trusting science, and living purely in the physical. We have control over our world if we believe only in materialism. We were willing to sacrifice the certainty in our inner souls of what’s really going on — for that feeling of control.
Beyond confidence, it was the culture to bully others on a subtle level. It was fun to chuckle sarcastically when someone mentioned spirituality, and publicly give them a rebuttal rooted in science. This was praiseworthy. It was fun. The majority ruled.
In my undergraduate philosophy classes, spirituality was shut down early on. We got that out of the way in first (freshman) year. In metaphysics 101, the existence of God was touched on, and a very well-prepared lesson biased toward atheism. I remember discussing the Paley’s watch analogy, an example of a watch found on a beach. It would never make you think that it had been created through the random washings of the ocean over a thousand years, the chances of that happening are minuscule. So, the same can be applied to our world. The chances of life arising in the universe are minuscule. I remember thinking privately that it was a very compelling reason to believe in intelligent design or a human-centered universe. But it was clearly and calmly explained that even if something only stands a tiny chance of occurring, that doesn’t mean it won’t.
Consciousness as a force that can affect the physical world, or that can be manifested differently for different people, was never a topic.
Metaphysical studies included discussions about dualism. Were the mind and body the same? Or was there some non-physical realm that science can’t touch, full of some kind of conscious energy interacting with the physical brain? It was hard to let go of the idea that we are not completely physical creatures — and now I see that was a correct gut feeling to hold onto. It is scary to a philosopher — who examines scientific outcomes — to admit that there is a non-physical realm. That opens us up to validate so many other considerations like what happens to our souls after we die. So, it was resisted. The mind is the same as the brain, when we die, that’s the end, and everything we experience that is magical about life is a trick of the mind.
There could never be a conscious universe or mind-energy that floats around somewhere we can’t access.
When I was getting close to postgraduate work, we studied the philosophy of time. Arguments were presented for presentism and eternalism. We imagined what it could mean if there were no times except for the present moment. We imagined the space-time-continuum to be a four-dimensional object that we are moving through, moment by moment. It was fascinating. We talked about relativity, too. Never once did it arise in conversation that relativity might prove that our consciousness might be more than what materialism says it is. Never did it occur to anyone that these things might point to our perspective of the universe — based only on what science tells us — to be faulty. Consciousness as a force that can affect the physical world, or that can be manifested differently for different people, was never a topic.
We knew that only undergraduate students ever wandered into a philosophy discussion to mention mysticism and spirituality.
I taught tutorial classes as a teaching assistant where a student or two would try to take on the whole class with spiritual arguments, and I led the counter-arguments with confidence. My boyfriend at the time was studying physiotherapy, and I was always embarrassed about that since I learned in my philosophy classes that this was a pseudoscience. I was a snob.
I was present at many seminars and Wednesday happy hours to witness white-haired men raising their voices and pointing at each other, overpowering things that they didn’t agree with. Sometimes they’d even jump up and down in passionate rebuttals to arguments. It was encouraged, and it was entertaining. And these were just ideological differences within materialism! We knew that only undergraduate students ever wandered into a philosophy discussion to mention mysticism and spirituality. No one dared do that— that belonged in theology.
I moved on with my life, after eagerly and happily completing a master of arts degree in philosophy, and became a teacher and a programmer over the years. But I loved being around these smart philosophers who had everything in life figured out, and people paid them to talk about it. I missed them, and never met anyone like them again. I felt that they were my tribe.
Fast forward to almost fifteen years later: the dormant spirituality inside me has emerged. This is a year of awakening for many. People are literally screaming “I believe in science!” and “Science is real!” everywhere, and every time I hear it, I get more doubtful about whether I believe in it. I opened my mind one day in July after a traumatic experience, learned about the ancient wisdom of the chakras, and never looked back.
Then, I read You Are the Universe by Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos. It sealed the deal for me. Everything said in this book mirrored every single part of my philosophy training that I had ever felt uneasy about. It validated my idea that people were bullying each other over the ‘belief’ in science the same way people had bullied others about religion just a couple hundred years ago. It was incredible that someone else had thought about all of the same philosophical problems and came to the same conclusions that I had all those years ago. I realized that the doubts I had pushed to the back of my mind while learning to be a materialist needed to come back out again — and it was time to start doubting materialism.
And here I am, a philosophy program graduate who has enrolled in a course about Ayurveda, an ancient philosophy of life, deeply based on the idea that the physical and conscious realms come together to make our experiences. I used to laugh at these beliefs. Now I am certain that they are true, and can help many people live happier lives.
To all of you who resist conclusions about reality because your inner self is telling you otherwise: don’t let go of that doubt. Stay true to your intuitions, and don’t let others make you believe that introspection can’t reveal reality. If you find yourself caught between spirituality and materialism, trust your gut.
If you enjoyed this article, I am sure you will enjoy my article about why people scream ‘I believe in science!’
