It would
be pretty weird if there were no purpose in all this. Think: we are now
decoding the mysteries of life and evolution, and wondering about these
questions. Could we be mere
interaction of particles then?

Even if we were, why in the first place do we view particles and
their interactions as something ordinary, as mere? What is ordinary?
Ordinary is what we’ve grown used to since childhood, things that don’t respond
to your calls, don’t talk to you. What you mean is inanimate. Why would inanimate things be ordinary? Why don’t you
see purpose in their existence? When you compare the existence of a grain of
sand to the existence of nothing, to nothing itself, to a state that never
was, that is neither empty space nor blackness, that is undefined because no
one ever came and saw it, consciousness never happened, nothing ever happened, nothing ever began or ended so that the word
nothing itself has no meaning because
there’s no consciousness to feel it, when you compare the existence of a grain
of sand to that, do you find it ordinary?

We can be sure that something
has happened, whether it be mind or matter. This me, right now sitting at
the typewriter at a plywood desk surrounded by painted walls in a concrete
city, this can’t be that dreary nothing. Even
if it be an illusion, there needs to exist something
to produce the illusion, to work that mechanism. Phew, this isn’t nothing then. Something exists.

What exists?
When you view everything, including yourself, as an interaction of particles, when
you view the mind in terms of the brain, you’re saying that matter exists, and mind is a product of the interaction of matter.

Fine. Since you’re so hell-bent on establishing that it’s only matter that exists, you must be having a
good idea of what matter is. What’s the definition of matter, then? Particles
that respond to certain laws and are not aware of their own or each other’s
existence, right?

Tell me, how can you be sure these particles exist, that matter
exists? How do you know? If you’re
just a mountain of nothing but those
particles itself, and you’re saying that they cannot feel, how can you be conscious and aware of their
existence? How can such non-living particles come together to form an assembly
that can feel itself existing? If you then modify your definition to say that consciousness
or awareness is inserted in some way as matter comes together to produce living
things, or that there is some form of awareness somewhere in the particles
themselves, you’re including the hallmark of mind. In the first case, you’re saying that mind and matter are
separate, that mind is matter that possesses a certain mysterious property of
consciousness, and in the second you’re saying that they are same, that the
property of consciousness is inherent in the particles themselves, and is hence
a property of matter. But anyway, in both cases, you end up saying that mind
exists.

If you still argue, well, how ‘bout the laws the particles adhere
to? Why do they do so? What set those laws? If you haven’t got answers, you
better go and hunt.

I think that mind exists, and matter is a part of it. It’s called matter and separated from mind through our errors. If you believe that
matter and mind both exist and are separate, well, I’ve got no objection to
that. But they cannot exist independently
of each other. Matter needs mind to feel
its existence, or it cannot exist. If you say that matter does not need our
acknowledgement for its existence, well then, there could be so much matter out
there right now that we can’t feel. You’ll say, of course! Dark matter! It was never detected before it was detected,
and before it was detected, it still existed, didn’t it? My reply to that
is that you’re able to say that dark matter always existed because you know now that it exists, because it
was ever detected. Now if you start supporting the existence of all matter that
haven’t been detected yet, well, then
you don’t even know what you’re supporting.
You don’t know what to believe in and what to leave out. Everything’s possible! If you
can’t feel it and you still think it exists, you’re arguing in favour of
dragons and fairies and unicorns. Why? Man,
they are there. They just haven’t been detected yet.

I’m not against the possible existence of stuff we haven’t felt
yet. I’m actually pretty strongly for it. Very strongly, in fact. But that
argument is beside the point. I’m trying to say that whatever stuff exists today, is said to do so because we have
felt them. And whatever stuff will be found later, would exist because there
would be a conscious acknowledgement of their existence. There is no meaning of
the existence of something that never
was felt as existing. It’s the same as guessing. You either decide that nothing
outside your conscious world exists or everything does. Among the ones not
felt, you cannot choose to decide which ones to believe in, because you cannot
justify why you chose those particular things and not the others, simply
because you know nothing about them.

But does mind need matter to exist? According to me, this whole
hierarchy is erroneous. Matter is a secretion
of the mind. If mind didn’t secrete matter, it could exist very well
without matter. But since it has, and since we see matter in such awful
abundance all around us, it’s a tough job to deny it.

That’s about it for now. Thinking this stuff makes me conjure up a
vision of an infinite black space dotted with a few stars here and there, and
eventually a lot of pointlessness. After some time it gets dangerous.

1Life.