On Asceticism: Against Immaterial-Material Dualism

An extremely prevalent position central to the personal philosophies and metaphysics of various spiritualists, and even a core teaching in several systems — is an overly dichotomized dynamic between the immaterial and the material, a duality between the two wherein they are thought of as less of a dynamic and moreso as two diametrically opposed principles. This conception of the relationship (or lack of one) between the two is wrong. Ultimately all true dualities imply inherent contradiction, and when its a matter of ultimate reality such a contradiction cannot stand. Reality cannot be inherently contradictory, it cannot contradict itself, if it did we wouldn’t even appear to have a coherent experience of it.

If any consideration of dualities implicating the nature of reality are reconcilable in principle, as two things being real immediately reconciles them in the reality principle (both being real and therefore sharing in the medium of reality), then it isn’t ultimately a duality. This isn’t all to say that the juxtaposition between immaterial and material has no basis in reality nor explanatory usefulness, rather to rectify the idea that materiality is principally opposed to immateriality. As dimensionally nil and surface value spirituality and even internet esotericism becomes more popular, this misconception and demonization of materiality follows suit, as though a reactionary response to a newfound rejection of physicalism. Good for them, but it’s time to broaden that comprehension.

The position described above is shifted in the favor of asceticism, and is opposed to hedonism. Asceticism is treated as a kind of sensory detoxification, the external material world being the object of sense perception, whereas hedonism is a kind of sensory intoxication. To understand the implications of each, let’s go through a few lines of reasoning and explanation:

The core of monistic idealism (non-contradictory idealism, idealism proper) is that reality is ultimately ideal; mental; immaterial; subjective, therefore within an idealistic system materiality and objectivity need to be explicable as intrinsic to the primary nature of reality as immaterial. That is to say materiality needs to be explained as occurring internally to a reality that is ultimately immaterial in nature, it cannot exist externally to reality because it is real — this problem also isn’t solved by proposing materiality as illusory, because then the appearance of materiality as such an illusion must still be explicable within the immaterial framework, making it a non-answer that basically creates the same question now aimed at the nature of the illusion. So, materiality occurs internally to this immaterial system, much like a self-objectification based on some kind of input from the immaterial nature. Our own imaginations can reveal how such system works albeit on a smaller scale, as they produce images as directed (both consciously and unconsciously) by the imaginative agent. If we consider materiality a kind of self-objectification, then sensation would essentially be one of our modes of experiencing that objectification, and indeed rendering it as information. This makes sensation part of a kind of feedback loop, since the subject is implied to precede the object in idealism, but the information constituting the object then saturates the subject as information that is cognized by it.

With sense understood as a mode by which we interact with and experience objectivity and materiality (ironically subjectively), the aforementioned essence of asceticism as a detoxification therefrom basically amounts to decreased interaction with objectivity, or the images of the ideal, and increased immersion in subjectivity or the immaterial in itself. Whereas hedonism amounts to increased immersion in certain objective, physical natures, which in the diametrically opposed model would suppose that this increase in immersion thereunto is equal to a withdraw from the ideal nature. The problem with this is that if the ideal nature is the primary nature of reality, there is no privation of it, there aren’t varying shades of more or less real — everything within an idealistic reality is ultimately subject to that ideal nature. Moreover, the presence of objectivity in such an idealistic reality necessitates that the subjective nature of reality is intrinsically self-objectifying by nature (in simple terms, the universal mind is self-imagining by default). The minimization of the object as unreal then is nonsensical, as is the desire to extricate the object from the subject with finality. Although this is possible, it is temporary, as you cannot extract a fundamental nature and operation of reality from itself.

Of course, this isn’t to suggest you should ditch any asceticism you find useful in the conditioning of your soul, nor should you treat temperance as unnecessary or foolish. The subject obviously has a tendency to get lost in the mirror of objectivity, and despite seeing itself objectified — it typically fails to understand itself fundamentally. A failure to immerse oneself in the fundamental nature by way of distraction by getting caught up in the operation of that fundamental nature is even more unfortunate than failing to see that it is indeed only an operation of that fundamental nature — and not totally unreal or diametrically opposed thereto. In contrast to both of these approaches, I recommend you ground yourself in fundamental reality, which will ultimately necessitate your participation in its operation (self-objectification or self-imaging), I recommend you condition your soul optimally, such that your continued experience of objectivity will shape itself to your increasingly greater inner condition.