Mysticism vs. Materialism
"... the great materialistic progress which we have venerated for so long is on the verge of bankruptcy. We can no longer believe that we are born into this world to accumulate wealth and abandon ourselves to mortal pleasures. We see the dangers and realize that we have been exploited for centuries. We were told the twentieth century was the most progressive that the world has ever known, but unfortunately the progression was in the direction of self-destruction." - Manly Palmer Hall
Today is the birthday of Manly Palmer Hall (1901–1990), a Canadian philosopher, scholar, and mystic whose prolific works included the remarkable volume The Secret Teachings of All Ages, from which I offer this quote for your contemplation: "Philosophy bestows life in that it reveals the dignity and purpose of living. Materiality bestows death in that it benumbs or clouds those faculties of the human soul, which should be responsive to the enlivening impulses of creative thought and ennobling virtue."
For the purposes of this essay Mysticism is defined as a philosophical belief in the existence of realities beyond perceptual or intellectual apprehension that are central to being and directly accessible by subjective experience, and Materialism as preoccupation with or emphasis on material objects, comforts, and considerations, with a disinterest in or rejection of spiritual, intellectual, or cultural values. Materiality, as used by Manly, above, may be defined as the theory that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena.
Materialism may also be described as the Marxist theory (circa 1925) of history and society that holds that ideas and social institutions develop only as the superstructure of a material economic base. Such an inflexible and pragmatic theory leaves no room for the concepts of searching for spirituality, the roots of our souls, and the purpose of living – leaving the value of our natural and innate curiosity and quest for knowledge immaterial.
But materialism is the life story of humankind and will probably remain so until it has brought death to the collective human soul as we know it, and on and on even after that for as long as we can go on stuffing our earthly physical existence with material comforts. Perhaps we have, as a global human society, already defeated the purpose of our souls - for all of us at least as old as I am have seen with our own eyes the rampant loss of spirituality, innate curiosity, the hunger for knowledge, the search for the purpose of our own existence, and the hunt for true felicity in ever-increasing favor of the material pleasures and comforts of our purely physical existence and well-being. In other words our minds are plunging into the netherworld of hell in proverbial hand-baskets.
Sadder still is that our patriarchal society, both secular and religious, has trained us quite well to live our lives seeking only materialistic comforts and to accept the rest without question - on the one hand that physical possessions create security, power, and popularity, and on the other hand that simple FAITH in our god will spiritually carry us through to wherever the hereafter is – no need to worry.
When I was a senior in high school my friends and I who published our school's newspaper came up with the idea that our class motto should be, "What? Me Worry?", stolen of course from Mad Magazine's Alfred E. Neuman, the lad with the missing tooth and the blank no-clue grin on his face. Our class overwhelmingly approved the motto, but our principal, Mr. Kupper, refused to allow it, so we tried to change it – to hell with the girls in the class – to "We Like Women; We Like Whiskey; We're the Class of 1960", but that didn't fly either, of course, and we ended up with an innocuous class motto that I'm sure no graduate of that class recalls these days. But at graduation, during the invocation Reverend or Father So-and-so stood on the dais before all 100 or so of us and told us that he'd heard through the grapevine that we'd voted to have "What? Me Worry?" as our class motto and what a good idea that was, for it implied confidence and FAITH in our future. It was too bad, he commiserated, that we were not allowed to have had our way. Oh, how, immature and thoughtless we – and that preacher – were! But we were well on our way into making a successful life for ourselves in the world of materiality.
I recall Mr. Kupper telling me once in front of our entire speech class after he'd helped Mr. Brown, the speech instructor, break up a hamburger fight that my friend Bob Diefenderfer had started during his speech on "How to Make Hamburgers", that I didn't have sense enough to pour sand out of a boot with the instructions written on the sole. I don't remember how I got blamed for the whole hamburger throwing thing, but I did, and I probably deserved it. Another time he challenged me to a fight over something else that I've long forgotten, and we walked stiffly side-by-side down the back stairs and out in the alleyway behind the cafeteria where he told me that we'd not gone out there to fight, but to discuss my abhorrent behavior man to man, which we did. He was a small, practical man with round wire-rimmed glasses, and probably knew that I could have "whupped" him hands down, so we had a small heated conference instead.
Years passed before I stopped detesting Mr. Kupper and came to realize that he had been right over every controversial issue I'd ever been involved in with him. Years later, at the Sheridan Country Club, we played 9 holes of golf together, and I had the chance to apologize to him. He was very gracious and accepted my expression of regret, but he'd not forgotten those incidents.
My point in bringing those high school days up in this context is that the ideas of innate spirituality and curiosity, or of a thirst for esoteric knowledge, though they existed quite strongly in me privately, never saw the light of day before my family, peers, friends, or associates. We'd all been successfully raised-up to shove philosophical issues to the back of our mindless brains and live only for the moment and for what we could acquire materially that would comfort us physically, bring us power and prestige, and provide us with a sense of security and well-being. And later, during our job apprenticeships or college training and our eventual initiation into the wonderful world of our life's work only reaffirmed what we'd been taught from the time we were old enough to be taught.
Of course I understand that the materialistic world is the only means we have to take care of ourselves and our families, but my argument is that it should not be our only world, and perhaps not even our prevailing world, for we live our lives here on earth for some other reason than to be physically born, raised-up, sow our seeds and lay our eggs, grow old, and physically die. Anyone who cannot understand at least that much about life has no business living in the first place.
So, as I've stated before in other essays on this blog, we owe it to our souls to seek the knowledge, successfully or not, to discover our reasons for being – the existential purposes of our lives. We will never find it through FAITH because the word faith implies a distinct lack of knowledge. FAITH also implies that we believe in the words of someone or something else with no need to confirm them. I believe – no, I know – that each and every one of us is obligated by the very fact of our own unique existence to make every effort to learn as much as we possibly can about the purpose of living, and that we must learn through subjective experience coupled with creative thought.
The unrelenting search for esoteric knowledge behind those veiled mysterious worlds beyond the one where we are presently trapped is the true meaning of mysticism and ought to be paramount throughout the mortal lives of every one of us. There can be no greater challenge than that, and perhaps, just perhaps, no greater reward. And then, too, as Manly Palmer Hall pointed out, there is no greater human dignity, nor soulful purpose, than making the effort, for it provides the self-esteem of ennobled virtue.
vvv
Today is the birthday of Manly Palmer Hall (1901–1990), a Canadian philosopher, scholar, and mystic whose prolific works included the remarkable volume The Secret Teachings of All Ages, from which I offer this quote for your contemplation: "Philosophy bestows life in that it reveals the dignity and purpose of living. Materiality bestows death in that it benumbs or clouds those faculties of the human soul, which should be responsive to the enlivening impulses of creative thought and ennobling virtue."
For the purposes of this essay Mysticism is defined as a philosophical belief in the existence of realities beyond perceptual or intellectual apprehension that are central to being and directly accessible by subjective experience, and Materialism as preoccupation with or emphasis on material objects, comforts, and considerations, with a disinterest in or rejection of spiritual, intellectual, or cultural values. Materiality, as used by Manly, above, may be defined as the theory that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena.
Materialism may also be described as the Marxist theory (circa 1925) of history and society that holds that ideas and social institutions develop only as the superstructure of a material economic base. Such an inflexible and pragmatic theory leaves no room for the concepts of searching for spirituality, the roots of our souls, and the purpose of living – leaving the value of our natural and innate curiosity and quest for knowledge immaterial.
But materialism is the life story of humankind and will probably remain so until it has brought death to the collective human soul as we know it, and on and on even after that for as long as we can go on stuffing our earthly physical existence with material comforts. Perhaps we have, as a global human society, already defeated the purpose of our souls - for all of us at least as old as I am have seen with our own eyes the rampant loss of spirituality, innate curiosity, the hunger for knowledge, the search for the purpose of our own existence, and the hunt for true felicity in ever-increasing favor of the material pleasures and comforts of our purely physical existence and well-being. In other words our minds are plunging into the netherworld of hell in proverbial hand-baskets.
Sadder still is that our patriarchal society, both secular and religious, has trained us quite well to live our lives seeking only materialistic comforts and to accept the rest without question - on the one hand that physical possessions create security, power, and popularity, and on the other hand that simple FAITH in our god will spiritually carry us through to wherever the hereafter is – no need to worry.
When I was a senior in high school my friends and I who published our school's newspaper came up with the idea that our class motto should be, "What? Me Worry?", stolen of course from Mad Magazine's Alfred E. Neuman, the lad with the missing tooth and the blank no-clue grin on his face. Our class overwhelmingly approved the motto, but our principal, Mr. Kupper, refused to allow it, so we tried to change it – to hell with the girls in the class – to "We Like Women; We Like Whiskey; We're the Class of 1960", but that didn't fly either, of course, and we ended up with an innocuous class motto that I'm sure no graduate of that class recalls these days. But at graduation, during the invocation Reverend or Father So-and-so stood on the dais before all 100 or so of us and told us that he'd heard through the grapevine that we'd voted to have "What? Me Worry?" as our class motto and what a good idea that was, for it implied confidence and FAITH in our future. It was too bad, he commiserated, that we were not allowed to have had our way. Oh, how, immature and thoughtless we – and that preacher – were! But we were well on our way into making a successful life for ourselves in the world of materiality.
I recall Mr. Kupper telling me once in front of our entire speech class after he'd helped Mr. Brown, the speech instructor, break up a hamburger fight that my friend Bob Diefenderfer had started during his speech on "How to Make Hamburgers", that I didn't have sense enough to pour sand out of a boot with the instructions written on the sole. I don't remember how I got blamed for the whole hamburger throwing thing, but I did, and I probably deserved it. Another time he challenged me to a fight over something else that I've long forgotten, and we walked stiffly side-by-side down the back stairs and out in the alleyway behind the cafeteria where he told me that we'd not gone out there to fight, but to discuss my abhorrent behavior man to man, which we did. He was a small, practical man with round wire-rimmed glasses, and probably knew that I could have "whupped" him hands down, so we had a small heated conference instead.
Years passed before I stopped detesting Mr. Kupper and came to realize that he had been right over every controversial issue I'd ever been involved in with him. Years later, at the Sheridan Country Club, we played 9 holes of golf together, and I had the chance to apologize to him. He was very gracious and accepted my expression of regret, but he'd not forgotten those incidents.
My point in bringing those high school days up in this context is that the ideas of innate spirituality and curiosity, or of a thirst for esoteric knowledge, though they existed quite strongly in me privately, never saw the light of day before my family, peers, friends, or associates. We'd all been successfully raised-up to shove philosophical issues to the back of our mindless brains and live only for the moment and for what we could acquire materially that would comfort us physically, bring us power and prestige, and provide us with a sense of security and well-being. And later, during our job apprenticeships or college training and our eventual initiation into the wonderful world of our life's work only reaffirmed what we'd been taught from the time we were old enough to be taught.
Of course I understand that the materialistic world is the only means we have to take care of ourselves and our families, but my argument is that it should not be our only world, and perhaps not even our prevailing world, for we live our lives here on earth for some other reason than to be physically born, raised-up, sow our seeds and lay our eggs, grow old, and physically die. Anyone who cannot understand at least that much about life has no business living in the first place.
So, as I've stated before in other essays on this blog, we owe it to our souls to seek the knowledge, successfully or not, to discover our reasons for being – the existential purposes of our lives. We will never find it through FAITH because the word faith implies a distinct lack of knowledge. FAITH also implies that we believe in the words of someone or something else with no need to confirm them. I believe – no, I know – that each and every one of us is obligated by the very fact of our own unique existence to make every effort to learn as much as we possibly can about the purpose of living, and that we must learn through subjective experience coupled with creative thought.
The unrelenting search for esoteric knowledge behind those veiled mysterious worlds beyond the one where we are presently trapped is the true meaning of mysticism and ought to be paramount throughout the mortal lives of every one of us. There can be no greater challenge than that, and perhaps, just perhaps, no greater reward. And then, too, as Manly Palmer Hall pointed out, there is no greater human dignity, nor soulful purpose, than making the effort, for it provides the self-esteem of ennobled virtue.
vvv
Copyright (2009) by Albert Lloyd Williams
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