Re: Spiritualism and idealism

[Nemonemini@xxxxxxxxxxx]

One way out of dilemma over the spiritual versus material, and also in
relation to the issues of Indian religion in previous posts, is to consider
that 'religion' need not choose to bother with the distinction at all.  The
result is endless confusion in relation to scientific reductionism.
The famous story of the Zen master asked some question about spirituality  
replied 'attention'. Asked again, impatiently, he said again, 'attention'.
That was the whole teaching, lock stock and barrel. Simply bypass all these
doctrinal questions.
It's shock to think that's all there is, but that's all there is, and that's
enough.
We can explore many other issues, but if, as the current culture once again
clearly shows in its New Age colliding with science, these get started on
material-spiritual dualities, the mind is set spinning forever and there is
no resolution. It just goes on and on.
The point is that crystallized concepts of spirituality tend to be the
currency of the religions, and these are systems of belief that found
themselves in conflict with the rise of scientific materialism.  
That generates the conflict of science and religion, etc... In the West, Kant
tried to set it straight, but if it is not clear after Kant, Hegel, Marx,
then, we see the Zen teacher's point, it will never be straight. All you can
do is shut up and pay attention.
The correct point of entry for a Marxist may be, attention, yes, and the
distinction of theory and praxis.  
We can simply dispense with the crystallized concept of the spiritual.  The
point would be that 'real religion' requires only an understanding of
consciousness, and then only as a practice or gesture, as in the act of
attention. As in the story of the Zen teacher.  We can resconstruct
everything from this 'attention to attention'.  And this can pass between any
distinction of the material and the spiritual. The act of attention
transforms consciousness, the point of the secondary description,
'self-consciousness'. Religion can then be founded on the issues of man's
consciousness and self-consciousness, a point clear in the Indian tradition
if we can extricate the original 'evolutionary materialism' of the ancient
sources, before they were embroidered also with the language of the
spiritual, mixed with Hindu polytheism, and the influence of Islam.
The language of self-consciousness appears directly in the Indian tradition,
and, remarkably, in the spectrum from Kant to Marx. That was the point of
'ideology' and its unmasking, quite apart from anything else. 'Raising
consciousness, as self-consciousness in relation to ideology, and so on).
This has been made the object of its own elaborations, but there is nothing
mysterious about it, we experience 'self-consciouness', i.e. attention in
relation to consciousness, a hundred times a day, it is a real 'material'
function', the gateway to what was meant by the 'spiritual', which will
simply confuse the issue. But attention is also deeper than that and like an
undeveloped function, and so on.
But the basic concept of 'religion', freed from the conditioning of belief
systems, or praxis', lies in the issues of consciousness and its potential.
Always the basic point is turned into another belief system. Look carefully
at the Gospels. This idiocy of fake documents manages to carry the only clue
to the still  unknown Jesus, 'Watch for ye know not'.  The same issue,
although I would recommend some other source, at least for a Christion. Who
this man was, we don't know, but the signature is there in its funny charm.
That's about all that is left, or will be left, of the New Testament after
the hurrican of Biblical Criticism is done with the outrageous palimpsest of
ideological manipulations that concocted a so-called 'spiritual' book.
So, Marxists might extricate themselves from New Age confusions with a one
line
Socialist Sutra: "Attention".
John Landon
author
World History and the Eonic Effect
nemonemini@xxxxxxx
http://eonix.8m.com