It is a very challenging and difficult task to seriously question a belief that is considered to be completely obvious. The common belief in the physical existence of material things is just such a belief. We would probably consider it a ludicrous request if anyone were to ask us to question or doubt the existence of physical things. And yet that is exactly what I will be asking you to try to do. On physics: Physics claims to be the science that studies physical matter, so if we want to understand the nature of physical matter, physics would clearly be one place to look. A very quick and dirty (and grossly oversimplified) historical survey of what scientific physics has told us about physical matter during the past several centuries could be divided into three main periods: classical physics, molecular/atomic physics, and quantum physics. Let's look briefly at what each period has told us about the nature of physical matter. Classical physics is probably best represented by the work of Isaac Newton -- especially his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Classical physics has, for our purposes, two simple principles, viz., that physical matter exists in three separate states, solid, liquid, and gas; and that physical matter in these three forms operates according to certain immutable physical laws. That will be our too-simple summary of the basic principles of classical physics on the question of physical matter. The question to ask yourself now is whether classical physics' description of how physical matter exists accords well with your common-sense perception of matter. I think it does. This is how physical matter actually looks and feels to us in our ordinary, un-critically-examined daily experience. Molecular/atomic physics, the next major stage in the historical development of physics, tells us something very odd, however. It tells us that matter is not actually the way it appears to us when we're using just our ordinary, uncritical senses. According to this physics, matter is actually made up of extremely tiny particles called molecules, and those molecules are themselves made up of even smaller bits called atoms. Furthermore, according to this physics, even those tiny atoms are made up of yet smaller bits of matter called sub-atomic particles -- protons, neutrons, electrons, and so on. What we ought to notice as most odd, though, is that the spaces between these subatomic particles are said to be enormous. An average atom, as you probably know from your physics or chemistry courses, is said to look a little like a miniature solar system. A central nucleus (itself made up of subatomic particles) is surrounded by negatively charged electrons that whirl about it in orbitals at huge distances from the nucleus. To give just a rough idea of how far away from the nucleus these orbitals might be -- and thus of how much empty space there is in an average atom -- if the nucleus were the size of a baseball, the first orbital might be several yards away from it, the next orbital might be a few hundred yards away from that, and the next orbital a few thousand yards away from that. The spaces between these circulating electrons, therefore, are very large, so it would be accurate to say that the average atom, like the average solar system, is made up mostly of space. It has very little actual matter in it. In fact, the proportion of matter (or stuff) to space in the average atom is very small. One physicist estimated that in the average atom (an "average atom" is clearly only a hypothetical construct) the proportion of stuff to space is approximately the same as if one baseball were suspended in the air in the middle of a large baseball stadium like the Seattle Kingdome. One baseball in the midst of all that empty space would be approximately the same proportion of stuff to space that we would find in an average atom. So this means that an atom, like a solar system, is mostly made up of empty space with a relatively few very tiny particles circulating at great distances from each other. That's what atoms are said to be, according to this physics, and molecules are just made up of bunches of atoms bound together by certain forces. So any given chunk of matter, like your table, for example, or your computer, or your elbow is made up of nothing but gazillions of atoms all hanging together with each other. So if each atom is almost all space, so is each molecule, and then so is the table and your elbow and your chair and the roof and floor of the room you're in right now. All made up mostly of empty space. Made up, in fact, almost entirely of space. That's what molecular/atomic physics teaches us about what matter is really like. It basically says that yes, matter does exist, but there really isn't very much of it in any given physical object, and what you think of as matter is really almost all empty space. Matter is nothing like what your senses tell you it is. It's almost all empty space. So let's ask now whether this account of what matter is truly like fits well with your normal sensory experience of the world. I think we'd have to acknowledge that no, this account of what physical matter is like does not fit well with my what my ordinary senses tell me. Our ordinary senses, according to this physics, do not actually give us an accurate picture of what matter is truly like. Our senses actually deceive us a bit here, probably because they are simply not fine enough. According to this kind of physics, then, physical matter does exist, but there is not nearly as much of it as you might have thought there was. The chair you're sitting on, which you may have thought was solid matter, is actually almost all empty space, and so is your own physical body that's sitting there in the chair. And so is your shirt and the coffee mug and the mountains and the moon. All mostly empty space. And then along comes quantum physics, a very strange bird indeed. Quantum physics tells us that all those little things that we used to call subatomic particles are not actually truly particles at all. What we used to call subatomic particles are not exactly particles, or "things," at all. They are not so much like little things, or little bits of stuff, as they are like little energies. We might perhaps refer to them as little packets of energy, except that that term might still give the impression that what we used to call subatomic particles were still particles, or at least were packages. To call them packets still might make it sound like they are little bundles or parcels or items of some sort, and that is precisely what quantum physics wants to avoid saying. So what we used to call subatomic particles are now instead to be called little amounts of energy. Just amounts of energy. The Latin word for "amount" is quantum (plural: quanta), so we will now refer to these... these... well, what we used to call subatomic particles, as quanta of energy, or amounts of energy. So if we are going to speak accurately here we will not strictly refer to these subatomic "particles" as "particles" any more, because that would imply that they are things, stuff, matter. We will instead refer to them as quanta of energy. And quantum physics, at least when it is speaking strictly and precisely, does not want to imply that these quanta are "things," in the sense of material particles. And that is why today's physics and chemistry textbooks seldom draw atoms any more as little miniature solar systems. They now instead more often represent atoms as clouds of energies, concentrated in a more dense nuclear center and again concentrated in more and less dense orbital regions at some distances from the center. Another question that we then need to ask about these little quanta of energy is whether they are even "existents" or not, namely, whether they are even something that exists. Quantum physics hesitates to refer to these little quanta as existents, and even refuses to say that they actually exist at some place at some time. Quantum physics prefers instead to say that these little quanta are more like probabilities than they are like actualities. They are said instead to have a tendency to exist at some place at some time. Current representations of atoms as clouds that are more and less dense in different atomic regions is an attempt to show that these little quanta -- what we used to call subatomic particles -- have only a given probability of existing in certain regions at certain times. In other words, they should not be conceived of as existents at all, but should rather be thought of as tendencies to exist. They should not be thought of as stuff at all, but only as probabilities, or tendencies, to exist. This kind of physics does not seem to fit well with our normal perception of things at all. If this account of "physical" matter is actually true (as the quantum physicists say it is), and if our ordinary senses give us quite a different picture of how things are, then we are left with the question of which account of the physical universe we are going to believe, that of the physicists or that of our common sense experience. In any case, we have, with quantum physics, left behind the over-simple concept of physical matter as just simply existing, and have instead come to see physical matter as made up only of quanta of energy with tendencies to exist. (And what kind of a thing is a tendency, anyhow?) If this account is true, then our images of physical matter may be little more than a kind of sensory illusion. As Sir James Jeans, a prominent physicist earlier in the 20th century, expressed this idea: The more we learn about the nature of the physical universe, the less it looks like a great machine and the more it looks like a great thought. That is, the more that physics learns, the more it sees that the cosmos is not made up of simple physical matter like a great piece of ironworks all fit together with physical levers and material gears and wheels. The more we learn about it, the more the physical universe begins to look instead like a great cosmos made of thought-stuff. Or as Shakespeare (not a physicist) has said so aptly: "We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep" (The Tempest , IV,i,148). On dreams: When we think closely about the kinds of experiences that we all have for several hours almost every night of our lives, we might also come to wonder about the ultimate realness of physical matter. After all, the worlds we experience in our dreams are also worlds which seem to be composed of physical matter (they definitely seem that way while we are experiencing them). But when we examine more closely those seemingly "physical" worlds of our dreams and the seemingly "physical" things in those dream worlds, we see that what appeared to be physical matter while we were experiencing it is in fact made up only of a kind of thought-stuff. on tulpas and hinduism: The Hindu concept (or experience) of the tulpa is yet another piece of evidence that might lead us to question the actual existence of physical matter. If the entire physical cosmos is, according to the ancient teachings of the Hindu tradition, one great tulpa, then its status as physical matter is definitely questionable. Try closing your eyes and, with your mind's eye, try to visualize the following pastoral meadow scene. In other words, you'll not just "think about" this scene, but will try to actually see it in your mind. You'll try to see a pleasant green grassy meadow on a warm sunny afternoon in early summer. You see a few white and yellow meadow flowers amongst all the lush grass. You're sitting in the grass under a big leafy shade tree, and you can feel the soft coolness of the grass under you. You hear some birds singing and you see the clear blue sky with only a few white billowy clouds in it. You smell the fresh sweetness of the grass and flowers and hear a small brook off in the distance. With your eyes closed, and concentrating, you try now to visualize that whole scene. It does take a certain amount of concentration and focus to be able to truly visualize a scene like that. Some people are able to do that kind of visualization fairly well, but it takes concentration and practice. Let's call this the first level of visualization. The second level of visualization would be if you could see that same scene just as clearly, but this time instead of doing it with your eyes closed, you do it with your eyes open. That means you have to simultaneously not see, hear and feel the things that are actually there in the room with you, and you do see, hear and feel the whole meadow scene. To accomplish this with your eyes open would take a great deal of focus, concentration and practice, and most people are not really able to accomplish it very well. The third level of visualization would be if you could concentrate so fully, and see, hear and feel that whole meadow scene so clearly and in such rich and precise detail that other people around you could see it too. This would mean that you could visualize something so clearly that what you were visualizing would actually become an experienced reality for other people. And that is what a tulpa is. A tulpa, in Hinduism, is considered one of the siddhis, or spiritual powers, that people accidentally develop when they are deeply immersing themselves in intense, long-term spiritual practice. Hindus believe that these siddhis (powers) are real, but that they should be ignored and not played with. Siddhis can be dangerous in that they are tempting and can distract the spiritual seeker away from what he or she should be devoting their attention to, namely the development of the spiritual life. But some seekers (like perhaps this particular wizened little man) do sometimes let themselves get distracted by one siddhi or another, and eventually can thus lose their spiritual focus. And, according to the Hindu tradition, the entire physical universe is a kind of tulpa. It is real, but it has only the kind of reality that a dream has. According to Hinduism, this universe-tulpa is created for us by Brahman, who is the true substantial Ground of the universe. (Or another way to say the same thing, the universe-tulpa is created by Atman, our truest, deepest real Self, that Self which is the same Self as all the apparent separate selves, and is itself ultimately identical with Brahman.) So, according to this tradition, are physical material things real? Yes they are real, but they are only as real as things in a dream are real. That is, the physical world is indeed the substrate of all our experience, but it is a substrate made up only of thought-stuff. And it may also remind you of Plato's story of the cave. We human beings, says Plato, are as if we are living in a cave. We are watching mere shadows on a wall and we believe them to be real. Little do we know that there is actually a world much more real and substantial than the mere shadow lands we believe to be real. But, besides all that endless variety of ideas or objects of knowledge, there is likewise something which knows or perceives them, and exercises divers operations, as willing, imagining, remembering, about them. This perceiving, active being is what I call mind, spirit, soul, or myself. By which words I do not denote any one of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, wherein, they exist, or, which is the same thing, whereby they are perceived- for the existence of an idea consists in being perceived. That neither our thoughts, nor passions, nor ideas formed by the imagination, exist without the mind, is what everybody will allow. And it seems no less evident that the various sensations or ideas imprinted on the sense, however blended or combined together (that is, whatever objects they compose), cannot exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving them.- I think an intuitive knowledge may be obtained of this by any one that shall attend to what is meant by the term exists, when applied to sensible things. The table I write on I say exists, that is, I see and feel it; and if I were out of my study I should say it existed- meaning thereby that if I was in my study I might perceive it, or that some other spirit actually does perceive it. There was an odour, that is, it was smelt; there was a sound, that is, it was heard; a colour or figure, and it was perceived by sight or touch. This is all that I can understand by these and the like expressions. For as to what is said of the absolute existence of unthinking things without any relation to their being perceived, that seems perfectly unintelligible. Their esse is percepi, nor is it possible they should have any existence out of the minds or thinking things which perceive them. It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects, have an existence, natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding. But, with how great an assurance and acquiescence soever this principle may be entertained in the world, yet whoever shall find in his heart to call it in question may, if I mistake not, perceive it to involve a manifest contradiction. For, what are the fore-mentioned objects but the things we perceive by sense? and what do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations? and is it not plainly repugnant that any one of these, or any combination of them, should exist unperceived? If we thoroughly examine this tenet it will, perhaps, be found at bottom to depend on the doctrine of abstract ideas. For can there be a nicer strain of abstraction than to distinguish the existence of sensible objects from their being perceived, so as to conceive them existing unperceived? Light and colours, heat and cold, extension and figures- in a word the things we see and feel- what are they but so many sensations, notions, ideas, or impressions on the sense? and is it possible to separate, even in thought, any of these from perception? For my part, I might as easily divide a thing from itself. I may, indeed, divide in my thoughts, or conceive apart from each other, those things which, perhaps I never perceived by sense so divided. Thus, I imagine the trunk of a human body without the limbs, or conceive the smell of a rose without thinking on the rose itself. So far, I will not deny, I can abstract- if that may properly be called abstraction which extends only to the conceiving separately such objects as it is possible may really exist or be actually perceived asunder. But my conceiving or imagining power does not extend beyond the possibility of real existence or perception. Hence, as it is impossible for me to see or feel anything without an actual sensation of that thing, so is it impossible for me to conceive in my thoughts any sensible thing or object distinct from the sensation or perception of it.
Anyway i fucked this shit up so that the formatting was lost.
I apologize, but i don't know if anybody really reads this anyway.
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