Are you a Monist or a Dualist?

Lent 2020 - Day Five

In the Liturgy of the Mass, Catholics recite the Credo:

Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty

factorem cæli et terræ, visibilium omnium et invisibilium

Maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible

With the exception of the 'Father Almighty' bit, I can go along with the Credo as far as this, accepting at this stage of my spiritual evolution that a full understanding of 'God' and 'Maker' is way beyond me. I can only feel, intuit. The 'visible and invisible' is very interesting to me, and it's at this point that two significant strands of spiritual philosophy, the Monists and the Dualists, part company.

I mentioned yesterday Richard Swinburne, author of Are We Bodies or Souls, a Christian philosopher, who is a Dualist - someone who believes that the Soul, God and Heaven exist entirely outside of the physical universe. Rather, they are of a spiritual realm that cannot be measured or observed, that has no tangible link to the visible world around us.

Monists hold that there is one universe and within that all phenomena, visible (stars, planets, you, me) and invisible (your thoughts, my thoughts) are part of the same system, one whole. Subjective though its nature is by definition, human consciousness belongs to a physical world, a universe that encompasses all.

Which am I? I rather side with the Monists, in particular because of the strange world of quantum physics which may - in centuries of further scientific study - offer a bridge between the physical world and the world of thought. If consciousness is eventually shown to be a property of matter, along with mass and energy, then the Monists will have been proved right.

The essence of quantum physics is uncertainty - uncertainty as to the quantum state of a particle that cannot be ascertained until a conscious observer takes a look. [I have written about Schrodinger's cat many a time, the cat being alive and/or dead simultaneously, until someone checks the state of the decaying quantum particle in the box.]

The importance of the conscious observer into the outcome of a quantum experiment is this: nature seems to 'know' not just if we are looking - but if we're planning to look. (This to me is one reason why all those experiments in the paranormal, telekinesis, telepathy, remote viewing etc never work.)

So - if conscious observers (us) weren't around to notice that there is a Universe around us - would the Universe exist? It can be said that it was the very existence of consciousness that brought the Universe into existence. Quantum physics has been around for nearly a century. The theory has been proved correct in labs around the world, the maths confirmed to eleven points after the decimal point - but the philosophical implications are still be grappled with.

Instinctively, I am a Monist. "We are all part of a continual whole" - words that came into my mind, unbidden, as I was out for a walk one day. The Universe is strange, our minds are still too feeble to take it all in, to grasp its mysteries, as one problem is solved, another appears (what are dark energy and dark matter, for example? How many subatomic particles are there? Where is the seat of consciousness? How will the Universe end, or is it eternal?).

Is the spiritual world separate from everything we can touch?

UPDATE: Since writing this post, I have encountered the concept of nonduality - not monism (in the sense that everything is material and reducible) and not dualism (in that the spiritual realm is entirely separate from the material world).

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This time two years ago:
Subatomic physics and Consciousness

This time three years ago:
Lent begins - the Big Questions

This time five years ago:
How does God speak to us? 

This time six years ago:
Spring makes itself felt in Ealing

This time seven years ago:
Waiting for the warmth to return to Warsaw

This time eight years ago:
Remembering Poland's 'Accursed Soldiers'

This time nine years ago:
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This time 11 years ago:
Sublime Jeziorki sunset

This time 12 years ago:
Sunrise getting earlier