Fanatical materialism banishes materialists to the Siberia of hallucination

Materialism is today’s prominent worldview. Most people may not consciously choose it, but they adopt it subconsciously.

Why? Because the contemporary culture aggressively glamorizes material things as sources of pleasure and symbols of prestige. Getting carried away by this pervasive propaganda, most people live as if matter is all that matters.

Fanatical materialists worship the deity of matter, demanding for it not just priority but exclusivity.

Just as any school of thought has its right-wing extremists, so does materialism. Fanatical materialists worship the deity of matter, demanding for it not just priority but exclusivity. Holding matter to be the only reality, they dismiss everything non-material as a figment of imagination – they banish it to the Siberia of hallucination. What they often don’t realize is that by championing such strident materialism, they banish themselves to the same Siberia.

Whatever we do, we do it with our consciousness. Fanatical materialists use their consciousness to deny the existence of everything non-material. But consciousness is utterly different from the insentience that characterizes matter. It is neither explicable nor replicable through matter. Consciousness is eminently non-material. So rigid materialism requires the denial of the existence of consciousness.

But our consciousness is what we essentially are. Our capacities to think, feel and decide – all hallmarks of consciousness – define us. Without consciousness, we cease to exist. That’s how materialists who deny the existence of consciousness end up denying their own existence.

Pertinently, the Bhagavad-gita (16.09) declares that such a shortsighted materialists destroy their own souls. Though the soul is by constitution indestructible, but it is destructible in cognition in the sense that all perception of its existence can be obliterated by a dogmatically anti-spiritual worldview.

Far more fulfilling than such self-destroying worldview is the self-actualizing Weltanschauung delineated in the Gita. It explains coherently our spiritual identity and glorious eternal destiny, and invites us to attain that destiny by the time-honored process of bhakti-yoga.

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