6. Suggestions for practical applications of the principal worldview
6.1. Lessons that may be obtained to enhance our conscious activities
It is interesting and also worthwhile to consider to what extent we human beings are taking part in our own vital functions. To what extent are we as conscious beings taking our proper part in the activity of our organism, of our intrinsic organisation, of our vital force, at our spiritual level? Are we doing our best to distance ourselves as far as possible from the dead state of the physical equilibrium in our mental realm? Are we using all our powers to increase our capability of living? Are we directing all our powers against those physical and chemical forces that affect us in a given situation? Do our lives move in the line of least resistance, like that of a stone thrown away? Can we consciously feel the attraction of our intrinsic vital force, and do we carry it on, reinforcing it by living a consciously conducted life? Do we really shape our lives in an independent, autonomous and spontaneously active way, in accordance with the attraction of the ultimate principles of our lives? We as living beings should thoroughly consider what possibilities we are given by revealing the ultimate, principal nature of our lives.
6.2. Some differences between populations 1, 2 and 3
Now that we obtained a picture of the ultimate principles, let us examine how the life principle may exert its influence for the different populations of the ultimate levels. Let us assume that physical objects populate only the physical level (Population 1, or P1), plants and animals populate the physical and the biological level (Population 2, or P2) and human beings populate all the three levels of physics, biology and self-consciousness (Population 3, or P3).
What is the main difference between the activity structure of a Population 2 and a Population 3 being? While the Population 3 beings perceive all the three ultimate principles, the Population 2 beings observe (mostly) only two ontological levels, a fact that makes a difference. In the P3 activity structure, between our P3 mental perception and our physical behaviour there are interim levels, among which – as shown by our inquiry – one of the essential ones is the regulating, controlling, amplifying, directing and guiding effect of the life principle. Thus, for P2 beings the perception of the physical principle is not mediated through an intermediate ontological level. Because for P2 beings this process is therefore without any transmission, the perception and expression of the life principle are made not indirect (as for P3 beings) but direct, and this suggests that the one that perceives and the one that is expressed are closely identical. For us, transmissive P3 beings, who have not only one, but three ultimate driving principles (and four realms of causes) with transmissions (couplings) between them, this closing identity may seem strange, sometimes even mechanical or automatic. We know that machines work exclusively on the basis of the physical principle, that is, without the transmission of another principle. Now we may return to deal with the question: how are elementary particles capable of perceiving the fundamental physical principle?
6.3. Matter or principle? Is materialism physical or spiritual?
Now we can return to the fundamental principle of materialism and “physicalism” (the physical world concept), namely to the principle of inert matter. This action principle made it possible to recognise the real connections of phenomena, and this principle made it possible to represent and describe the physical phenomena in a mathematical and logical form. There is a significant difference between talking of the atom with knowledge of the laws and principles of physics (and, generally, logic) in mind on the one hand, and talking of the atom without such knowledge in mind on the other. Without any comprehensive and inevitably spiritual organising factor, physics would have no laws, and nor would logic have any – thus we would be simply unable to conceive of something as sterile and abstract as the notion of the atom. Without a principal factor, materialistic nuclear physics would never get further than the sterile concept of the atom. Materialism, being “matter-principled”, is founded on corporeal/material and inevitably on principal/spiritual grounds at the same time. Materialism builds up on a material and a spiritual factor: on atoms and on physical laws. There are no atoms without physical laws, and this fundamental fact shows that there is no materialism without spiritualism. And this is not only empirical counter-argument, because sheer materiality, the concept suggested by materialism, is essentially a self-contradicting concept, denying its own generating factor, the principle behind which generates the concept itself. It is easy to see that a sheer materialistic view, one that would really deny all spirituality, would be like the perfect embodiment of closedness and readiness: it would be an eternally inert, inanimate world without laws and understanding. Therefore, we have to keep in mind that actually materialism essentially represents a kind of obscure spirituality, of a controversial kind that actually denies its own spiritual nature.
6.4. Are interactions material?
We can draw important new conclusions here. According to the materialistic view, apples fall on the ground because the Earth attracts them. But how is the Earth able to exert attractive force? By what device? Does it emit an attractive effect? If yes, what is the nature of that effect – is it material or spiritual? How can the attractive effect exert attraction? Does it let out some kind of matter from itself, for example gravitons in the case of gravitation? But if this would be so, the amount of gravitation of bodies should decrease after a time. Similarly, electric charges could not remain strictly static at a constant charge, they would have to emit electro-magnetic energy permanently, and thus the field of force of the charges would have to diminish. Even if one would acknowledge the fact of energy and mass emission from gravitational, electric etc. charges, one could speculate that they could get back the same amount of energy-mass from the quantum-vacuum field of the universe. Even in this case it would be necessary a principle which should regulate continuously all the charges of the universe in order that the energy-mass exchange input and output should be balanced. In this case, we again would reach a picture in which a principle regulates the mass and energy flows of the universe.
Now the “hard question” surfaces again: how can a spiritual principle exert a material effect? Taking another example: contemporary science regards the value of electric charges as a universal and unchangeable constant (although there are some theories about gravitation diminishing with time). If we disregard from the hypothetical universal balancing mechanism, then we have no other choice but to admit that the influences (be they electro-magnetic or gravitational) that bodies emit are not of a material nature, since all matter has energy and a corresponding amount of mass. Now since a new-born charge have a material influence, it should emit material influence therefore energy from itself, and so its charge should decrease which is not the case. From this thought-experiment we can conclude that here we are dealing with effects that can be described with mathematical exactness, but which are not exclusively material effects. In both of these cases, the question arises: where does the ability of matter to exert influences come from if its material substance remains constant? This is a question worth considering.