North Miami Beach                           June 25, 2002                        A.H. Schectman 

                                 MATTER DOESN’T MATTER

In thinking about the body/mind problem, an ancient division of substance into two parts, I got to thinking that matter doesn’t matter.  Matter is things.  Matter is body and we all get to accept that the body is going to go away.  Dust to dust – ashes to ashes – it’s that sort of thing.  But we are left with the titillating thought that thought sticks around in the THINGS thinking creates.  The body doesn’t do any darn thing without direction by the MIND - a place where we accept or believe thinking takes place.

“Personhood” is something that is created along with the body by the mind and the kind of person that is uniquely one mental entity occupying one unique body.  We know all kinds of persons who think of themselves, as I think of myself, as the be all and end all where the being and knowing starts and ends.  I once had an experience I learned along the way was not unique with me. I immediately knew that if I closed my eyes the world would disappear but reappear when I opened them.  The world I see is just for me and I am the center of it.

When we have children and they occupy our time with being children we learn that THEY now experience that feeling of uniqueness – that the world exists just for them.  Matter does matter for them.  They learn that what they see is what they want and have not yet learned that they can think things into being if they just learn how.

It is not too hard to imagine that the physical world around me at this moment will disappear soon.  Our recent trip through a flood and the flood I created in our apartment – we threw away a lot of THINGS we found we had hidden away and certainly did not need – shows the impermanence of THINGS.  This experience in front of a monitor and typing away at a keyboard tells me that if I am quick and efficient enough I will put a life-time of writing in a place that is no place – the world-wide-web – (Hal tells me it is probably in Hong Kong) and it may therefore find a permanent home? I have to check with Hal about this. Matter matters a lot to me but it really doesn’t matter.

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