Bernardo Kastrup - Affinity p.1

There is a certain affinity between the thought of Bernardo Kastrup and that of Neville Goddard. All that we take to be the material world is mind, and only mind.

Bernardo Kastrup is a Dutch philosopher and computer scientist, also competent in physics. Bernardo’s philosophy, Analytic Idealism, demonstrates something interesting for followers of Neville. Two of Neville’s core ideas, at least, are reflected in Bernardo’s system. They therefore receive strong confirmation in Bernardo’s logically constructed and empirically substantiated arguments.

(This affinity between the two men’s work is my own observation. I have not seen any reference to Neville in Bernardo’s work, and, of course, I am not claiming that the two systems of thought are identical.)

What motivates this comparison? As students of Neville attempting to internalize his ideas, we must grapple with difficult propositions. One of them is very counter-intuitive and seemingly impossible to assimilate. That is the instruction that the seeming physical universe, as something external to mind and independent of it, does not exist.

“Nature, then, as a thing or a complex of things external to your mind, must be rejected.” The Power of Awareness, Ch. 2.

Neville wrote that in 1952. In one lecture, he cites the Hermetica to support the claim. As he says, restatements and reformulations of important ideas are necessary in order to grasp them.

More recently, philosopher-physicist Bernardo Kastrup echoes Neville’s thought: Contrary to overwhelming cultural consensus, the outer physical world does not really exist in a material sense. All that we take to be the material world is mind, and only mind.

We can scarcely entertain Neville’s idea unless we first tear down the false structures that are preventing it from reaching fruition in the mind. Materialism, as a deeply ingrained colloquial attitude, and its official philosophical formulation, “physicalism”, constitute this barrier. We scarcely realize how a tremendously powerful cultural consensus like this conditions our patterns of thought and belief.

Ironically, despite great scientific advance, we live in a superstitious age. Materialism is the most prevalent superstition, and it has the mind of modern man in a vice-like grip. Thanks to Bernado’s analysis, we see the reason: we have not generally received the wisdom that contemporary science has already proven, yet cannot bring itself to embrace: matter, as physical stuff existing independent of the mind, is simply not a tenable hypothesis.

Would you like to hear more aspects of Bernardo’s critique of materialism? For more detailed discussion, please go to S02 E03 of Neville On Fire. You can either read the full transcript, or listen to the audio. Check the show notes, too, for a link to Bernardo’s course on Analytic Idealism.