Ah, yes, bb - the denial of self which one must embrace to be a materialist. Thoughts, ideas, ideated concepts, the mind itself, all are the prime movers of transcendent reality, but not only of transcendent reality - for without the transcendent self we could not appercieve the material world at all. It takes a mind forming thoughts to make sense (slight pun intended) of all that we see, touch, hear, taste and smell, for all these sensations are routed through our nerve endings to our brains where, finally, they are noticed transcendentally - or not at all. Or perhaps more succinctly, if a tree falls in the forest without someone to hear it, is there sound? There are sound waves, of course, but if there is no mind to translate the signals of the nerve endings (and the brain is a giant nerve, let's not forget), then effectively, there is no "sound".
In short, were it not for the immaterial, the materialist would not be aware of his own existence.
Great insight, logos. The materialist denies the ground upon which his entire existence rests and depends. Strikes me as being some kind of weird form of suicide.
Or maybe an exercise in "self-lobotomy?" If so, for what purpose?
logos, I think this is such an excellent elaboration of what Voegelin means by transcendance in this essay -- one of the modes of his model of noetic consciousness, Intellect-Transcendence-Ideation-Reason. Thank you so very much!