Dear Francis, In Answer #76, you said, “There is only one awareness. Your awareness, my awareness and God’s awareness are the same awareness which is the substance of all things…” Are you implying that God is a being with a mind? And that this mind contains the egg that was buried for six months? Isn’t that tantamount to saying that objective reality is real? That it exists whether or not it is being observed? What you are saying is reminiscent of the famous pair of limericks summarizing the idealistic philosophy of George Berkeley: There was a young man who said “God Must find it exceedingly odd To think that the tree Should continue to be When there’s no one about in the quad.” —Ronald Knox “Dear Sir: Your astonishment’s odd; I am always about in the quad. And that’s why the tree Will continue to be Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God.” —Anonymous Stanley
Dear Stanley,
Thank you for sharing the limericks. I am afraid we have lost the art of elegant and witty debate somewhere along the road to the Twenty First Century.
When I say that your awareness, my awareness and God’s awareness are the same awareness, I am not implying that God is a being with a mind. I am saying that awareness is universal, that the cosmos itself is aware in all beings, and that this cosmic awareness is the reality, the substance of the totality of that which exists, including, but not limited to, material existence. The egg that was buried for six months doesn’t have any empirical existence independently from awareness, which is tantamount to saying that awareness is the reality of the objective world. When objective reality is not being observed, it “returns” to awareness which it had never left. In other words, pure awareness is the form of existence of the world between observations (or shall I say “measurements”?). It is the God in the quad, when he/she/That dreams the quad. When That leaves the quad, the quad dissolves. That remains.
Love,
Francis
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