Page 113 - Matter: The Other Name for Illusion

call your life; how can you be sure that you will not be in a completely different place
observing images pertaining to this life? "
This rich man will react strongly to what he is being told. If these facts
were told to him plainly with all scientific proof, even if he understood he
would not accept the truth. In his mind, to accept that everything he owned
was a dream-like fantasy would mean that he had been following an illusion
his whole life. Then, everything for which a person is praised, everything that
gives him a sense of pride and self-importance is an illusion. The situation of
that person will be as humiliating and ridiculous as that of a person who is rich
in his dreams and puts on airs because of this imaginary wealth. When the rich
man in our example goes into his company after he has grasped this truth, he
will not be moved to arrogance by the respect and esteem shown to him. This
is because he now knows that those who show him respect and bow to him are
only facsimiles in his mind. Or when these things are told to him, he will not
be able to "show off" to his guests with his yacht because both the yacht and
the guests on it are appearances in his brain.
When he is told that matter is an illusion and that he can have no
connection at all with the source of material existence, the farm he bought the
day before will come into his mind. In that case, the money he counted out bill
by bill and gave to the vendor, the farm he bought with all its fixtures, the
surrounding area surveyed as he made the purchase—all would exist only in
his mind. It would be exactly as if he had dreamed the night before that he had
won an important contract and made a lot of money from it. When he woke up
nothing would be left, and what he thought was real would be a dream.
If this is the case, he is not in the yacht now. The yacht is an appearance
inside him. When he thinks he is going into his house furnished in the latest
style, in fact, he is opening a big garden gate and entering a house in his brain.
The house, the furnishings, the garden and the garden gate are in his mind.
If this person is aware that what he is being told is clearly true, he will
come to realize that everything he owns at that moment are fundamentally
shadow beings. All these things are images shown to him by God Who created
him. In order to test him, God created his life and the appearances of the things
that he would think he owned. But forgetting that God gave him these things
and blessed him with the wealth of these appearances, he became arrogant and
spoiled by these things, gave himself airs and regarded people as his inferiors.
Then, he has spent his life vainly clambering after an illusory dream world. But
one day he realizes that he has been caught up in illusions and wasting his
time, that none of these things has absolute existence and that only God exists.

Why Is The Truth About Matter Such An Important Subject? 111