Page 162 - Matter: The Other Name for Illusion

ome of those who do not completely understand that we never
have contact with the original matter and everything we see is
actually a complex of perceptions formed in the brain fall into error
S and draw wrong conclusions. For example, some people
understand the explanations about matter being an illusion to mean that
matter does not exist. Others think that matter exists as an illusion only when
we are looking at it, but when we are not looking at it, it does not exist. Neither

of these ideas is correct.
First, to say that matter does not exist, or that people, trees or birds do not
exist is definitely wrong. All of these things exist and have been created by
God. But, as we have explained from the beginning of this book, God has
created all these things as an image or a perception for us. That is to say, after
God created these things, He did not give them a concrete independent
existence. Every one of them continues to be created at every moment.
Whether we see them or not, all these things are eternal in God's memory.
All those things that have existed before us, and that will exist after us, have

already been created by God in one single moment. As has been explained in
the earlier chapter, time is an illusion; God created time and He is not bound
by it. Therefore, those things that will exist for us in the future have been
created in one moment in God's sight and they currently exist. But we cannot
see them yet because we are bound by time.
Just as those things we will see in the future (or will

exist in the future for us) are present every moment
in God's memory, so, in the same way, things in
the past do not cease to exist, but are present in
God's memory. For example, when you were a
fetus in your mother's womb, the day when you
started to learn how to read and write, the moment
you picked up your first school report, the
moment you first drove a car, the time an old
lady smiled at you when you gave her your

seat on a bus, and other such things you
experienced in the past, together with all
the moments you will experience in the

160 MATTER: THE OTHER NAME FOR ILLUSION