Page 758 - Atlas of Creation Volume 3

sends to good schools. He owns a few cars, a yacht, some houses and some land. This man thinks he has
everything that is admired in the life of this world. He thinks he has attained everything that a person could
hope for in this life. Besides his wealth, he has gained a great deal of respect. Everyone who knows him re-
gards him as a person who is respected, and has standing and position in society. This opinion is shared by

the servants who attend him in the morning, the chauffeur who bows as he opens the car door for him, the
security guards who greet him with respect when he enters the company building, and the employees who
stand to attention from the moment he enters the factory until he gets to his office. He has many close
friends and acquaintances in high places and positions. Every day he runs from meeting to meeting; he is a

member of some boards and societies, and even chairman of others. In the course of a day he gives orders
to hundreds of individuals. In his bank and private safe he has more money, stocks and bonds that he can
count. As he adds up these things from time to time, he gains even more satisfaction; he is proud of himself
and congratulates himself. What gives him a special feeling of satisfaction and self-confidence is the fact

that he earned everything himself by his own hard work, and that he attained what he had devoted his
whole life to achieving.
One day, while he is sailing on a yacht with his friends, someone comes up to him and says: "Everything
you see here at this moment—all these people, this yacht, the sea, the factories, the houses, the employees who jump to
your command—are all appearances happening in your brain. You do not know whether the originals of these appear-

ances exist outside your brain or not. If the nerves entering your brain were severed, this yacht, the people on it, their
voices and conversations, the smell of the sea, the taste of the fruit juice you are drinking, in short, everything would
cease to exist in a moment. All of these things as well as everything you have owned in your whole life are in your
mind. There is no difference between your houses, cars, yachts, factories and companies and things you own in your

dreams. It is like having a dream about going to Europe in your own private airplane and waking up in the morning
to find that there is no airplane, and that you are not in Europe but in bed. If one day you wake up from this sleep you
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 es-

teem 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

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