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source of atoms cannot be found is frustrating for the intellect but has
the potential to be extraordinarily liberating for the mind. It requires
us, if we want to understand our own nature, to look at things in an
entirely different way.
This fact has led to some schools of thought asserting that nothing
exists except in the mind. To an extent that is true in that the
appearance of anything can only arise in the mind. But the “mind
only” view has one major limitation and that is that objects have
something about them that can be perceived by others having sensory
perception. In other words, any number of beings may detect the
presence of object A, even though the quality and interpretation – the
perception – may arise differently to them; and that detection relies on
the presence of atoms. So the appearance of objects arises in the
mind but the objects themselves are not in the mind.
Some phenomena cannot be seen but can still be experienced, like the
wind, for example. What do we mean by “the wind”? There is no such
entity as the wind when we look at things more deeply because the
wind is simply the movement of air – gas molecules moving in unison
through space. It is a phenomenon, not a thing, and can only be
experienced or described as a result of the moving air coming into
contact with other objects. We cannot actually see wind, only its
effects. The causes of wind arise from other phenomena: changes of
air pressure, temperature and so on (which also arise from other
causes in a beginningless chain of events). All phenomena depend on
movement and they also depend on the presence of atoms, which are
not self-existing permanent entities in their own right. So the original
source of atoms cannot be found and the causes of phenomena are
simply effects produced by other phenomena, so their origin cannot be
found either.
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tomorrow’s forecast but isn’t actually there. In other words, the
appearance is there and to say that it isn’t is nonsensical but its
reality is something else – and that brings us back to the atom.
So the man or woman who says that the end of life is the end of
existence is ignoring something quite profound. Their belief is based
on an idea of physical reality which depends on a permanent
foundation called the atom. But there is no permanent structure of
any sort anywhere in the universe and so the whole physical cosmos,
and every atom which comprises it, has to be the play or
manifestation of something deeper – a deeper reality that some call the
“unified field” and others from a more metaphysical standpoint call
the transcendent because it could be thought to be beyond the
physical. A better view might be that it is not a case of transcendent
one side and physical the other but that everything is all part of the
same, or rather an appearance of the same, whatever that same may
be.