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Dear Buddha
By the editors •
December 1975
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What is the body? Is the brain a biological mechanism that “creates” consciousness, or rather the manifestation of something beyond — and perhaps the source of — the physical?
Is there individual consciousness?
Who
is it that’s doing? What is it we call “I”? If consciousness (or God, or Being) can be likened to the sun, and our own deepest Self, or Soul, to a mirror reflecting the sun’s rays, and our more limited ego to a match set ablaze by those reflected rays, how can that match
know
, except by metaphors as exaggerated as this?
How do we perceive? How do we switch channels, say from perceiving the chair as a solid object to perceiving it as a whirl of sub-atomic particles? Just how does our perception create our reality?
What is time and what is space and why are they the window and the door of our existence?
What is thought and how can it be measured? Is there a mathematics of consciousness that can be employed to comprehend reality more fully?
What is intuition? Is it something to perfect, or do we just step out of the way and let it happen? Does man create new knowledge or simply draw upon what’s already known?
Is the desire for psychic abilities just another attachment to power? Why is it considered more evolved to move a cup with mental powers than with your hand, no less a mental act if the body itself is formed by consciousness. What is the will that manifests itself through either of these actions? In other words, why do we do anything?
Is “purpose” just a human concept? What is the purpose of the universe, of human destiny, of spiritual evolution, of individual achievement?
If the universe is infinite, then the terrors of the universe are infinite, too. Who do we hide behind?
Body and Mind
Biology
Consciousness
Science and Technology
Spirituality
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December 1975
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