Question: Hello from Albuquerque, New Mexico U.S.A. Awakening to the Dream is the most fascinating book I've read. Advaita Vedanta is new to me, and it is unlike anything I have come across. My question is this:
The current scientific view of the manifested world is that there was a "Big Bang" billons of years ago and evolution formed humans with consciousness or self awareness. From what I understand, awareness "creates the manifested" In other words, the falling tree in the forest doesn't make a sound if no one is there to hear it. So how could evolution take place to form "aware creatures" if at one time, according to evolution, humans didn't exist on the planet?
Answer: As you say, the scientific view is of a 'Big Bang' followed by evolution, eventually leading to conscious beings. The Advaita view is the reverse: Consciousness/Awareness is primary. It is not dependent on anything, but expresses AS everything. In other words, the world, the universe, yes absolutely everything, appears in IT. Science sees dead matter evolving into intelligent life, while to Advaita there is only IT appearing AS this whole manifestation.
Question: If all there is is this, it must have always been this, with no beginning or end?
Answer: Yes. Here is a quote from an answer in news letter number 14:
When we perceive a universe with time and space, we also perceive cause and effect. When there is cause and effect there must be a first cause. This first cause must by itself be uncaused, otherwise it would not be the first cause. It therefore has no beginning. If it has no beginning it has no end and qualifications such as before and after, or front and back cannot apply to it. Without these criteria it is outside of -or prior to- the dimensions of space and time.
Question: However, science and the theory of evolution has some pretty convincing evidence, like the fossils. Science tells us that our sun will eventually consume all of its fuel along with the Earth, and that would be the end of the dream...wouldn't it?
Answer: Perhaps. It is one way of looking at it. However, according to Advaita, space and time are in the 'Dreamer/Awareness.' Concepts like 'beginning/end' are of the space/time dimensions and do not apply to the Timeless One. Here I suggest to have a look at news letter number 10 and read 'An ancient story for kids of all ages by Alan Watts' for a cyclic view of manifestation/dissolution.
Another way of seeing this, is that this whole manifestation vibrates into Being right here, right now, complete with buried dinosaurs, crumbling ruins of old civilizations, dying stars, and other 'evidence' of the past. Just like it does in a dream. Here is a quote from the book Awakening to the Dream:
In our dreams we may encounter age-old mountains, oceans, stars, and planets. There may be people and animals, cities and forests. We may experience days or even years passing by.
Or this Buddhist poem from the same chapter:
Plop, there it is!
Nothing else than that, which is empty of matter, fills all corners of the universe!
Mountains, rivers, the entire world, you and all, they manifest the body of the 0ne.
Below is a relevant excerpt from the book Awakening to the Dream.

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The dreamer contains the dream and, at the same time, occupies a relative position in the dream. Everything in his dream, whether rocks or clouds, feelings or thoughts, people or animals, is made of "dream stuff," and as the dreamed character, he can say:
Like the shadow
I am
and
I am not *

Now consider the possibility that the Self dreams up this manifestation in a similar way. Like the dreamer appearing in his own dream, we can say that the Creator appears in his manifestation while, at the same time, the manifestation appears in the Creator. Dreamlike, He manifests the whole cosmic drama out of Himself.
He is hidden in His manifestation, manifest in His concealing.
He is outward and inward, near and far? **
The substance of this dreamed up "reality" is Pure Awareness -the dream that stuff is made of. In this reality/dream the mind appears and superimposes on this undivided whole the illusion of separate objects and events by inventing boundaries in space and time.
Let me ask you a question. Where did the event of "you" have its beginning? Was it at birth, at conception, or when your grandparents' grandparents met? No matter where you draw the line, it will be arbitrary and defines an artificial boundary. In the game of day-to-day living, these conceptual borders come in handy; but most of us have long forgotten that they are entirely conceptual.
Awareness is Self-luminous and does not need to be aware of anything outside itself. In other words, Awareness is all there is. In the universal dream, just as in the dreams we have at night, there is the illusion of this and that, near and far, past and future, self and other, which creates the relative experiences of space and time, but space and time in and of themselves have no reality. The "mind-generated objects" in this universe are temporal occurrences and only have size and form relative to each other. Ultimately, however, there are no distinct objects or events separated by space and time, nor does the dream itself have a fixed size or time span. The dream and the dreamer are one-and-the-same Self-aware reality.
* The Love Poems of Rumi. Edited by Deepak Chopra. Harmony Books ISBN 0-609-60243-8
** Doctrine of the Sufis by Muhammed Al-Kalabadhi, Arthur John Arberry (Translator) AMS Press; ISBN: 0404146376

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Loosen the load
Loosen the load of sweetness I?m carrying.
The sling knot is biting into my shoulder.

This day has been so meaningless.
I feel I can?t go on.

When I was with my Master I heard a truth,
that hurt my heart, like a blister.

The tender pain of seeing something
that I loved as an illusion.

The flocks I tended are gone.

I am a shepherd without even a memory
as to what that means.

Climbing this mountain, I feel so lost.

This was my inward way, until I came into
the presence of a moon.

This new wisdom of how like-nesses unite.

Good friend, everything is You. I see only God.

Now the delightful forms and motions
are transparent.

I look through them

And see myself as the Absolute.

And here?s the answer to the riddle of this dream:

You leave;
so we two can do ONE dance.

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"Man's highest persuit is that of knowledge"
-Socrates-
"Man's highest knowledge is that of his own ignorance"
-Plato-

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Painting by Ellis Englesberg: "Ignorance" (after W. Gropper)
Visit her at: http://www.guernicagallery.com/englesberg/index.html




The Triple Filter Test
Keep this philosophy in mind the next time you either hear or are about to repeat a rumor.
In ancient Greece (469-399 BC), Socrates was widely lauded for his wisdom.
One day the great philosopher an acquaintance ran up to him excitedly and said,
?Socrates, do you know what I just heard about one of your students??
?Wait a moment,? Socrates replied.
?Before you tell me I'd like you to pass a little test.
It's called the Triple Filter Test.?
?Triple filter??
?That's right,? Socrates continued.
?Before you talk to me about my student let's take a moment
to filter what you're going to say.
The first filter is Truth.
Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true??
?No,? the man said, ?actually I just heard about it and...?
?All right,? said Socrates. ?So you don't really know if it's true or not.
Now let's try the second filter, the filter of Goodness.
Is what you are about to tell me about my student something good??
?No, on the contrary...?
?So,? Socrates continued, ?you want to tell me something bad about him,
even though you're not certain it's true??
The man shrugged, a little embarrassed. Socrates continued.
?You may still pass the test though, because there is a third filter
- the filter of Usefulness.
Is what you want to tell me about my student going to be useful to me??
?No, not really...?
?Well,? concluded Socrates, ?if what you want to tell me is neither True
nor Good nor even Useful, why tell it to me at all??
The man was defeated and ashamed.
This is the reason Socrates was a great philosopher and held in such high esteem.
It also explains why he never found out that Plato was having an affair with his wife.

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