Expert: John Willemsens aka Advayavadananda - 9/1/2009

Question
Hello John

Some time ago I was reading a text by Charles Berner.
He wrote among others: This divine body, as I told you yesterday, is like the resurrection body. It is also called the immortal body. As a matter of fact, it is not in time at all. Not being in time may seem like a miracle, but it is not. In fact, not being in time is the normal state. Being conscious of something, being in time is an impurity because it is not true. Time and space are illusions. This whole world is an illusion. It's an illusion of consciousness. Consciousness tells you there is a world here. There is something here, but it's not what appears in your consciousness. It is God. It is the collective us as divine individuals. So the divine body is simply a pattern of our relationships.


--- I'm especially interested in: "This whole world is an illusion. It's an illusion of consciousness."

How's that? How should I understand it? Can you explain that in pretty simple terms?

Thanks

Answer
Hello Luke,

Our position in Advayavada Buddhism is quite different: consciousness is merely the fact of knowing, the knowing that is going on in our brains, consciousness is to know, that's all - it's one of the skandhas. See our website for information about the skandhas - use the Picosearch device at the bottom of all pages of our website:

http://www.euronet.nl/~advaya/index.htm

Kind regards,
Advayavadananda.