Non-nescience

1. Death is an illusion.

2. The idea that causes produce effects is illusion.

3. Time is non-ens: nonexistent, a creation of mind.

4. Every individual lives alone in a universe of one.

5. Universes are created from beginning to end and destroyed from beginning to end instantaneously, in every moment of consciousness.

6. Multiple moments of consciousness (and thus universes) arise and pass away in each second of perceived time.

7. Each individual perceives the apparent passage of time differently. (Einstein, 1915.)

8. Observer is neither identical to, nor other than, that which is observed. Example: I see a tree. I am neither the same as, nor other than, the tree. If I were the same as the tree, how could I see it? If I were other than the tree, how could it arise?

There is a thought experiment which describes Mary, a scientist, who exists in a completely black-and-white world. However, she has devoted her entire life to studying the physical and scientific descriptions of color. Indeed she knows everything that can possibly be known about color. She knows all about photons, the spectrum of light, the different receptors of the eye, the optic nerve, the neural processes in the brain that generate imagery, etc. Yet she has no actual perceptual experience of color.

Then one day someone opens the door to Mary’s black and white world and she steps through to the other side, where the world is vibrant and rich with color.

Up until that moment, she was certain that she knew everything there was to know about color and would learn nothing new upon stepping through the door.

Did she?