On The External World

You academics laugh at the poor enthusiast who claims to have experienced a higher power, but cannot provide empirical evidence for such a thing. You pity this parochial foolishness. You see him as a child who had a pleasant dream. Yet you intellectuals speak so assuredly - that is, paradigmatically - of this thing you call the external world. Could you please provide me an example of this external world? Is it in the room with you now? As you sneer and point to a tree or a rock, you fail to realize that your experience of these things is simply something that exists in your mind. You understand a tree to be some entity outside of yourself, but your entire relationship to it is only through the medium of your internal mental space. The tree is a construct. It is a dream. When you next try to imply some kind of background reality that underlies the tree-image generated by your mind - perhaps you imagine something like a black goo that can transform into any particular object - you again fail to realize that this concept of a “thing-in-itself” is simply another of your mind’s constructions. It seems that there is a strange barrier separating you from anything outside of your mind. But you are so sure that there is something (everything) beyond that barrier. You are like a young man who has a romanatic chat on an internet message board and is entirely convinced that, behind those words, is a beautiful girl. Of course, the girl is one of your mind’s construction. As is the tree, the rock, and the world. I, too, am one of your mind’s constructions. All that I am, is a concept in your mind. I am dream - no, a nightmare; and I have come to haunt you by reminding you that you are alone.