Creation is a combination of consciousness and matter. This is why “people” who are produced by the creative principle are not sure if they are essentially material entities with spiritual tendencies or spiritual entities with material tendencies. The consciousness part is unborn, immortal and conscious and the material part (gross and subtle matter i.e. thoughts and emotions) is inert. It doesn’t think and feel. When you get that sorted out you won’t confuse the two and since you can’t change either one – the material or the consciousness portion – your confusion is resolved and you automatically default to the immortal portion, which is a partless whole. Here’s the reasoning.
Name and Form
It looks like our bodies, for instance, are an assemblage of parts but they aren’t; they are a partless bundle of matter. For instance, It is impossible to determine where the hand begins and the arm ends. There is no delineating marker. If you say the wrist unites them you won’t find any difference between the end of the wrist and the arm on one end and the end of the wrist and the hand on the other. Wrist, hand, arm are all just names and forms. They have no substance. They exist all right but they are as good as non-existent because they have no effect on the body. Likewise the body and mind are only names and forms; you can’t separate them from yourself, the underlying substrate i.e. existence shining as consciousness or awareness if you prefer.
To say they are non-existent, however, is not true because you can’t experience something that doesn’t exist. In fact non-existence doesn’t refer to anything at all because there is only existence shining as consciousness…nothing else. That’s what non-duality means.
