"There is no world" versus "Bereishis Bara;" a Dose of Reality.

So, I have ten minutes and the blog window is open.  I wanted to share something philosophical with you, which is probably attributable to something wrong with me, but whatever.

I have always seen life as fluid, "streaky."  Light has always flashed before my eyes, and without glasses, one thing seems to merge into everything else.

Couple that with some cell theory that when you touch something (e.g., a table), cells of your leave your body and join to become the structure of the table, and cells of the table leave the table on a cellular level and join to become part of who you are.

We are not talking shmutz here, but real transference of cells.  Pretty cool concept.  Add in the thought that the world is pretty much empty space, and you have a world view that says that the world doesn't exist except for an illusion which tricks you into believing it is real, and then there is that "Bereishis Bara" problem where G-d CREATED a world, tangible and real to you.

Then there are mitzvos which bring down G-dly energy which re-vivifies the world and studying Torah, which is a physical vessel (a klaf and ink, or in English, a scroll, parchment, and ink), yet it is able to hold and contain G-d's essence himself, as if we could understand such a concept.

Like a dog can see a malach without freaking out (because it lacks the comprehension that it is looking at a spiritual entity), when we study Torah, we connect with G-d in a way that if we truly understood what we were doing, we would expire and die from the G-dly light.  Yet we don't.  We look at the parchment and ink, we read the words, and it does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to us, as if we were a dog unable to comprehend the magnitude of what we are seeing or doing when we read a word of Torah.

Then there is the TV screen problem, namely, that I see my reality as if my eyes are glued to a TV screen and as if the TV screen is like VR goggles (virtual reality glasses).  The better analogy is eyes being glued to the TV with sticky glue, and thus we 'see' our body, and the 'world' that Hashem created for us to live in.  But... just as a TV can be shut off, so can our reality.

I have often visualized a spaceless expanse that when I "shut off" the TV, I can float down, up, forward, backwards... in any direction like a Peter Pan, and yet the 'image' of the TV remains in front of me.  I can in my mind switch it on or off, but independent of what my eyes see and what my mind tells me is real, it also tells me that the spaceless expanse is also just as real, if not more so.

So I live in the world and allow myself to trick myself that everything is real, when in my heart, I suspect it is not.  But then, "Bereishis Bara," so who knows.