Questioner: Dear James, since I had an artistic phase I enjoy watching programs about Peter Howson, an artist. In a recent one, titled Prophecy, as he is painting he is talking about God. He describes the Creation, how it is still happening and God is constantly creating a painting and at the end of the painting, the final brush stroke, really is the end of existence.
James: I think of Isvara as an artist first and foremost, and I think of myself as a word artist as well. Yes, creation, sustainment and destruction are is always simultaneously ongoing. The process is eternal. But there is no “final†brush stroke that ends existence. Existence doesn’t end, because it doesn’t begin. When the cosmos “ends†it doesn’t actually end. It disappears for a long time, just as a person disappears when he or she goes to sleep. Then it reappears. Ever unaffected, existence/awareness presides over its appearance and disappearance.
