Was This World Created?

Before we can address this question we really should discuss what creation is. In a previous post I inferred that a thought is a form of creation, as in day or night dreams. We create pictures in our mind, visualize them, and then let them go. This form of creation lasts only as long as we hold the thought in our mind and has no reality other than what we give it. As I posited in my first post, anything not eternal is not absolute and has no reality. But no matter the length of time the thought is held it is still a form of creation, albeit temporal. In the movie A Beautiful Mind, a story about a college professor who develops schizophrenia, his mental illness allows him to create imaginary people and imaginary situations that become very real to him. Within his mind he has created a world that an outsider cannot see but that he sees perfectly well. This example of creation is classified as a mental illness, and there are mental institutions full of "insane" people that are living in alternate universes. They are creating these alternate universes in their minds, universes only accessible to them, but as far as they are concerned their creations are real. This creative ability within is a testament to the  immense power of the mind and I can only wish to know how it works. It is surely something we take for granted as it is an ability we possess from the day we start to imagine and see pictures in our head.

Being human our thought creations do not seem to have any staying power and they cannot be seen and experienced by anyone but ourselves. The only way a thought comes out in the open is to write about it or bring it to form such as in our art or music. Thus, we can share our thoughts with the world as we attempt to give them permanency and reality. This is a form of creating that has staying power by way of writings, compositions, and artwork that can hang around for a very long time. Take for instance the pyramids of Egypt. They have been around for thousands of years and are stupendous examples of our creative abilities by bringing thought to reality for everyone to see. But even the pyramids do not have eternal staying power. As a matter of fact, and as the Buddha stated a couple of thousand years ago, all material things are subject to decay. This is true as everything we observe decays, be it a tin can or a distant universe. So is there anything that is real and absolute? And what would real and absolute look like? What does eternity (permanency) look like? Asking these questions we begin to see our inability to even perceive reality.

When we talk of this world being created it follows that it must have began as a thought within the mind of some sort of being. And since this is a world of material form and is subject to decay it is not absolute and following the law of reality, this world and all that we observe is not real. If we want to give credit to a God for creating this world then we have to consider that God as not being real and absolute either, for a real and absolute God cannot create finite and temporary things, which by definition are not real. And if you want to think God creates things external to Himself then you are not allowing God to be an infinite Being, for nothing can exist outside infinity. As a child I naively thought that God just said the words, let there be light and there was light, etc. and likewise everything else came into creation. My childhood understanding of God creating was simply that He said what it was He wanted to create and it came into existence, albeit external to Himself. Since we can temporarily create within our minds, what could a omnipotent and eternal being do in his mind?  And the last question, could God create anything that is subject to decay, if we think in terms of God being an infinite and eternal being? In an infinite universe there is no time because there is no beginning and no end. Thus, a thought of God is endless and permanent.When we think of something it has no permanency and fades away as we let it go in our mind. If this world is a creation oin the mind of God, then we must be a thought that is slowly dissipating within His mind, ergo decay. Since anything that God creates is eternal, we therefore cannot be a creation of God.

Now since this world is subject to decay and has no permanency it is not real. If it is not real it must be a passing thought, a dream, or an illusion. So, who's mind is this world coming from?