We still walk through the universe as Adams; naming all things. By our words we separate the land from the waters, the island from the wave, the grain of sand from the drop of water. We speak, and light is distinguished from darkness. We are not all powerful, but we are all-naming.
Looking too closely compels us to un-name. Say a word too much and it begins to sound like gibberish. Whether we climb up to the top of Mount Yog or trek across the Desert of Mu, examining the finest particles is to unveil what-is-without-name. Sometimes that unveiling is freeing, other times it is terrifying. What happens when we lose our name?
Does a chair exist? We might work to find it, but there is nothing to find if we try to remove ourselves. Ultimately we end up looking inward. We notice that we need to sit. The chair serves us; we make it exist.
Can we ask God about what is and what is not a chair? If God cares at all, it is because we made it so.
The aetherial plane is so fragile it seems. Those abstract objects and ideas we build above and through the material plane fade if we die. We inscribe the signs of these aetherial things, hoping to preserve them beyond death.
Some try to find life everlasting in the face of death, but I don’t think that’s why we work so hard. Eternal life isn’t that appealing. To live is to accept the death of others; their matter becoming our own. Living without death is to be a cancerous object, a singularity. Such a thing consumes all others until only it is left; eternal and unchanging. We don’t work to live forever, we work to be connected forever.
Heaven only sounds appealing if your loved ones come with you. It is the fear of separation, existing without others, that really scares us. Death is easy, separation is hard. So we work, not to live forever, but to be connected forever. We want to continue caring for our loved ones and cherished causes long after our bodies have been reborn as the wind or the babbling brook.
Do you exist? I think therefore…we are. To see yourself through others, to be known, to care and be cared for. That is why we build atop that empty material plane.
Does a chair exist? Yes, because we need it to.
Further Study:
We Are Terra 