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Originally Posted by LmP
I heard a talk by an author in which she located the universe in the Mind of God; hence, we are figments of God's imagination. God being God, we are as real as we feel ourselves to be! God being God, our subcreations are also figments of God's imagination; every bit as real as we are.
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I can accept this idea absolutely. In fact its something
Lalwende & I were discussing into the early hours over Christmas. I did read somewhere that its possible to translate 'God created man in His own
image as 'God created man in His own
imagination' I don't know if that's true, & it does lead into areas of theological enquiry which I'm not qualified to enter.
I suppose all thoughts in God's mind must be 'Real' in an absolute sense - because nothing could be more real - God being the source of all 'Reality'. And if everything exists as thoughts in God's mind, then all those 'thoughts' must have an equal 'Reality' - I'm not saying they have a
moral equality, merely an equality of 'being'. Their moral worth would depend, I suppose, on the extent to which they are in harmony with God's essential nature.
Perhaps that's what we respond to in the works of Tolkien - that 'harmony' with the Divine. Tolkien's works help to move us back into a state of harmony with 'God', helping to heal that sense of seperation we feel, of being 'out of synch' with 'something' which for most of us these days is unnameable....
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Come to think of it, when then was "now", there was no such thing as a fairy tale. It was the "ferny brae", or whatever the name was for any given neck of wherever.
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I'm reminded of something Bob Stewart said in an interview, about the way we talk about the 'ignorant past'. He made the point that
we are currently living in what our decendants will refer to as their 'ignorant past'. I suppose in a sense Faery is eternaly 'there' yet always just out of reach - hence the yearning we feel when we read fairy stories. Perhaps 'Faerie' is that 'harmony' which we feel
should be the way of things but isn't.
We are 'thoughts' (of God) subcreating 'thoughts' of our own. I don't know why fractal images have just sprung to mind... Anyway, one could speculate on whether the thoughts of our subcreated characters have an equal 'reality' to our own. God 'dreams 'JRR Tolkien' who 'dreams' Frodo who 'dreams' of White shores under a swift Sunrise...
Unless I'm rambling as usual (& being a 'pest' again
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