More Than Allegory: On Religious Myth, Truth And Belief

by Bernardo Kastrup

In all cases, the world is seen as the mental creation of a deity; that is, a kind of thought in the mind of God. The universe begins as insubstantial imaginings—’illusions’ in the Uitoto case; ‘dreams’ in the Arandan case; thought-up primordial ‘waters’ in the Hindu case—which then gain concreteness and solidity once the deity itself enters the dream—by waking up in it, in the case of the Arandan; by stamping on it, in the case of the Uitoto; or by birthing itself into it, in the Hindu case. The deity always undergoes a significant change in its state of consciousness—from dream or illusion to a lucid, self-reflective, deliberate state—once it enters its creation.