Once there were three wise men who were very good friends, so good that one of them never answered a question without first consulting with the other two. And they always sat together when answering questions.
One day a little girl and her younger sister walked up to the rock where the three wise men sat and asked, “Who created the universe?”
At first all three wise men were silent. Then they looked at each other, inhaled deeply, and said nothing while the little girl and her younger sister looked up at them and waited.
It was a beautiful day, that day. The air was warm and soft breezes gave light exercise to leaves, meadow grasses and small bushes.
“Well,” began the first wise man after he leaned over and whispered to the other two, “may I say that yours, young lady, is more than one question. Which, in that case, has more than one answer. With your permission, all three of us will respond.”
“Yes please,” said the girl excitedly. “I would love to hear from all three of you.”
With that the first wise man looked to the third, and the third said, “The universe was not created or uncreated. It has not come into or gone out of existence.”
Then the second said, “There is no who.”
And the third said, “Cover both your eyes and tell me, what can you see? Cover your ears and tell me, what can you hear? Seal your mouth and tell me how a mango tastes? Bind your hands and ask yourself, 'What can I touch?' Plug your nostrils and ask yourself, 'What can I smell?'”
“Within your body,” continued the third wise man, “there are hundreds, even thousands of minuscule bacterial colonies which cannot hear, taste, touch, smell or see you as you see yourself. If I were to tell those bacterial colonies that you are their universe, that they are the universe for the atoms within them, and that the atoms in them are the universe for subatomic particles in them, none would believe me."
“I would believe you,” said the little girl.
“Me, too,” added her younger sister.
“And would you believe me as well?” asked the second wise man.
“And me?” asked the first wise man.
“Yes,” said the little girl. “I would believe you. I do believe you. All of you, because what I believe in is within me, and the me that comprises my individual Self exists within my Belief. Belief is the universe within which all forms of the Self emerge, and belief has no reality but that which emerges from it. What I see, hear, touch, smell, and taste is outside me. It is not me."
“Belief,” said the little girl’s younger sister letting go of her older sister's hand and stepping up to the three wise men, “is not a who, and the universe is not a place.”
“Indeed,” said the three wise men as they exchanged confirming glances. “Now, let us talk of God.”
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