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This is not a well-formed question, but what's behind it is a deep puzzlement about our relationship to everything that does exist. The only real problem behind the conundrum is to determine 'the mind of God', so a better way to put the question is to ask: is God conscious?

There is no perfect certainty, but there are some quite solid-looking starting points.

• First of all, I'll call it Dao, because it feels more neutral and uncluttered and I find that helpful.
• Dao is the whole of what actually, really, when all's said and done, exists.
• Our temporal, conscious experience slips and slides around with our hopes and fears.
• It's our consciousness that separates us from Dao.
• What's separate from Dao doesn't exist.

So Dao exists. No problem. The trouble is that we don't. Now what do we do?

Well, in line with the spiritual traditions, a first step is to let go of all those illusory hopes and fears. So let's do a thought experiment and imagine a world full of saints - people who have left all their sin - their everyday consciousness with all its noble values, as well as the baser desires - behind. What would such a community look like? Would these people, each of them walking in Dao, be conscious? Not in the everyday sense, but in some higher way?

The thing is, if everything that we think of as our conscious selves is 'really' an illusion, then it would surely make no sense for Dao to be conscious in that way. If Dao is conscious, then it would be in a way that stands over and above good and evil.

Perfection and completeness is an old dichotomy; like Heisenberg's principle the more you have of one, the less of the other. But Dao, being all that exists, would be conscious of perfect completeness and complete perfection. The question is, what kind of consciousness is that? Does it count as consciousness at all? I mean there are myths about God getting bored and wanting some company: it's obviously incoherent that Dao should 'have feelings'. Unless...

Unless it's a case of having feelings but not having feelings about those feelings. In other words, you feel sad about something but you feel the sadness purely and simply, without the desire to change things. You feel wonderful about something else, but without needing to hang on to this wonderful feeling.

So let's go back to our community of saints. They are living, breathing human beings who experience heat and cold, hunger and gourmet food (any food is delicious when you're hungry; a warm fire after being out in the cold is heaven) and so on. Just Yin and Yang, without the inconvenience of wishing it were otherwise. Is that coherent?

I may be wrong, but I'm inclined to think it is. If so, then we can hypothesise (all that our consciousness can do with the Ineffable is hypothesise - live 'as if') that the Universe - Dao - is conscious of everything except good and evil. That was a human invention, enshrined in the myth of the Garden of Eden.

It fits with all the usual advice about living in the present moment, about acceptance, emptiness, detachment and all the rest. Remember the three wise monkeys? And if you have no evil, you have no good either. Just Dao, pure and simple.

I don't know about you, but I find this quite a relief.

next essay: consciousness & hamartia