A Reversal Of The Idea Of Substance

Are you saying that I never had the experience of being a boy, that it is just a memory created in the present?

What is being said is that there has never has been a boy moving in time, turning into a young man, then into a middle-aged man, and so on. All of these appearances flowed through consciousness. You, as consciousness, have never been a boy, a young adult, or a middle-aged man. These were perceptions and concepts flowing through consciousness.

I am not denying that these perceptions and concepts have flowed through consciousness. That is what memory tells us. However I am denying the fact that the boy grows into an adult. I am denying the objective existence of these events and the objective existence of time. By “objective,” I mean independent from consciousness.

Francis Lucille, The Perfume Of Silences, 155.