22:56 Simon Mundie: Before we dive into space time being doomed, one last question actually, Rupert, for you on this, which is something I hear you say a lot, which is that no one has ever found matter. Well, again, I think to someone who perhaps is not particularly who is a bit uninitiated, that might sound like an outrageous claim. So can you just clarify what you mean by that?
Rupert Spira: All we ever find are or know are conscious experiences. And we extrapolate that the existence of a physical stuff called matter that exists independently of consciousness. But but nobody has ever found that stuff, let alone found how consciousness is generated from it. We found what appears as matter. So if when we look at reality through our perceiving and conceiving faculties, reality appears to us as matter. And so matter is the name we give to the way reality appears to a finite mind that is constructed in the way a human mind is constructed. And there may be other kinds of minds in reality that there may be other minds that that that look at the same reality because there’s only one reality. And it may appear to them in a very different way, not as matter. Why? Because their minds are constructed, configured in a different way from a human mind. So matter, the physical universe, is just the way that the one reality, which I would suggest is made of consciousness, appears to from the localized finite perspective of a human mind. So it matter is is part of the way reality appears. It’s not what reality is. And it’s fine. I’m not suggesting that we should get rid of that we should no longer speak in terms of matter or it’s fine as long as we know that we’re not describing what reality ultimately is. And actually, if we then try to find that stuff that appears to us as matter, if we go deeply into it, we never actually find it. Nobody has ever actually find it. We find appearances in consciousness.
25:31 Simon Mundie: Okay. So, for example, if I hold this pen up, it seems like there’s a pen here. But actually, you can’t separate the pen from the awareness that knows it. You can’t separate the pen from the awareness that knows it.
Rupert Spira: Nor can you separate its appearance from the perceiving faculties through which it is known. It’s not a coincidence that as human beings, our perceiving faculties consist of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling. And surprise, surprise, the world appears to us as sight, sounds, tastes, textures and smells. Do you think that’s a coincidence? Of course not. If we had a sixth perceiving sense, let’s call it X-ing, then we would find Xs in the world. If we had a seventh sense called Y-ing, we would find a corresponding Ys or Zs in the world. In other words, the pen is its reality. I think this is very important, Simon, because someone might think, and this is true of some idealist thinkers, that they conclude that the pen only exists in your mind. I’m not suggesting that, and I know Don is not suggesting that. The pen borrows its ultimate reality is, I would suggest, the infinite consciousness that lies way beyond each of our finite minds and precedes our finite minds. So the pen, the reality of the pen is infinite consciousness, but it borrows its appearance from the finite mind through which it is perceived. So as William Wordsworth said, we half create, half perceive the world. We perceive it in the sense that what we’re perceiving is reality, and that reality precedes and is independent of its being perceived. But our perceiving faculties, the faculty of seeing in this case, impose their limitations on reality and create its appearance. So we half perceive and half create the world. So yes, the pen, it owes its reality to infinite consciousness. It borrows its appearance from the finite mind through which it is perceived.