The essence, yes, but I think that's a human creation, the creation being a concept. So, the perfect, what, circle or breast or sunrise. That perfect one is a concept, it's not a reality.

That's a good point. Previously i would have said a beautiful sunset (or breast) is an example of perfection - but as you say it's only a human concept of what beauty or perfection is.

Art can convey something really, really close to perfect, like grief or victory or peace or being human, but it does so indirectly. So I have a concept of grief, or I felt grief in the past and formed a concept of what it is. If I'm feeling grief, or even if that's in the past, and I see art that communicates that feeling, it's somehow healing. Same with peace. You see a landscape painting or photograph that connects with your concept, and you feel that peace.

How about 'understanding'? We have an imperfect understanding of potentially everything as we discussed, so is perfect understanding even possible theoretically? Or in the case of art, that connection you mention is a kind of understanding, a connection to a concept or an essence (is concept and essence the same thing?)- can we ever achieve a state of full understanding? Not in terms of understanding every single detail but rather an abstract communication - essence to essence?

I've often thought everything we need to know about existence is in the creation myths - for example, Adam and Eve. The tree of knowledge, harmony, then the Error (Fall), which, in turn, produced life through it's 'genie out of the bottle' dynamic, with all the threads escaping but paradoxically wanting to reconnect with their essence.

Is that 'tree of knowledge' real? If we are a computer simulation, that suggests we were created according to a computer concept, in which case we have some kind of connection back to that concept. Can we tap into that?