• Members of the previous forum can retrieve their temporary password here, (login and check your PM).

Is 'life' an illusion ?

Migrated topic.
Orion

Orion

Esteemed member
Senior Member
OG Pioneer
Senior member
Is life an illusion, the inevitable sum of many small parts?

Is life simply illusory or conceptual ? A way of referring to the state we find ourselves in ?

A state of working of many atoms in specific arrangement?

What is this we experience?
 
Define Illusion.

Do you mean the standard definition, distortion of the senses? in this case, no, what we perceive and share is not a distortion of our senses, but rather simply a common or consensual interpretation. It is the starting point from which distortion may occur and produce illusion, if that makes sense.

Do you mean is life a hallucination? An illusion is a distortion the senses make of a stimulus, whereas the true definition of a hallucination is a distortion of perception in the absence of a stimulus, which opens up a whole can of worms - is there anything actually outside us that feeds our senses?

We are clearly limited by our senses and what they can perceive - and also limited by what our brains make of this information - but that does not mean, by sheer definition, that what we perceive is an illusion, or a hallucination.

I rather like the Hindu notion of Maya - illusion that does not stand in opposition to reality or truth, and is thus, not "false". Just - different, maybe? Or incomplete? I find this a more satisfying viewpoint than imagining that all is smoke and mirrors and and trickery and falsehood.

Just some tauts. :)

JBArk
 
cubeananda said:
In a poetic sense, when we think about ourselves as a lotus, that lotus becomes so heavy that it falls back into the mud.
Click to expand...

I like that, although the same could be said in reverse :p
 
perhaps.............................. ,

i don't know

what i do know is i really don't care even if life turns out to be an illusion its all good

i love it all , life , death , God , Universe

love it all ,

awesome .....................yessss

ya i guess i'm losing my mind , still its ok , i love it anyways ,
 
I like the term Maya as well... though I tend to see it in the light of Aboriginal Dreamtime.

I see the ground and origin of existence as being mind... not matter. So, everything that exists amounts to thought and dream. IMHO

This does not make it unreal or illusion in the way people tend to mean. It is as real as anything else.

The real question tends to be how awake are you within the dream.

It is kind of like Prospero says in the Tempest:

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep."
 
This sort of goes back to the slippery real/not real debate that we've visited so many times;

jBark, how can something be a distortion of the senses when those senses themselves are a part of the illusion?

I do think that at some level there is an objective gross phenomenon that is "baseline reality", but that's not what we see. What we get is an interpretation that makes sense relative to our nature. And the human interpretation isn't necessarily consistent across the board- if you could superimpose your reality into my brain, to me that might look like paisley-world or fractal-world or minecraft-world, but when comparing our worlds verbally, all of our terms still line up so its hard to know just how different our personal realities are from each other.

I don't think any one interpretation is true or false- we just have to remember that our perspectives are narrow, incomplete and highly interpretive.
 
Guyomech said:
This sort of goes back to the slippery real/not real debate that we've visited so many times;

jBark, how can something be a distortion of the senses when those senses themselves are a part of the illusion?
Click to expand...

Well, we need a starting point. I just slid a little further from the cartesian cogito ergo sum to posit that our thinking is tied to sensory input. Hard to deny there is input, no? I am not claiming to know from whence, or wherefore, but there certainly is input for my thinking mechanism to sort.

And the human interpretation isn't necessarily consistent across the board- if you could superimpose your reality into my brain, to me that might look like paisley-world or fractal-world or minecraft-world, but when comparing our worlds verbally, all of our terms still line up so its hard to know just how different our personal realities are from each other.
Click to expand...

It is fairly consistent I believe. There is actually a consensus about a fair chunk of reality. While I think paisley or fractal or minecraft vision is pushing the idea a bit :) , it evokes the old question - do you see red the way I see it? if we take a certain wavelength of light in the red spectrum, all but the colourblind will agree it is red, and this is how we arrive at a consensus about reality. Is it really of any importance whether or not if I saw through your eyes what you call red I would see green? No - what matters is that our own interpretations are internally consistent, assuring a high degree of consistency from subject to subject. (Ok, alright - "high" degree may be up for debate 8) ).

More simply put, if we all agree about the names of the colours in the visible spectrum, or the notes of sound or of pain or pleasure or sour or sweet tastes or the stench of excrement or the delight of the redolence of the nape of a loved one, our subjective experience of them matters little. Ok, well, maybe the subjective experience of that last one. (or two!) :)

Cheers,

JBArk
 
I think some more interesting questions that follow the original one:

If life/reality is an illusion, can we somehow wake up and see beyond the illusion? If so, how? Are there techniques to 'wake up' that work for different people, or is it very dependent on context/person?
 
Well, we need a starting point. I just slid a little further from the cartesian cogito ergo sum to posit that our thinking is tied to sensory input. Hard to deny there is input, no? I am not claiming to know from whence, or wherefore, but there certainly is input for my thinking mechanism to sort.
Click to expand...

jbark, how does one differentiate between "thinking" and any other materialistic process that is considered to be devoid of consciousness? Thinking, as an act of consciousness, is only self-validated. We could instead ask where the line is between the external world and the black box that is considered to be one's mind? I don't think that such a line can be clearly drawn, if at all.

Whatever life/consciousness is, I think it is severely different from other things in the universe. I think it is so different as to seemingly contradict the rules that the rest of the universe appears to be governed by. It is an unforeseeable fluke; an emergent anomaly; an example of something that should not exist based on our current understanding of the universe. And yet, if you wait long enough, all things possible will occur, and probably some of the things thought impossible will occur as well.

Enlessness, perhaps there is nothing beyond the illusion. And how would we know that we are not still illuded after we "wake up"? Finally, does it even matter? If I told people that "I have a chemical that, when inserted into your brain, simulates the experience of waking up into a greater reality", I would hope that most people would want to try it. At least everyone here would. At the very least, life should be a fun ride, and sometimes questions of what is "real" or "illusion" should be left at the gate.
 
Sometimes I believe that all of us experience a world that looks essentially the same, smells and sounds pretty much the same (correcting for diffences such as color blindness etc); and that the big difference between us and how we see the world comes down to the thoughts we have about it.

And sometimes I think the opposite: that our worlds are all wildly different looking, but the number of parts and the way they interact is the same, so that our language is only capable of defining common points rather than differences. That simply by the nature of our very different internal interpretive mechanism, your blue and my blue are seen from such different angles that they would seem very different if placed side by side. But the overall equation makes it impossible to place them side by side.

I wonder if this is the reason why a given piece of art will get so many different reactions...?
 
"Unity Exists." P.D. Ouspensky

(Edit: Personally, I use terminology taken from the Fourth Way experiment. It is the easiest way to describe a lot of concepts in as few strokes as possible)


Ones personality needs be severely reduced.

Some illusions comes from one's personality, and before we can work with Real illusions we have to learn to recognize the huge number of false illusions which come from our false personality. In the fourth way there is a concept called World 96, wherein the 3 basic laws of the universe manifest in 96 different ways. More laws = more illusion.

World 96 is the actual realm where our false personalities are developed, fed, maintained. It almost like the opposite of an Astral Body, its like a stone body.


For the most part, world 96 is the most predominant influence on our planet presently.


It's helpful to be honest with one's self about what exactly a false personality is, but we can't do that unless we compare it with something else. A set of definite characteristic that we were born with, which we didn't acquire from anyone or from anywhere.

This, we might call our Essence. Our essence still creates Illusions, but it's alright to say that these are Real Illusions. And actually, for us to have a conscious destiny, we needs understand our Essence and work with it.

With a whole group of people who understand their own essence, we begin to see that Entities are at work making sure that various Essences and True Personalities can be divinely harmonious. And it forms microcosm in which Conscious Harmony is the government. This is what a school is. Conscious Harmony ultimately produces wordless divine states among groups of people.


But the first step is to see all the problems that our False Personality causes us, and the second step is to find out how beautiful our own essence is. These two steps dont need to be in order. The second step can be taken before the first step.


Essence still doesn't exist inside the higher Reality which most of us are thinking of. There are good dreams and bad dreams. However, recall being a child. Being a young child (about 6 years old) you were EMPTY. You were EMPTINESS. The decisions which flow out of essence are so spontaneous, that one can't actually say they were done.

It's actually kind of a natural Ritual for all "Ascending Souls" (with or without a school) to lose a state of Essence to False Personality only to regain a state of Essence with Awareness.

When there is Awareness in Essence, there is Awareness of Emptiness. Slowly, slowly, the clear light of the void begins to render itself, it begins to enamor the being of the person participating. It becomes a superfluous force which is shared among whole groups of people.


It's this clear light which is the "Reality" we bespeak.

And even this creates a Higher Order of Illusion, the illusion that there are illusions.

Everything comes from "The Tao" is contained in "the Tao" and fundamentally is made up of the "Tao" This is just not very practical.

"Mystery Schools" have been mysterious in the past, perhaps moreso than buddhist schools, But my experience in dealing with a school of the present day is that the more practical one is, the more mystical states are available.

So the more practical a teaching is, the more mystical.
 
When the Buddha was asked questions of a metaphysical nature, or any of the 'unanswerable' questions he would often negate the usefulness of those questions. As in, they may be pressing questions to have, but essentially , it boils down to whether or not those answers or understandings will have a practical influence on that person's life and liberation.

A Buddhist parable:

"It's just as if a man were wounded with an arrow thickly smeared with poison. His friends & companions, kinsmen & relatives would provide him with a surgeon, and the man would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know whether the man who wounded me was a noble warrior, a priest, a merchant, or a worker.' He would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know the given name & clan name of the man who wounded me... until I know whether he was tall, medium, or short... until I know whether he was dark, ruddy-brown, or golden-colored... until I know his home village, town, or city... until I know whether the bow with which I was wounded was a long bow or a crossbow... until I know whether the bowstring with which I was wounded was fiber, bamboo threads, sinew, hemp, or bark... until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was wild or cultivated... until I know whether the feathers of the shaft with which I was wounded were those of a vulture, a stork, a hawk, a peacock, or another bird... until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was bound with the sinew of an ox, a water buffalo, a langur, or a monkey.' He would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was that of a common arrow, a curved arrow, a barbed, a calf-toothed, or an oleander arrow.' The man would die and those things would still remain unknown to him."

-Cula-Malunkyovada Sutta: The Shorter Instructions to Malunkya" (MN 63), Majjhima Nikaya


So many of these questions collapse in on themselves because we are part of the observation we're trying to observe. In some cases, it could be seen that asking the 'wrong' questions could be an impediment to the awakened state we're pursuing despite the effort it's self being sincere.

As endlessness said, i think different people are more suitable to different methods and techniques and interpretations for what it exactly means to 'wake up' from the illusion.

What happens when you wake up? Do you go back to sleep? Do you help others wake up?
That's where i think certain schools of Buddhism really reach their weight and worldly relevance as human suffering is not ignored or sidelined in the pursuit of 'waking up'.

Been making a habit to ask myself this more often when i have questions or theories that might seem appealing to the enquiring mind at first glance, but ultimately, the resolution or answer may not consist of any practical value.

If so, So what?
 
It's not always going to be clear at first if resolving a big question will have practical value. If we strip it down far enough, we can get by on the simple answers: where's the food? Where's the danger? But we are wired to be curious for its own sake, probably with the motivation that unexpected insights could convey unexpected advantages. No doubt this strategy has been central to humankind's rapid evolution.

So is a totally esoteric insight useful in any practical way? It gets fuzzy, but I believe yes- if this insight helps you to relate to others more, or be more patient, or have a healthier perspective about death, etc. These kinds of insights can lead to a broader perspective, which in evolutionary terms is quite practical.
 
hixidom said:
Whatever life/consciousness is, I think it is severely different from other things in the universe. I think it is so different as to seemingly contradict the rules that the rest of the universe appears to be governed by. It is an unforeseeable fluke; an emergent anomaly; an example of something that should not exist based on our current understanding of the universe. And yet, if you wait long enough, all things possible will occur, and probably some of the things thought impossible will occur as well.
Click to expand...
I don't think consciousness is different from anything in the universe... I think it is the field in which the universe arises, and is the substance of which everything is composed. It is what causes the big bang, and is both the building blocks and the destination of all minds. In this way, our consciousness is not only not unforeseeable; it is inevitable.

The last bit about everything possible occurring, though, I agree with wholeheartedly.

hixidom said:
Enlessness, perhaps there is nothing beyond the illusion. And how would we know that we are not still illuded after we "wake up"? Finally, does it even matter? If I told people that "I have a chemical that, when inserted into your brain, simulates the experience of waking up into a greater reality", I would hope that most people would want to try it. At least everyone here would. At the very least, life should be a fun ride, and sometimes questions of what is "real" or "illusion" should be left at the gate.
Click to expand...
Oh, I think we would still be illuded after awakening. (love that word btw)

But waking up does matter. It expands the field of your being to include vast infinities beyond what is apprehend-able to someone in the throes of sleep.

Being awake in an illusion is not something we have to imagine... it is basically what we call lucid dreaming. Enlightenment in this dream world is not overly different from waking up in a dream. It removes all of the confusion and drama... it gives you a new perspective on things that allows you to transcend what had been hard and fast rules.

As such, it is considered to impart sidhis, or miraculous powers, to those that achieve it. It is why prophets and saints can work miracles. It frees you from suffering... because you realize that what had been causing you distress is not real. Furthermore, as you progress into deeper and more profound awakening, you can manipulate reality and manifest things.

This reality is denser and more difficult to transcend than a typical dream, but the principle is still the same. Someone who is awake enough could fly and teleport and do all the things that a lucid dreamer is capable of doing... which means anything they can imagine... and back with enough willpower.

hixidom said:
If I told people that "I have a chemical that, when inserted into your brain, simulates the experience of waking up into a greater reality", I would hope that most people would want to try it. At least everyone here would. At the very least, life should be a fun ride, and sometimes questions of what is "real" or "illusion" should be left at the gate.
Click to expand...
This is the idea of the "red and blue pills" from the Matrix. Many people don't want to take the red pill... and even after taking it, are sometimes keen to un-take it and go back to sleep. Not for the reasons that are shown in the Matrix, per se... but more for the same reasons we came here in the first place. People also play video games for similar reasons... the thrill of being limited and being able to authentically feel such odd and rare emotions as fear, anger, lust, envy and greed. We fall from grace on purpose, just like Lucifer.
 
Guyomech said:
unexpected insights could convey unexpected advantages.
Click to expand...

Yeah i agree with that. There is no doubt a valid reason for our transcendental curiosity which can eventually offer practical applications from the insights attained.

And i agree with the above Endlessness, Awakening in life is very akin to awakening within a dream and and there will always be new levels of self to awaken to. Greater levels of lucidity and self awareness far beyond our physical perimeters.

I can get where you're coming from with the last sentence about purposely falling from grace too, although i don't necessarily see it as something we purposely chose, nor do i believe the grace is really abscent, rather we just came to believe and reinforce the opaque obstructions that prevent us from fully merging with the higher parts of the spectrum of that light/grace. But i guess that part of the story is hidden for now.

As for the original illusionary question , i quite like the metaphor from Nisargadatta Maharaj ;

"The world is like a sheet of paper on which something is typed. The
reading and the meaning will vary with the reader, but the paper is
the common factor, always present, rarely perceived. When the ribbon
is removed, typing leaves no trace on the paper.
 
I think it was me you are referring to, though I imagine my brother Endlessness might feel similarly... I certainly can not speak for him.

8)

I love the quote... though it begs the question of who is typing and what is the ribbon?
 
Back
Top Bottom