Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Robert Walker of Robert Walker Online. Thank you Robert!
Though it may seem obvious, and therefore deceptively simple, one of the most challenging things about the idea of illusion vs. reality is just that—the difficulty of deciphering illusion as opposed to reality. Again, it seems obvious and simple, but that is sort of the point here. For an illusion to be an illusion it must look/feel/seem like something that it is not. And so most people will see most illusions not as “illusions,” not as forms or representations of something they are not, but will literally mistake them for that they seem to be.
Take the example of a mirage. The reason a mirage is a mirage (the reason the illusion is an illusion) is that a person does not look at a mirage and say “Look, a mirage!” No, the reason it is a mirage is because a person sees it and says “Look, water!” While most people would like to posit themselves on the enlightened side of illusion, this is rarely the case in reality. Most of us have enough experience with mirages to be able to spot one when we see one, but that’s also my point here. It takes experience (practice, work, and effort) to no longer mistake illusion for reality.
Most people do not see illusions as illusions. And if one does not realize that he is seeing an illusion, he will believe that what he sees is reality. A mirage is one thing. It’s another when we’re talking about concepts, such as Freedom, Love, Trust, Desire, Family, Responsibility, etc. Indeed, this is one of the reasons why belief is so dangerous, for it gets in the way of people being able to question their vision, to discern reality from illusion.
So, how can one see, or recognize, an illusion? Well, the trick is that you can’t. The only way to know an illusion is in retrospect. Only when we see the reality of an illusion—only when the illusion no longer exists—can we know (“see”) that it was really an illusion. In this way, the only way to see an illusion as an illusion is to see its absence. And while we might stumble upon some illusions, like stumbling upon a mirage, if we want to make real progress and mature, the way to find illusions is to seek them out in our own beliefs, assumptions, and certainties.
One of the things we must accept if we are to benefit from the idea of illusion vs. reality is that there is a difference between what something is and what it is to us. Again, this seems simple, but it is actually quite complex and far-reaching in its implications. Take, for example, the old philosophical stalwart: a table. My question to you is: What is it? Is that thing a table, or is a table what you call that thing? Think about it. If you think about it hard enough, you will see that there is a difference between what that thing is, and what you call it. Even if you try to break the thing down into its constituent parts—wood, nails, atoms, quarks, strings, etc.—the question remains: are those things wood, nails, atoms, quarks, strings, etc., or are wood, nails, atoms, quarks, and strings what you call those things? If you allow the distinction to sink in, it’s a mind-blower. This is at the heart of illusion vs. reality.
What we see is that illusions do not exist in the world “out there.” What exists out there in the world is reality, or said another way, what is. But we do not see what is, we see what we see the way we see it. This is one of the great philosophical dilemmas. And so what we realize (and this is key) is that illusions do not exist out in the world, but rather within (or, said another way, from) ourselves.
When it comes to our mirage, either there is water, or there is not. Or said another way, either there is a mirage, or there is not. Whether or not there is water is wholly and utterly independent of us, the subject. But whether or not there is a “mirage” is wholly and utterly dependent upon us, the subject, for its very existence.
I will say it loud and clear: Human beings do not determine what is, only how we see (things).
Now, those who have studied such matters will probably (as they should) point out that recent discoveries in quantum physics have shown that it is possible that we do affect “what is” by seeing it. But, in reality, this is compatible with, and not a negation of, what I am talking about. Of course we (humans) affect things in the real world, for we are just as real as the reality of which I speak (I’m not saying we’re ghosts). What I am talking about in this discussion of illusion is, to be more accurate, that slippery and nebulous thing we might call “attitude,” or the process of “mind.” To reiterate, then, and to be even more clear, our belief about reality does not determine what it is.
And so what we realize is that what we believe is utterly inconsequential to what is. When it comes to belief, your belief either corresponds to what is true or it does not. And what we see, as well, is that belief itself is in the realm of illusion, not reality. Go back to the mirage example. Say there is no water there. It doesn’t matter at all (to reality) whether you believe that there is water, or you believe that there is no water. There is no water. Either you see the truth of the matter or not. You don’t need to believe that there is no water there; you see it, you realize it, you are aware of it, but you don’t believe it. Belief, by definition, is an opinion of something that may or may not be as you think it is. Belief is all about you, awareness is all about what is. This is a very important difference of focus.
And so, in the realm of reality, what we see is that belief has no place, no purpose, other than distraction and delusion. What we see is that beliefs themselves are (and when you think about it, can be nothing but) illusions. Just as the way you see something is an illusion of what it is, your belief about something is an illusion of what is. What you believe may be true; but if it is true, then why the need to believe it? Belief simply has no place in such a situation. You simply do not need to believe what is true. What is true is true. What is is. Either you see it or not. If you see it, there is simply no need to believe in it. The idea of “believing in” the truth is nonsensical.
Direct understanding (or awareness) of reality precludes the very existence of belief, of illusion, by its very nature. This point is of utter importance. Again, it takes the focus away from you and puts it on reality, on what is.
You simply cannot see the way things really are, cannot be aware of reality, with your ego as mediator.
What we see from all this is that beliefs are illusions. And on the path to enlightenment, illusions are training wheels. While training wheels do serve a purpose, eventually they will only slow you down and get in the way.
From my personal notes, 10/12/00.
Robert Walker is an author and musician currently living in New Mexico. Between the years of 1999 and 2003, he accumulated over one and half million words of personal notes. He is posting excerpts from those notes on his website/blog: Robert Walker Online.
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Nice work Robert. I always enjoy reading the understandings of others because they are often reached by means so different to my own. The difference in perspective often fills in the gaps or better yet widens out my narrow corridor of perception. In this case however I think we are as close to 100% agreement as possible.
I like your final lines. Illusions are training wheels that can help. The differentiated can be used as a boat to cross the river. But on the other side of the river one does not pick the boat up and carry it around on one’s head. The boat is left behind as one journey’s off into the new land.
Again, nice work.
Funny, only yesterday i read somewhere a post about illusions in self-esteem, about pretending, not being… and there was a phrase “fake it until you make it”. Illusion/reality conversion – you should create an illusion of a person you want to be and pretend you are this mirage-person, until you become one… you should believe you are, and you’ll become… belief is the thing you need if you want mirages to become real. it sounds reasonable… and your article also sounds reasonable… and I can’t understand where the flaw is hidden:)
i disagree with his assertion that belief is illusionary..beliefs definatly affect our view of life but they are important to how we live our lives and make sense of our reality.
I think maybe the key is in the fact that we are conscious beings with creative powers. Our thoughts are things that have an effect upon other things.
Also there in an interesting choice of words in what you said Linda. You said …make send of OUR reality. What is is what is. Take power and money for example. Many people consider these things evil or bad. But they are just things. The subjective labeling is what defines them as either or. Physical pain and pleasure are just an experience of sensation. Some people enjoy pain. Draw pleasure out too long and it may feel like pain.
I think what he is getting at is that under the multiplicity of subjectivity there is a reality that just is as it is. The rest is our own creation.
Great article Robert! (Albert – nice choice of guest author!)
I love reading explanations of maya (illusion) as everyone comes to it in a different way, which expands my understanding of what it is.
As a yoga practitioner, moving to a state of pure awareness where one is able to “see” just what is… is one of the benefits that can accrue. And it’s awesome in those moments when it does happen.
For me, it’s most likely to happen when I teach a class – when I sink into that state of flow where mind chatter ceases and it’s just me and my students and the effortless flow of yoga.
I wonder if other people who experience this type of flow in their lives, whether it’s sport or art or something else entirely, find they are in this state of awareness where all illusion falls away?
(For more on this, check out my article http://pranaflownz.com/2008/10.....w-of-life/ )
Cheers,
KL
Stephen and Kara-Leah — I appreciate your comments. Thank you.
Lina — That’s an understandable confusion to have. One way to think of this is that there is “who we are” (our conditioned ego-self) and “who we really are” (who we are in the absence of (that) ego-self). The idea is to awaken from the illusions of our conditioned existences (our illusory ego-selves) to who we really are. The problem with this whole “fake it till you make it” idea is that rather than awakening from illusions, one rather constructs other illusions and then attempts to be them.
Similarly, many people “find Buddhism” and create a new “Buddhist” version of themselves. Some even wear the costume. But it’s likely that they’re missing the ultimate point—which is to let go of/awaken from our artificial, constructed “identities,” not create (or escape into) new ones.
You already are who you really are. The point is to do the work (make the efforts) to be it.
As I said in the post: “What is true is true. What is is. Either you see it or not. If you see it, there is simply no need to believe in it. The idea of ‘believing in’ the truth is nonsensical.”
We could just as easily substitute “who you really are” for “the truth” in the last sentence.
I hope this helps.
Cheers,
Robert
Robert,
I love the simplicity of your statement, ‘Your already are who you really are”. It’s so simple, and goes straight to the core.
Practicing yoga, it’s often about peeling away the layers… which can be painful and difficult, but it reveals the true you underneath!
Cheers
KL
I want to know who chose the picture for this one! I bet it was Albert. Talk about your illusions! Love your airbrushed Swedish supermodel with the airborne hair, honey. Excellent illustration.
Hi Robert,
I agree that we should try to see things as objective as we can and refrain from personal judgment and wishful thinking.
However, I think it is unnatural, if not impossible, to understand something “directly” as it is–as if we see it for the first time like a new born baby. Obviously understanding the world is a cumulative process. You would not be able to read what I write here if you had not learned from your teachers about how to read and write.
My point is that it is impossible to understand something as it is, because the ability to understand things in the world is a result of a learning process. It is impractical to ask us to think with a clean slate like an infant who cannot survive in this world by himself or herself. The knowledge about the world, which we have cumulated over time, is what that keeps us alive. But you are right that it is exactly the same body of knowledge that keeps us from seeing things anew as they are.
I rationalize that there are two kinds of knowledge that we have accumulated: objective (physical) knowledge and subjective (social and egotistic) knowledge. The former is actually needed for us to perceive reality, and the latter is what may cause illusion and keep us from seeing things as they really are.
What do you think?
Tony — I think you bring up some excellent points, worthy of serious thought. You have stumbled upon one of the (very many) paradoxes we naturally come to again and again as we get “deeper” into these issues. But, I would say to be mindful of the (ultimate) “subjectivity” of supposed “objective (physical) knowledge.” See my discussion about the table in the post. When you dig deeper, even something as intuitively obvious as “physical knowledge” breaks down into (valid) skepticism about such epistemological matters.
The truest response I could give you is that all of us who strive for this level of awareness must continue to dig, examine, consider, and so forth, and see for ourselves. Although that might seem like a frustrating answer, at a certain level, we simply must see such things for ourselves (via our own efforts). You are obviously putting in such effort. Keep doing so, and remember not to rest on assumptions and certainties, even if doing without them is difficult, and even scary (yes, it can indeed get scary when our illusions begin to crumble around us).
That said, I think that the dialectic, as it were, is incredibly valuable to the process of “awakening” to things as they really are. As such, I’d like to point you to a post on my site that, I think, speaks to your points/questions: Our Starting Point
Please feel free to check it out and let me know what you think.
@ Carolyn: Heh, yeap it was me. Something clicked about that pic for me…
Hi Robert. Thanks for your reply. To me, a table can be seen in different contexts and be described in different levels of representation. Calling it a table or an assembly of wooden blocks and nails or an assembly of protons and neutrons and electronics are all correct depending on the context. None of the descriptions should be called an illusion. An illusion such as a mirage is something that appears to exist but actually doesn’t. The table does exist; only the naming system of the table is artificially created and attached depending on a particular context. Buddhism has the concept of emptiness to describe existence that is unreal (“not independently exist”), but it is not the topic here.
I agree that a conditioned mind is occasionally biased and is less likely to see things anew. But on the other hand, I believe that human is naturally born to be conditioned for good reasons. Without the ability of being conditioned (the ability to learn and to accumulate experience), we will have to see everything anew every time. In our society, a medical doctor must rely on what he or she has learned in medical school and the many patients and cases that he or she has experienced first hand in dealing with a new patient. The medical doctor cannot possibly see each case anew without drawing on prior experience and knowledge about medicine. It is the conditioned and experienced mind of a medical doctor that we should trust most if not all the time.
Also, living organisms, including human, are hardwired so that some of their judgment and responses are obligatory. A line that is drawn on a blackboard is perceived as a line, not as many dots densely packed. When a circle is partially covered by and overlapped with a square, we will conclude that the covered part of the circle is still there although it is possible that the circle is actually just an arc but not a full circle. When hearing a very loud noise, all living organisms, without thinking, will run away from the source of the noise (rather than standing still or running towards it). These are built-in mechanisms to help us survive and pre-interpret the world in a split second. Most of the time, those interpretations are correct and useful. The ability to see a table as a table, but not an assembly of nails and wooden blocks, should be seen as an achievement of human being.
The problem of a conditioned mind, I agree, is that it blinds us from seeing things that may be different from the schemas that we have generalized and created over time. If we keep seeing that most criminals are blacks, or most CEOs are men, then we conclude, unjustly, that blacks are bad people and women are inferior to men in corporations.
While I agree to the criticisms of the conditioned mind, I think the criticisms overlook the benefits and the importance of “being conditioned.” It is true that the society is getting worse in terms of morality. But if we all make an effort to be mindful of our daily activities, our mind can be conditioned in the right direction as well. Many gurus talk about how meditation can help to achieve an unconditioned mind so that the mind can see the real reality. I personally doubt that if several meditated minds mediating on the same thing, will those mind see the same real reality? I believe that people who try hard to see things for themselves still may see different things and “realities.” In other words, I doubt the existence of a truly unconditioned mind.
Sorry that I have written too much here. I certainly know that I have overlooked something and may have some wrong logic somewhere. I look forward to hearing your advice (and I probably won’t respond so lengthy, if at all).
Robert this is a great article on a topic that usually gets heated debates by many because many people still think that there is one reality. So naturally they get upset when others don’t see things their way.
For me everybody lives through and in their own reality. I love what Wayne Dyer once quoted “In my life nothing ever goes wrong”
Many people may not understand that given the current situation of the world, but I do – because what is reality to one person may be an illusion to another.
Hi Evita — Thanks for your comment. I have been confronted with this idea of what we might call “reality relativism” many times in the past. Yes, in a certain sense, reality to one is illusion to another. But, as in extreme moral relativism, we tend to lose sight of the importance of asking ourselves what “reality” really is. I think it’s important not to take any form of conceptual relativism too far, while at the same time being vigilant against conceptual tyranny. Something to consider: If, as I contend, reality is the absence of illusion, then, seen this way, the idea of each of us having our own realities doesn’t really make sense.
Tony — You bring up some good points.
Regarding “the table” example, I’ll point you to something I wrote in the post above:
“What we see is that illusions do not exist in the world ‘out there.’ What exists out there in the world is reality, or said another way, what is. But we do not see what is, we see what we see the way we see it. This is one of the great philosophical dilemmas. And so what we realize (and this is key) is that illusions do not exist out in the world, but rather within (or, said another way, from) ourselves.”
In other words, I’m not suggesting the “table” (itself) is an illusion; rather, what we see (no matter what we call it) will be an illusion, until we have essentially become free of the illusions of our conditioned existence to the point of being able to “see” reality (“things as they really are”).
You bring up some good points as to the fact that the way we naturally are (what we might call “human nature”) is not necessarily “bad.” I agree. The point of awareness, or making the efforts towards “an enlightened state of being,” if you will, is not to disparage the natural progressions we make as human animals, but rather to see that we can outgrow our conditioning, and thereby attain (real) happiness, which I equate with “enlightenment,” or “being who you really are” (i.e., the absence of your illusory ego-self).
I also want to make it clear that I am not talking about “seeing things anew,” but rather seeing without illusion. These are not synonymous to me. The former, as you rightly point out, sort of negates all that we have been through to get where we are. I think respecting process is very important on the path to awareness.
You wrote:
“I personally doubt that if several meditated minds mediating on the same thing, will those mind see the same real reality? I believe that people who try hard to see things for themselves still may see different things and ‘realities.’ In other words, I doubt the existence of a truly unconditioned mind.”
I think I see what you’re getting at here, but I think that, on the contrary, everyone who successfully “awakens” from the illusions of his or her conditioned existence, regardless of culture or time, will “see the same thing,” i.e., the “same” truth(s). Not (metaphysically) positive truths, but rather truth “via negativa,” if you will—what we “see” in the absence of illusion. I think we see the evidence of this in most wisdom traditions (especially those based on “Eastern” thought), and even lurking beneath the surface of many religions (for example, Thomas Aquinas — a truly brilliant “Christian” who spoke within the confines of the conditioned vocabulary of the times in which he lived). We should also always be mindful not to put too much stake in words/concepts themselves (such as “enlightenment,” “awareness,” “truth,” etc., for they are all, in the end, themselves illusory constructs.)
As to the last sentence of yours I quoted above, I think it is always wise to doubt (as long as that doubt does not block us from further awareness). At the same time, I think that it absolutely is possible to outgrow our conditioning. That is the very essence of a “buddha” — one who is awakened. While I understand doubting that anyone can truly attain such a state, that doesn’t mean it is not possible, and that people have attained such a state (though, admittedly, the number is relatively small). The only way to know the truth of such things is, again, to (as the Buddha himself is said to have said) go there and see for yourself.
Thanks Robert for your reply. I do see some good points you mentioned that I had overlooked.
This is an amazing blog. I’m so glad I found it. I absolutely love this article… even the comments are great!
I agree with Kelly, this is a terrific blog. I went to a series of personal effectiveness seminars a few years back, and there’s a lot of similar information. I enjoyed them very much, and this brings a good reminder of some of that.
Nice post, I guess illusion leads to dreams ,and dreams with some commitment leads to achievement and success.
Few people experience real realty. It has been said that we create our own, but there still exists one, that we did not experience.Therefore it is an illusion.
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