I recently had a conversation on Facebook with a couple of spiritualists who were talking about how the world is an illusion. The conversations can be found here (you may have to join the group): https://www.facebook.com/groups/620851949303352/posts/1055002835888259/
The meaning of illusion
One of them asked me what my definition of illusion is. This was my answer:
“I think the essential meaning of ‘illusion’ is when something makes an impression on you that’s misleading or that you otherwise misinterpret, so you believe the meaning of that thing is something other than it is. IMO, for illusion to have meaning, there must be the theoretical possibility of witnessing a more accurate truth behind the illusion (i.e., one that is more convincing/makes more sense/agrees with more other senses and beliefs) that may go deeper than the original impression.”
Without the possibility of seeing a deeper truth behind the impression, the apprehension is not exactly an illusion, it’s merely a delusion, hallucination or falsehood, which is why I say that, for illusion to have meaning, there must be the theoretical possibility of witnessing a more accurate truth behind the illusion. I wrote more about this in the last paragraph of the first section of https://myriachromat.wordpress.com/2024/11/08/fun-and-liberation/. It’s like simply saying there must be a more accurate truth behind the illusion, only I bring the act of witnessing that truth into it because of the tricky philosophical nature of the notion of objective truth, particularly wrt the idea of the “view from nowhere,” being independent of personal observation or interpretation.
There is necessarily at least some subjectivity in determining whether something is an illusion or not, because the same is true for determining what’s true. One reason interpretations of impressions are at least partially subjective is that all interpretations are reductive. When you look at a flower or infer facts about it, the actual flower is orders of magnitude of orders of magnitude more complex than what you see, which is reduced to a 2D projection of its mere surface, the 3-factor color space of the human eye and brain, limited visual fidelity, etc., and it’s orders of magnitude of orders of magnitude more complex than the the facts you infer, which are merely propositions made of a few symbols and the simple semiotic relationships between them.
As the observation or interpretation of the object is merely a a reduction, it’s necessarily arbitrary which parts of the truth of the object or of the raw impression of it one retains and which parts one throws away in the reduction. But actually, one’s not “retaining” any particular part of the impression, because the reduction is entirely a translation, or a transmogrification, of the data.
It’s also interpreted into, and/or filtered by, the belief framework/worldview, and some more specific beliefs, of the individual, which is another reason it’s at least partially subjective. But we may not necessarily say this is a reason “illusion” only has meaning if something deeper behind it may be discovered, because we could reason that the specific beliefs the interpretation is made into or filtered by are either objectively wrong or right, and if they’re wrong then the resultant interpretation may thus be illusory.
We could also reason that the belief framework or worldview of the individual is also objectively wrong or right, but this is more problematic, because we could say the worldview amounts to a perspective onto the world, and there are many possible valid perspectives. We could also say that the worldview or belief framework always underlies our synthesis of what we call truth, so it’s meta to it and therefore neither true nor false.
This, of course, implies that truth is merely synthetic, and is probably therefore subjective as well. I talk more about why truth is both synthetic and subjective here: https://myriachromat.wordpress.com/2020/10/28/is-there-objective-truth/. It’s why I quality the phrase “more accurate” in the initial definition of illusion with “i.e., one that is more convincing/makes more sense/agrees with more other senses and beliefs.”
The meaning of Maya
The beginning of what the other person in the conversation said to me included the sentence ‘illusion in the context of reality is in reference to this material creation we’re currently residing in, also known as, “Maya,” ‘that which is not.” This was my response to him:
“I think it may not be the literal material that’s illusory, but our interpretation of its meaning or our understanding of the nature of existence/ourselves from within this material world/incarnation.
But metaphysics is tricky, and it’s hard to say exactly what matter/the physical universe is. We may find that matter is illusory in some way, that it’s perhaps a misleading perspective on That Which Is, but that’s tricky too: at some point “reality” can only mean our experiential context, and the material is wholly real in our totally immersive experience. “I know this: If life is an illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me.” -Robert Howard in Conan the Cimmerian
At some point, other interpretations of the material may just as well be called alternative experiences as called deeper or less illusory perceptions of the material, and perhaps even what’s considered deeper could still be considered irrelevant to, additional to/extraneous to, or aberrant from from our everyday experience, because our everyday experience is so completely immersive, meaning the material wouldn’t be considered illusory even if it appears to be a relative interpretation of something more absolute. Here’s a seemingly relevant quote: “Moreover, as regards the theory of knowledge, everything is above all what it appears to be, but besides that, always something different and immensely more.” – Henry T. Laurency, ‘The Philosopher’s Stone – Esoteric World View – 2.4 Matter and Consciousness’. (I don’t think it’s precisely true, as it doesn’t account for anomalies such as optical illusions, lies, etc.)
Also, the material world could be considered to “boil down to” or to be made up of something deeper, like the cosmic void/the formless, but it may still be considered real just like biology and our bodies are considered real even they “boil down” or are made up of chemistry and atoms.
Regarding the illusion possibly just being a misinterpretation/misunderstanding of the meaning of the material world, a major factor here is that we interpret life to be all about the material, when in fact it’s more about the spiritual, and in interpreting it that way we make it more about the material in some respects, while in other respects it always was and always will be about the spiritual. Some of the implications of interpreting it to be all about the material are 1. identifying with and caring more about the body than about the mind and soul, including the minds and souls of others and how we may interact with them, 2. having the bleak and dreadful outlook that everybody, including oneself, eventually dies—totally and permanently, and 3. becoming more or less physicalist and dismissing much of the actually maximally rich, full tapestry of reality/metaphysics, including everything that’s considered mystical, spiritual, occult, paranormal, psychic/psi/parapsychological, magical, divine or sacred.
Another sense in which life is an illusion is simply in a lot of our most fundamental beliefs, which probably all, in more and less indirect ways, stem from our immersion in the physical world and bodies, and which definitely inform virtually every other aspect of our beliefs, intentions/desires, fears, habits and way of life, character, personal relationships, the structure of society, and of course ultimately our happiness and prosperity.
In Communion with God by Neale Donald Walsch, God/Neale lists the 10 main illusions of mankind. Each illusion is said to have been created in order to cover up the holes in or to make possible the previous illusion. The illusions are:
1. The illusion of need
2. The illusion that failure exists
3. The illusion that separation exists
4. The illusion that insufficiency exists
5. The illusion that requirement exists
6. The illusion that judgment exists
7. The illusion of condemnation
8. The illusion that conditionality exists
9. The illusion that superiority exists
10. The illusion that ignorance exists
These are all elaborated on in his book Communion with God, in his book The Ten Illusions of Humans: The Most Important Single Message from Communion with God, and online at https://spiritlibrary.com/nea…/the-ten-illusions-of-humans.
I think the essence of Maya may be often confused by people simply making the sweeping gesture that Maya means the world is an illusion, leading one to think that matter/the physical universe itself is an illusion, when matter may be real, or it may be real in some sense even though ultimately all is mind or consciousness, or in any case it may be irrelevant whether matter is really real or not, and Maya really means that the social reality society teaches us is illusory or at least contains, and is probably framed by, very fundamental/systemic nontruths.
Though, TBH, Maya probably also means that there’s a lot more to reality, even in the here and now (or, more accurately, everywhere) and to our own nature than the physical, or what’s conferred to us by physical sensation, and even more than what we normally experience of our own minds.
Then there is the idea that “all that we see and seem is but a dream within a dream,” which may be true for some poetic interpretation of “dream”; there is Bill Hicks’ quote, “all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves”; there is Plato’s allegory of the cave; there is these lyrics from a Robert Miles song, “Maybe this world is a broken mirror / Reality in reverse / Maybe it’s just a shadow / Of a parallel universe”; etc.
Maybe the forms of this world are just a shadowlike reflection of a greater world, I suppose the spiritual world. For example, our bodies/the human form are probably “designed” to embody cosmic truths, which is why the ideal human form is so beautiful/aesthetic. My friend Darin says that it’s analogous to how crystals grow in a solution. The crystal is denser than the solution, like the physical world is denser than the spiritual world, and the crystal contains the same important substances of the solution, only in a more concentrated form. And it seems almost as if the events of our lives are sometimes messages of a sort, that get somehow fragmented, encoded and distorted in their transitioning across levels of reality or life.
The abundance of synchronicity, for one thing, makes a strong case that causality, or the operation of reality itself, cannot be anything nearly what we think it is. (For arguments against skepticism toward the concept of synchronicity, see https://myriachromat.wordpress.com/2020/10/30/how-many-coincidences-are-enough/ and https://myriachromat.wordpress.com/2018/04/13/notes-on-science-scientism-mysticism-religion-logic-physicalism-skepticism-etc/#Bias.) The same could be said of the extremely counterintuitive, seemingly impossible nature of physics on both fronts: general relativity and quantum mechanics.
The reason I said metaphysics is tricky is that it’s sub- or super-empirical, and without empirical verification behind a metaphysical statement, it’s questionable whether there is meaning to saying the statement is true or false, and it’s also questionable what the statement even means. This assertion is in line with and supported/explained by positivist philosophical movement, which I don’t fundamentally agree with, but I think it’s a useful razor in many contexts.
So, it’s questionable what the meaning, and not to mention the truth-value, of “matter/the physical universe is an illusion” is, because that probably qualifies as a metaphysical statement, given that it’s beyond empiricism, as we can only empirically measure physical things, and that it’s beyond the physical, as it’s about the nature of physicality itself and/or what’s behind/deeper/more absolute than it.
