For quite some time, I have accepted the notion that the life our meager brains are able to comprehend is nothing more than illusion. I've felt a resonance with this concept without actually understanding why. If someone asked me to explain why I believed life is an illusion, the most I could muster was a shrug of the shoulders.
But something within the pages of God's Debris sparked a somewhat clearer understanding. I don't remember which page I was on or whether the words I was reading spoke of this topic directly. All I know is that a loose definition of life as illusion started to form in my mind.
So, I'm going to do a little thinking out loud here. I do so with a bit of trepidation based on two factors.
First, there is a lot of stuff inside me little noggin that I have a great deal of trouble expressing in words. This might seem like a counter-intuitive statement to some of you because of the amount of verbiage I seem capable of splashing across a page. While I seem plenty capable of explaining and expounding on some topics, I concurrently feel like a clumsy oaf in relation to a number of others.
Second, conceptions such as this don't owe themselves to words at all anyway. The very process of trying to encapsulate a process one can't truly comprehend is daunting, at best. Whatever I write will, ultimately, miss the mark by a wide margin. Be that as it may, here I go.
As far as our consciousness, neither the future nor the past exists. The future hasn't transpired yet and the past has already evaporated. The only thing that can be considered real is the present.
But this creates a problem for human consciousness. We're only able to engage the present from the past (which is already gone)! Our realization of every moment only occurs a fraction of a second after it happens. So, we're always playing catch up to something -- the present -- we're incapable of catching.
The way we make sense of all these aspects that no longer exist is by creating illusions of what could exist if our brains could realize sensations and phenomena instantaneously.
Does this make any sense to anyone? Yea or nay, let's hear what you have to say about illusions and life.
But something within the pages of God's Debris sparked a somewhat clearer understanding. I don't remember which page I was on or whether the words I was reading spoke of this topic directly. All I know is that a loose definition of life as illusion started to form in my mind.
So, I'm going to do a little thinking out loud here. I do so with a bit of trepidation based on two factors.
First, there is a lot of stuff inside me little noggin that I have a great deal of trouble expressing in words. This might seem like a counter-intuitive statement to some of you because of the amount of verbiage I seem capable of splashing across a page. While I seem plenty capable of explaining and expounding on some topics, I concurrently feel like a clumsy oaf in relation to a number of others.
Second, conceptions such as this don't owe themselves to words at all anyway. The very process of trying to encapsulate a process one can't truly comprehend is daunting, at best. Whatever I write will, ultimately, miss the mark by a wide margin. Be that as it may, here I go.
As far as our consciousness, neither the future nor the past exists. The future hasn't transpired yet and the past has already evaporated. The only thing that can be considered real is the present.
But this creates a problem for human consciousness. We're only able to engage the present from the past (which is already gone)! Our realization of every moment only occurs a fraction of a second after it happens. So, we're always playing catch up to something -- the present -- we're incapable of catching.
The way we make sense of all these aspects that no longer exist is by creating illusions of what could exist if our brains could realize sensations and phenomena instantaneously.
Does this make any sense to anyone? Yea or nay, let's hear what you have to say about illusions and life.
It makes a bit of sense and as this is a tricky subject it would take the two people some beer, some definitions of the terms they wanted to use, then several hours to reach a point of conclusion probably something like "well, it's like that isn't it? Yeah kinda, that'll do, we won't get much closer than that - fancy another beer?"
ReplyDeleteIt is not the illusion of a magician but the illusion that there is a solid reality of objects when in truth there is no solidity, objects or qualities. But at the same time it is as real as it is not real, it is our reality. We have to take the bits we like and know not to be attached to like or dislike as while nice and interesting they are figments.
You need both sets of arguments dependent on who you are talking to. If they are determined of one view you show them the other, resulting in them seeing such a strong case for the other that their previous firm notion is on shaky ground.
I think of it like a compass. It was set on north, it was then talked around to being attracted to south - but the truth is in balance of knowing both and pointing east or west, attempting to never be pulled off to either pole. The safest bet being to sit on the pin in the middle.
It is illusion in the sense none of the qualities we give it have any reality whatsoever - but i still like tea.
Thanks for bringing up this topic.
ReplyDeleteWhile I'm inclined to agree with what Tao says, I've always been taken with the "relative" solidity of things. That seems to be what we confuse with "reality as such". If you sit and just observe (or meditate), things seem more or less solid, but over time, they break down and return to the elements.
When we use the word "time," I think we are trying to say something about this process of coming to fruition, then declining. We try and use numbers to make something regular of it. That, along with memory, gives us the senses of discreet pasts, presents, and futures.
Which is another way of saying, things are always becoming in the eternal present.
As humans, we've developed ways of understanding this process, and those ways have in turn shaped us as humans. A hunter-gather's perception of time is very different from that of a harried yuppie, which is different from that of, say, a Babylonian farmer.
We live in the world. In the world, not outside of it. And our understandings of the world take place here. That's why so many different understandings of the world can coexist (not always peacefully, but they are both there).
I don't think we are doomed to live with incommensurate understandings of the world; we can always work to understand one another. I think of the recent book Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes, by Daniel Everett, as a successful effort by one man to understand others who were initially very different from him.
You can't have a concept of illusion without an underlying sense of truth; they just don't exist without one another.
Just some disjointed thoughts.
If all life is an illusion, it is the only illusion we have. It's a remarkably universal and persistent illusion that we have to deal with it on a daily basis. That illusion can run you down on the A26!
ReplyDeleteThe thought that there is no solid reality is meaningless in the world we inhabit. It may be important to the quantum physicist, but it is irrelevant to the grandma crossing the street at a busy intersection.
The illusion that blocks our path is permanence. We tend to think that because things change slowly they are unchanging, and this leads to mistakes in perception and action that in turn lead to conditions such as climate change and Peak Oil.
It is time itself that is the illusion.
ReplyDeleteI can not speak for others, but for myself, I am aware that time is a very elastic thing.
I can slow, and even stop time.
I can live a second into the future.
It is why I am still alive, after the kind of life I have led.
I had a severe stutter for many years: I simply couldn't synchronize my vocal cords with my mind.
Nothing and nobody could help. It was only after I gained full consciousness that it fell into place. I can speak perfectly when I am in the moment. And that is where I live now.
All this talk of being unable to be in the moment, since the moment is already past, simply does not apply to my experience of life.
I am very much faster than most people, in any number of ways.
And being able to exist a moment into the future, makes that not so difficult to understand.
We maintain the sense of the past and idea of the future because without it you become psychotic, making up strange explanations for whatever is occurring around you. It's a dream-like state where things simply happen and your mind is going along making up explanations for what's happening around you.
ReplyDeleteEh, then again, that's pretty much what a lot of us do anyway.
"Time is an illusion. Lunch time doubly so." -- Douglas Adams
A moment ago it made sense to me. At this moment it makes sense to me. A moment from now it will make sense to me. In a few moments I will cease to think about it.
ReplyDelete