“It’s all an illusion”… is all an illusion!

“It’s all an illusion.”

“Nothing has ever happened to nobody.”

“Everything is just the play of consciousness.”

Sounds cool, yeah? Core, essential, pithy truths, right?

Sure, if you nod your head and believe everything you hear just because it feels good.

You may have statements like these on your fridge or on posters on the wall or in needlepoint wall hangings… maybe, you believe, if you remind yourself of these ideas for long enough, you’ll actually experience them 24/7. Maybe.
But, here’s the big question:

Are they even true?!

Is everything REALLY just an illusion so compelling that, well, it seems real?

I’ve hung out with a lot of teachers who say things like this. And I always wonder the same thing when I hear them say it:

Why can’t they PROVE it? Why don’t they do something that demonstrates that these ideas are more than mere concepts?

Why don’t we ever see one of these teachers stand in the middle of the highway letting illusiory cars pass through their fictitious bodies?

Why do they pay taxes, eat food, get liposuction?

And why do so many of these teachers who say “nothing ever happened to nobody” all tell you the time and date that this “nothing” happened… and why do their “nobody’s” often have funny Buddhist/Hindu/Pleadian names?

So, which seems more likely: that it’s all an illusion, or that “it’s all an illusion” is just how someone impresses you by using mystical-poetic language to describe a description-defying experience?

What if you didn’t think that it was a worthwhile goal to attain the “level of consciousness” you believe has been reached by those who talk this way? What if you didn’t think that seeing it all as “a play of illusion” would make you happier, thinner, or make people pay money to hear you talk?

Here’s a quick lesson from Buddhism about this “nobody” thing: There’s no such “thing” a chair — chair is a concept we use when encounter a combination of independent parts (“legs”, “seat”, “back”)… and those independent parts are combinations of other independent… and so on, and so on and so on. No matter how far you look, you never find a chair separate from the concept of chair.

Scientists say something similar… they can’t find (or agree upon) what the essential unit of matter is. Each “thing” they find is either made up of other things or has qualities that aren’t fixed in time and space. When examined from a particular perspective, they can’t find some stable “thing.”

Same thing with “Me”. “Me” is just a word to describe a process, a relationship, an experience. You can’t find some specific aspect of “me” that is, well, you. At best, you may land on the simple feeling/sensation/experience of your undeniable existence… but you’ll be hard pressed to define that experience/feeling/sensation… unless you resort to the poetic language you heard from someone else that’s the closest match you can find to that phenomenon.

Not being able to find an inherent “somebody” does not mean that what exists instead is a “nobody.”

Having an experience where one perceives all formation arising from a vast un-name-able something and receding back into it — the way a wave seemingly arises and passes away while never being anything other than the ocean — does not mean that “nothing ever happens.” It’s merely a coarse description of one way of perceiving reality… one of many.

In Kabbalah, for example, ALL of the ways of describing reality are simultaneously accurate — the interaction of independent parts, the interplay of related phenomenon, the ebb and flow of one essential core component, and something that completely defies being described .

Ironically, saying it’s all an illusion is a way of giving solidity to the thing. It freezes the ocean into a knowable, definable, thing.

But if it is, truly, an illusion, even the idea that YOU perceive that IT is a THING (an illusion) is an illusion too.

And if that’s true, what’s left? What do you see when you look out the window without the idea that it’s REAL *or* that it’s an ILLUSION.

Look, just for fun, and see what you see without the stories that we use to understand it all.

And then, if you want to have real fun, turn your attention to the “thing” that was perceiving (or receiving or whatever it was doing) what you were looking at.

And if you want to enjoy the biggest secret, don’t put a name or label on what you find. If someone asks, tell the ruthless (and probably wordless) truth.

[tags]meditation, spiritual growth, psychology, self-improvement[/tags]