WHAT IS ILLUSION?

WHAT IS ILLUSION?

Published 22.03.2018 | By Йосиф

Throughout this text I use certain terms that can have contradictory meanings and so I shall always specify what I mean when I use them.

In general when I say illusion I mean unreal notion or apprehension of reality – subjective exaggeration or underestimation of certain values and truths. Most philosophy schools do not use this term, as for them reality either exists or does not exist. But when you enter multilane life and come across multidirectional impacts you inevitably encounter illusory perceptions and their impact on the human thinking. I would like, therefore to underline that the reality exists, but our notions for it are illusory because we have assumed that the material world is the only one existing. The illusion is a result of self-overestimation of our abilities for real apprehension and assessment. In this sense the illusion is a skin-deep knowledge, not a non-existing reality as most people take it. One of the reasons creating illusions in people is the self-delusion that one reason is perfectly enough for a certain event. Narcissism is another source of illusion. For example almost everybody sees himself as a victim of other people. In reality – in 99% of cases – the reason for the bad situation occurring is due to the victim himself, even though it seems to him that he has given no reason. This illusion of the narcissus victim causes many conflict situations and at the same time excludes self-observation, apprehension of reality and the capability for conscious correction of the mistakes made.
Constant source of illusion is the absolution of reality. Reality should be always relative and subject to time. “Everything flows, everything changes.” In most of the cases the reasons are complex and multidirectional.
What may be the biggest source of illusion for people is their one-sided (narrow-minded) perception of reality as being ‘black and white’, ‘true and false’. Reality always has at least two sides – positive and negative. Our limited consciousness perceives only one side of reality and misses the other (or others) so in this way our perception is unreal. In the same way that it is impossible to split a magnet into two separate poles it is also impossible to say that something is entirely good whilst another is entirely bad. One of the aspects of broadened consciousness is its ability to recognise the interrelation of these composites and it then becomes very difficult to use labels “this is good” and “this is bad”.
I will try to give several examples of mass illusion:

A person is only a material body, within which the human consciousness disappears as the body decays – elimination of this illusion will eliminate the root causes of stress too.

The human body consists of bio-chemical processes only – the elimination of this illusion will completely change the medicine.

Science has examined almost all reality and there are few details left – if this is also accepted as being an illusion, then fundamental changes in most peoples thinking will be possible.

I could say that one of the definitions for a wise man is – a man free of his illusions.