Last week I received a cryptic note in the mail.  It had a whole lot of scribbling across the top which was supposed to look like, and may have even been, coded writing.  Under that there was one line written in DaVinci’s famous code.  Putting aside Dan Brown’s book The DaVinci Code, it is where you write from right to left so the message will be legible when held up to a mirror.  The message read “The world is an illusion.”  And ‘whoever’ paid over fifty cents to have this message delivered to my door thought it was at least that important; such intrigue.  I passed it on to my youth group to play with.

What struck me was the statement, “noisulli na si dlrow eht”.  I have heard this stated over the years (generally in common syntax) by many people newly introduced to eastern religions and philosophies.   They hear words like maya (meaning the illusion or immateriality of substance) and think this means that nothing they are looking at has any meaning.  Many then go into years of meditation practice where they seek to deny the existence of all the things of their lives, including their own bodies.  They will seek to shut down their emotional responses to any physical stimuli.  Many ‘cults’ will encourage this view and tell their followers it is better to just give their possessions and money to the organization; because, their logic follows, if it is illusion then it is a distraction to their ‘spiritual growth’. 

Don’t mistake my message here, I see nothing wrong with giving, in fact it is one of the most powerful growth and increase practices I know of.  Illustrated in this quote from author Greg Barrette, “Every scientific study of volunteering shows that tithing of time can add years to your life, health to your body and stability to your mind. Studies have even shown that the more people who volunteer in a given country, the higher is their standard of living and the more democratic is their government.”

The problem arises when we are led to believe that it is some how more spiritual to deny the physical.

I certainly understand the appeal of this idea; it makes life so much simpler when we can make a blanket statement that will solve all our moral dilemmas.  We can blame all situations that may arise on someone’s attachment to an illusion.  Then our only response necessary is “give up your attachments!”  Unfortunately this doesn’t really fix anything; words never do unless there is real understanding.

Now that I have argued against its validity, “the world is an illusion” does actually have some real truth to it, depending on our meaning.  If, for example, we are saying that all space on a subatomic level is equally 99.999% empty (including the walls of your house, the rock that you stub your toe on and ‘empty space’) then we are perfectly correct and scientifically verifiable.

It seems apparent to me that it is not so much the world which is an illusion but rather our perception of it.  A leading biologist, Richard Dawkins, has postulated that we make up the appearances of a uniformly empty landscape in order to protect ourselves from getting hurt.  If we didn’t see colour and texture we might actually try to walk through walls, dive into granite and walk on water; and that just wouldn’t serve most of us well.  So collectively making up our world would serve to promote our survival.