Everyday Musings > What you see is what you get

You went through school, sat up nights for exams but don't remember much of what you studied so hard for. Your favourite actor you could give your life for as a teenager is now in memory a silly little crush. One moment you're in love and can't stay apart and the next you want space, a bag or car that you just had to have is taken for granted the moment you own it – makes me question if the once intense feelings or reality ever experienced in all of this was ever real or just an illusion?

What is an illusion? Webster says it's the state or fact of being intellectually deceived or misled. Or the perception of something objectively existing in such a way as to cause misinterpretation of its actual nature.

Magicians use illusions to make us believe they're doing magic. The stars give us an illusion of twinkling. The sea of being blue. 'Positive thinking' without feeling positive inside is an illusion. If you stare hard at a Stereogram, the mess of colours turn into a picture that makes sense. For many years, I lived under the illusion that if I turned on the gas, it would burst. My palms would sweat, my heartbeat would go up, but by practice, I realised that my fear was an illusion.

Marilla D. Svinicki is englightening when she speaks of 'the subjective experience of listening to a skilled presenter or expert describe a problem solution'. She says 'the fluency of the expert gives the listeners the illusion of understanding or the belief that the material is clear and easy to understand. This feeling that the material is easy then contributes to the false sense of security that students take away from a well-presented lecture'. She adds, 'How often have you heard a complaint that, "I understood it when you worked it out in class, but when I tried to do it myself, I couldn't even start"? That's the illusion of comprehension. And we face it everyday.

In the movie 'Instinct', psychiatrist Cuba Gooding comes to the prison cell to meet Anthony Hopkins and tells him that he's in control of what happens to Hopkins - he controls his medication, his chance of getting a hearing. Hopkins grabs his neck and pins Gooding to a table and asks him to write what Hopkins took away from him by doing that. Gooding, gagging and in fear for his life, scribbles 'My control'. Hopkins says "What do you control for sure? The stereo, the air conditioning in your car? Try again. What have you lost, what did I take?" Gooding says 'My freedom'. Hopkins says "You think you're free? What is it that has you tied up in little knots? Your ambition? Last try, get it right." And then Gooding finally writes "My illusion."

The Indian concept of Maya, very simplistically put, is just that. We don't live on this Earth, we live in our illusions, and that colours everything – our decisions, our choices, our likes, our dislikes, our way of life. The way out of a miserable rut is to identify our illusion and sift it, to recognise what is real in the matter, and what had been spruced up by our attachment, our fear and our imagination.

But if everything we feel or felt and think we know or knew is an illusion, what is real? Is there nothing real? Well reality does exist in our world. In things that are finite, that are expressed and thus have form and can be measured that is, they have a life cycle. The earth, the trees, objects, words, the human form...

The ones on the path of enlightenment spend a lifetime sifting reality and illusions. And in the process see things as they really are and once you do that, you are no longer slaves of your illusions. And are free from the misery of life. Nirvana.

Reality is all around us. The question is, do we really want to give up our illusions to see it?