Near and Far is an illusion 2

 Of course following from the previous blog there are infinite ways to see that what we call Near and Far is an illusion. What is real is that we either see or we do not see. Whether it takes 1000 years for light to reach our eyes from a distant star or a few nano-second from something in the room we either see it or we don't. Whether it is near or far we must work out AFTER seeing it.

   Van Gogh's 'Starry night over the Rhone' has a couple in the foreground, and reflections on the water from Earth bound street lights but also Celestial magical stars far away in the cosmos: a reflection itself on the mortal but also immortal nature of human life and love.

Yet we also know it is just painting on a flat canvas. We are happy to accept this illusion without much thought, but it reveals just how unreal our experiences are. If we can make up near and far in a painting then don't we do the same when we see anything?

And a moments reflection reveals that this is actually a BIG DEAL because the whole world in which we inhabit depends upon a belief in a Self who is Near, while the world is Far.

How odd we would think if the Self was Far and the World was Near!

Looking out at the world we think "we" occupy the space at the centre. We are the nearest thing, and the world radiates out getting farther and farther away.

Yet in reality we make all this up. The world is like this paining essentially "flat" with no built in near and far and we make it up. Okay we have binocular vision to make this more complicated but in fact we just have 2 flat images in either eye that we use to "make up" the near and far. This means the Self cannot be at the centre, or near any more than the self is "out there" and far.

Woah! Suddenly what was uninteresting is totally bizarre! Did we really overlook this obvious fact all our lives?

Well yes.

The problem like going into the cinema is we are very happy to drift from one illusion to another and not really arrest it and look at it.

The truth is that we are experiencing things HERE and NOW. If we access that HERE and NOW without getting involved in it, just observing the fact that it is HERE and NOW then we are close to "The Source" (as I described it in the pervious post).

The moment we go "through the door" and start working out what things are and what is near and far then we enter an unreal illusion.

Now a possible mistake here is Nihilism. It's tempting to put the "unreal" in the bin. But its important that NOTHING EVER GOES IN THE BIN. We just see it more clearly for "what it is".

Van Gogh's painting is marvellous even though it is just a paint on canvas. In fact that it is only paint on canvas makes it all the more amazing. But we never believe that the illusion is anything other than what it is.

The same for all our senses. They are what they are. The world is what it is. But from the standpoint of the HERE and NOW it is just a swirling illusion.

Now again Nihilism is very tempting. Like the Matrix it appears we are faced with the false dilemma of either a red or a blue pill and we must chose. No!

The illusion exists, but it is an never-the-less an illusion, nothing wrong with it we just see it for what it is.

It only becomes a problem when it stops us accessing the HERE and NOW. In order to ground ourselves in reality it can be useful to take the red pill and get a break from the illusion, just until we are grounded in reality. But its not quite as dramatic as Morpheus dragging Neo onto the Nebuchadnezzar and then trying to defeat the malevolent illusion*. True realising that all our senses are an illusion within the HERE and NOW is quite eye opening, but actually nothing happens. The world stays the same we just get to look at it from a high perspective. So nothing goes in the bin, and that feeling of groundlessness and weightlessness just takes getting used to.

* Altho in Hinduism/Buddhism the Great Illusion is the Goddess of Death Mara. It is true until we see the illusion for what it is we are under its control, and like all Demons its leads us astray so worth respecting the damage it can do.