IS THE WORLD AN ILLUSION, A DREAM?

Ozodi Thomas Osuji

Hindu religion teaches that the world is an illusion, a dream.  What exactly does this mean, and is it true?  In this essay, I will examine the concept of the world as an illusion and whether it is a useful concept.

HINDU STORY OF CREATION

     Like most religions, Hinduism posited a story of creation, a mythology of how the world came into being. Of course, this creation story, like others, is not true. True or not, let us examine it and see what we can extrapolate something useful from it.

     Briefly, Hinduism teaches that there is a force called Brahman (God). Brahman, as it were, cast a magical spell (Maya) on itself and went to sleep.  In his sleep, Brahman, one force, multiplied itself and became many; Brahman became all livings things on earth.  One self is now infinite selves; one mind is now infinite minds. 

       One Brahman, as it were, divided himself into infinite Brahmans each called Atman. Each Atman is Brahman. The same force that is in Brahman is in Atman; both are the same and coequal.

     Brahman and Atman are spirit and not physical. As spirit, they are joined; they are in each other. Brahman is in Atman and Atman is in Brahman. They are one self and one mind, literally. Where Brahman ends and Atman begins is no where and where one Atman ends and another begins is nowhere.  Simply stated, there is one God, Brahman, and he is simultaneously himself and infinite other selves (us). In their true state, and true home, Brahmaloka, they are spirit, unified spirit.

       Brahman/Atman somehow manifested in the world of space, time and matter.  In the world of matter, space and time Brahman/Atman is now in bodies. Inside bodies, space and time Brahman/Atman forgets his true identity as a unified force and now sees itself as separated from itself. Each Atman now perceives itself as separated from other Atmans.  In the world of separation Atman is now called Ahankara, a dream self, an ego.

       On earth, each of us and other living things is called an Ahankara, an ego, a separated self, a separated mind. The separated self believes itself different from other selves and other creatures on earth. It is motivated by desire for self survival and does whatever it takes to survive; if possible, in cooperation with other people, but if not, alone.  Each of us in body, a separated self, is preoccupied with personal survival. Thus, we live, and a hundred years later, give or take, die.

       Hinduism teaches that our empirical world of space, time and matter is a world of illusion, a dream.  As it sees it, we are unified and are spirit but we see ourselves as separated and as in bodies. Separation and bodies are considered not real hence an illusion, a dream. In truth, Hinduism teaches, we remain as unified spirit but merely dream that we are separated selves housed in bodies.

         Something is an illusion if it is “a false idea/conception, an unreal or misleading appearance or image”.  An illusion is that which does not exist, in fact, is not real, but seems to exist and seems real.  For example, on hot summer days, if you are in a desert you could see what seems like water (ocean) in the distance. You walk towards it only to find out that there is no water there. The appearance of water is an illusion.

     That which is real is there and can be verified. According to Hinduism, that which is real is permanent and unchangeable. The real is eternal.

      As Hinduism sees it, whatever is not permanent, and is changeable is unreal.  Our world is not permanent and is changeable; therefore, Hinduism sees it as unreal, as an illusion.

      According to Hinduism, reality is unified. There is only one Brahman (who is infinite in numbers, yet is one). Whatever is not unified, whatever seems separated into bits is unreal.  Our world is a world of multiplicity, of separation and therefore is not real.

      Hinduism sees our world of multiplicity and separation as unreal, as illusory and as a dream.  Our world is the dream of God; actually a dream of a part of Brahman, since not all of Brahman is in the dream. Brahman remains awake in that he knows that he is one and is infinite and joined. Apparently, a fraction of Brahman’s mind appears to sleep and imagines itself separated from itself and from its multiple parts.  That part of Brahman’s mind that seems unaware of its unified self is our world.

        ( India ’s foremost philosophers, Shankara and Ramanuja explicated these ideas. Essentially, they tried to show how a God that is awake is also sleeping. God is awake and yet is dreaming this world. Clearly, our human mind finds it difficult to understand this explanation, for our minds can only operate in one dimension, not two. To Indian metaphysics, the same God is awake and is sleeping. Indeed, Shankara suggests that the awake part of God does not even know that the sleep-dream part of it, our empirical world, exists.)

      The objective of Hindu religious practices is to enable us (sleeping, dreaming Jivatman) to realize that our seeming separated selves, egos, Ahankara, are not real and for us to relinquish them and regain awareness of our unified nature. 

        In meditation, Raja Yoga (Patanjali posited our Yogas; Jnana, Bhakti, Karma and Raja Yoga), the individual is encouraged to consciously let go of his belief that he has a separated self, ego, Ahankara, to jettison it, to negate all thinking done through the ego, to let go all concepts, for they are of the divided self, and try to remain quiet.  When the world of multiplicity is negated in meditation, the individual attains inner calm. Such a mind has stopped sleeping and dreaming that it is separated from itself, has expunged all ego categories from it. Such a mind has returned to its semi original condition.  It is no longer lost in the world of dreams.  In the open mind cleaned of all dreams of separated self, the individual awakens to the world of union, to the awareness of himself as no other than Atman, who is one with Brahman.  This experience is called Samadhi.

      In Samadhi, the individual escapes from the world of separated selves and returns to the world of unified self, where he and all people, in spirit, are one, are God. He experiences peace and joy, a state called bliss, absolute bliss.  This state is said to be the original state of all human beings.  In that state, we are said to be eternal, permanent, changeless and all knowing. (This does not include knowing about our empirical world, for the empirical world is an illusion, but knowing about the spiritual world.)

      When an individual has broken through the world of illusion, moksha, and attained the world of union, he is said to have become self realized; he is enlightened to his true self, a self said to be light in nature. He is now an illuminated self, as Buddha was said to have attained. He has relinquished the separated self, the ego, and now knows that he is no other than a unified self, Atman/Brahman.  He is now in heaven, Brahmaloka, and is in eternal bliss, peace, joy, undisturbed.

       As long as other parts of Brahman are still sleeping and dreaming that they are separated selves, the enlightened part of Brahman must return to the world of dreams to teach them of their true unified nature.  He, as it were, takes on his relinquished separated self, the ego, but now a purified ego, an ego of love and forgiveness (as Ramakrishna called it) so as to be  in the world of egos, the separated world of space and time, but teach union as truth.  He is now living in our world as an avatar.

       Such a person knows that our world is an illusion, a dream, and does not take it seriously. He sees the world as a play thing and does not deceive himself into believing that it is serious. He is perpetually happy and peaceful (Annanda state). His emotions are perpetually even, and not pulled by the attractions of the things of this world. Indeed, he knows that he is not flesh and therefore is not given to the attraction of flesh. He does not give in to sexual desires. He eats just a little bit of food to keep his body alive on earth, so that he uses that body to teach about our truth; he does not seek food as epicureans do. He uses his body and ego to teach love and forgiveness and when the body has no more use he dies, that is, he returns to living in the awareness of unified spirit.  The enlightened person is a teacher of God, teacher of Brahman.

        (These Hindu ideas were translated into Christological categories by an astute American Clinical Psychologist, Helen Schucman, in her book, A Course in miracles.)

      It would seem that the philosophy of Hinduism negates this world, and escapes from it and returns to what it considers our real world and real self, the world of unified spirit. However, in the here and now, Hinduism does not encourage people to escape from this world, for there is no where to escape to, since where this world is, is also the world of Brahman. 

       It is a question of consciousness. If one has separated consciousness, one is in our world; if one has unified consciousness one is in the world of Brahman.

      One is always in the same place but has different consciousness. Thus, it is a question of shifting consciousness, from separated to unified, not a question of running to something that is out there. Nor can one escape this world by killing ones self. The only way to attain unified consciousness, according to Hinduism is through gradual understanding that this world of appearances is not real, then giving it up, so as to experience its opposite, the world of union.  Our world is seen as the world of opposition, a world that opposes the world of God.

       The world of God is unified and our world is the world of separation; the world of God is the same and equal and our world is the world of differences and inequality; the world of God is one and our world is the world of multiplicity.  In the world of God all is one, there is no you and I, no seer and seen, just one self and one mind. Our world is the world where there is you and I, seer and seen, a world of opposites, good and bad, light and darkness etc.

       Our world came into being in opposition to the world of God. Therefore, the only way to experience the world of God is to voluntarily give up our world, and do so by conviction, not duress. No one can force you to give up our world, not even God can do so; only you should decide that our world is ephemeral, chimera, illusion, dream and give it up, when you want to.

      Moreover, our world is said to last for a certain number of years called Kalpak.  Each Kalpak lasts millions/billions of years.  There have been several Kalpaks.  Brahman is awake in his heaven but sleeps and sees himself in a Kalpak and then awakens and returns to sleep and awakens, that way several worlds come and go. Within one kalpak, we have serial dreams, if you like, different lifetimes in this world.

        We are said to reincarnate into the world, to dream some more and keep doing so until we recognize the nature of the world as a dream and stop desiring it and give it up hence stop coming back to the world.

         As long as we desire to live as separated egos and are therefore defensive of the separated self, are selfish, we hurt other people, people whom we see as not part of us, hence build negative Samsara, and those bring us back into the world.

       The Indian concept of karma teaches that all behaviors have consequences for one and for all people and that we return to this world to take the consequences of our past lives actions. Those who are consistently loving and do good social work do not build negative samsara and therefore do not come back to the world to suffer the consequences of their bad behaviors.

       That is to say that we leave this world through good works, not by killing ourselves. Suicide does not do us any good; indeed, it brings us back to this world to begin where we stopped.

       Western science teaches that the material universe has lasted about fifteen to twenty billion years. Let us then see our current Kalpak as having lasted twenty billion years.

       We know that our physical world will end and return to the nothingness from where it came. Out of nothing there was an explosion and in nanoseconds space and time were invented and subsequently particles of matter were invented and the particles clung together to form atoms, which became the various elements.

      The various elements, in time, formed the basis of biological lives. In time all biological and material existence would cease being, either through the Big Chill or when all matter collapses back into its original form before the Big Bang that produced our world.

        What was in the original state of being, the Singularity state?  Obviously, whatever it was, was not matter, as we know it, otherwise it would not have fitted, as we are told, into a pin head.

       Hinduism would say that what existed before matter came into existence was Brahman, one spirit that is simultaneously infinite spirits, Brahman and Atman.

     (Hinduism calls matter Guna; there are three gunas: sattva, raja and tamas; those three combined to form our bodies and temperaments; whichever dominates in our bodies is said to shape our temperaments and personalities.  If mostly sattva, we are calm and intellectual, if raja we are restless and active, if tamas we are lazy.  It is said that the Brahmin class tends to have more Sattva, that the administrative/business/military class tends to have more raja and that the lower classes tend to have more tamas. Thus, India ’s three classes, Brahmin, Kastriya and Sudras are said to be shaped by the gunas in their bodies. Of course, all these are speculations; genetic science is beginning to give us a better grasp of the role of body and personality.)

DISCUSSION

         Is our world an illusion, a dream?  Western science takes our world as real, though it knows that it changes forms.

       Energy changes from one form to another: heat, light, mechanics, sound, electricity etc are forms of energy; each changes to others.

       Consider a piece of wood, a solid. You burn it and it turns into ashes and gas. Gas is converted into liquid. 

        Liquid, gas, solid are all convertible to the various forms of energy (heat, light, etc).  As western science sees it, energy is changing forms, ad infinitum.

       Hinduism agrees with this view but asks: where did the original source of energy come from? Something must have pre-existed energy; something gave rise to the various forms of energy.

       What existed before the Big Bang?  Western science says: I do not know.  Science considers whoever pretends to know what existed before our material universe came into being as merely indulging in conjectures that cannot be demonstrated as true.

      Hinduism claims that the world it is talking about has different categories from the world of space, time and matter and cannot be demonstrated as true in our world. Indeed, the world of pre-matter transcends all concepts, for concepts adapt to the world of separation. 

        The world of God is the world of union, a world where there is no you and I, no seer and seen, no subject and object, a world of unified self and unified mind.  Our present mental frame work cannot understand the world of God.

      This means that science parts ways with Hinduism and leaves it to indulge in its beliefs as to the nature of reality.  

       Is the world of empiricism a world of illusions and dreams, as Hinduism claims? Let us examine our experience

        What is our experience?  It is that we are born, live in bodies that will eventually die. Plus or minus a hundred years and the individual is dead. 

        Our bodies were made of elements, atoms, particles and sub-particles. When we die those decompose and return to their pool in the environment.

        An atom that was in ones body today could be in a star in the future. Ultimately, that atom would be split into its components: protons, neutrons and electrons. Those, in turn, would be reduced to sub particles, such as quarks. Ultimately, what was our body would become nothing, the nothing from which something seems to have come into being.

       Our bodies are a chimera; at best, they exist temporarily and then return to non existence. Our bodies are not permanent and eternal. Our bodies are unreal.

      As Hinduism sees it, since our bodies are unreal they are an illusion. Our bodies ultimately do not exist, but seem to exist.

        We see our bodies but in fact only atoms and particles seem to be where we see our bodies, and ultimately those do not exist.

      Our bodies are that which seems to exist but do not exist. This is the definition of illusion, is it not?

      Our minds, thinking, seem a product of our bodies. Since our bodies do not exist, it follows that our thinking does not exist?  That is the only logical inference, is it not?

       Our bodies and thinking do not exist. They exist as in an illusion; they seem to exist but, in fact, do not exist; they are illusions, dreams.

THE EXISTENTIAL CONSEQUENCES OF SEEING LIFE AS ILLUSION

          The consequences of accepting that our bodies and body based thinking are illusions and dreams are that people develop a philosophical, stoic perspective on their lives. They recognize that their lives are transitory, an illusion that has no significance.

      Let me personalize: I see my body; that body, through my brain seems to think and behave in what I call my personality. I know that my body, thinking, personality are temporary existences that in fact do not exist.  So, I do not take me seriously. I am amused by my body and thinking.

        I know that my body and thinking is nothing, is an illusion and therefore do not take them seriously. I laugh at my body and my thinking and behavior.

      To me, life is mirth.  I see the world as a dream, an illusion that no rational person should take seriously.

         Does that mean that one is an escapist?  Not at all. It means that one enjoys the scientific business of studying matter and energy and using them to do work. One enjoys studying the illusion, the dream, but one does not take it seriously.  One sees the world as a drama, a play and plays ones role in it without taking it as serious.

       The cumulative effect of this approach to life is fearlessness. So you threaten to kill me, eh?   So a government threatens to kill me, he?  So a terrorist threatens to kill me (if I do not do what they ask me to do).

       I say: go ahead and kill me. All you would have done is transform my body (a set of atoms) into other forms of atoms.  You would have done nothing, so why should I fear your threat?  You did not kill me; you merely rearranged the atoms that seemed to exist as my body.

      Generally, the separated self housed in body maintains itself through fear and defense. It sees other separated things attacking it, trying to eradicate its existence and defends itself.

       Our life on earth is characterized by fear and defense, attack and defense. That is pretty much all that we are doing on earth: defending our bodies and separated selves.  Atoms temporarily agglomerate as ones self and one defends them with food, medications, clothes, shelter etc.

        Everything we do on earth is defense of the bodily self.

       All professions offer us the means to defend our physical and psychological ourselves (medicine enables us to defend our bodies, food enables us to defend our bodies, military enables us to defend our bodies, government and laws offer us defense from one another’s attacks).

       Life in body is one perpetual defense and living in fear. As long as the individual undertakes to live as a separated ego self, he must perceive attacks on him and live in fear.

      Living in fear, one can be threatened by those who could destroy ones body: other people, criminals, governments and terrorists.

       A human being, a separated self is a miserable, fear and defense driven creature. A human being is a slave to his wish to live as a separated self. A human being lives in bondage.

     This is the discovery made by Gautama Buddha: as long as we wish to live as separated selves, ego, we must live in fear and must suffer; the only way not to suffer is to give up the desire to live as separated self. Buddhism attempts to enable the individual to transcend his desire to live as a separated self. In its meditation, it does what Hinduism teaches: it encourages people to relinquish their ego based selves and become empty of all self concepts and desire to live as separated selves. In that empty space, the real self downs on one, a self that is not the human personality but an impersonal life force, unified life.

       The suffering from living as a separated self is a bondage of ones own making, for it is ones desire for separated self housed in body that subjects one to fear and defense.

       If one no longer has a desire to live as a separated self, no other person could have hold over one.

       Okay, you have a gun pointed at me, and threaten to kill me unless I do what you ask me to. If I do not want to be killed, if I want to live as an ego, I would feel fear and do as you asked me to do. But if I do not care to live as a separated ego self, I would not give in to fear and defense and would leave you o do as you wish; rearrange the atoms that is called my body (in the state of illusion).

What is the point here?  The point is that the perception of the world as an illusion and dream has existential utility. It enables people to overcome the fear and defense that make their existence a misery. Human beings live in bondage (to fear and defense) and receive liberation from their slavery when they no longer fear death.

Death sets the agglomerated particles of matter in our bodies free, and they return to their kind in nature and eventually return to nothing. Death destroys the psychological self, a self produced by our bodies and thus liberate us from all psychological pains. 

To have a separated self and seek to defend it is to live in pain; to have no psychological self is to not be defensive, to return to unified self, where defense is not needed. To be in unified self is not to feel fear and not to be defensive. To be in unified self is to be in peace and joy, bliss.

VOCATIONS

There are basically two vocations in this world; one, to teach separation and consequent fear and defense and then market the means to defend the separated self. Most human professions are enabling people to cope with their chosen life of separation, fear and defense. We sell food, medications, clothes, shelter, protection (police, military, prisons, governments, laws etc). Those who engage in such vocations perpetuate our state in ego.  They do it with our permission. We want to live as separated selves and feel fear and need defense and buy from those that sell what protects our separated selves. They provide us with what we need to live in our chosen separated bondage.

The other vocation is those who teach us to liberate ourselves from the fear and defense that make our lives miserable. These people are the teachers of God, teachers of union, teachers of love.  These people ask us to let go of the world of separation and return to the world of union, which, ultimately, is the world of spirit, and requires death of body and ego to attain it.  (In strict terms, ego and body do not exist and one does not have to die to know that spirit is real.  However, if one believes in death, so would one die?) 

What vocation is ones?  One must choose, indeed, one has already chosen before one manifests in the world. Do engage in your profession with total enthusiasm. 

 Human beings live in bondage and need liberation from it, they need return to bliss and one must teach it to them.

TRUTH VERSUS FANTASY

        Teaching liberation from ego and fear is not the same as teaching ego idealism. Ego idealism sees this world and its problems and wants to improve them on the world’s own terms.

In fantasy one dreams of how to improve the world, build castles and have every one live in them, make every one a billionaire etc.  Fantasies are of the imagination, they are attempts to escape from the world of suffering. Alas, no matter how much you imagine a beautiful world, as long as people live in separated states they will live in fear and defense hence live miserable lives, even if they live in material luxury.

      There are essentially three ways of solving problems. One is the normal way. Here the individual is in the real world and addresses problems as they are, on their own terms.  Problems are caused by human begins and are solved by human beings. A realistic problem solver mobilizes people (leadership) and they work together in solving identified problems. As they work together, human personalities, egos, clash and he deals with them without running away from them. He does not run to go nurse his imaginary big ego self.

 The second way of solving problems and not solving them is through fantasy. Here the individual, usually a neurotic idealist, sees problems and attempts to solve them at the imagination/mental level only. He uses his mind to imagine ideal solutions to identified problems.  But he does not enter the real world of people and work with other people in solving those problems.  He is not a leader in the sense that he does not work with people in solving real problems. To the extent that he is a leader he is not a realistic leader, he is an idealistic leader. He is a fantasy leader; he is trying to use a magical wand to banish the problems of this world, to transform the world into an El-dorado. Imaginary leadership, fantasy leadership, the fantasy problem solve lives mostly in his head, not in the world of people. He does not solve real problems, although he may think that he does.

 Finally is the mystic. This person sees the world and its imperfections and seeks a different world. Unlike the neurotic fantasist, he does not try to use his imagination to come up with ideal worlds. He attempts to tune out the world and see if he could experience a different world.  He extinguishes his ego and is humble and asks God, his immanent spirit, the Holy Spirit, to guide him,   clearly, the mystical approach to solving problems is what Hinduism teaches.

 What I would like to add to mysticism is that whereas it is necessary to seek the experience of union with God that when the individual returns to this world that he ought to find a profession through which he solves realistic problems.  If one must live in the world of scarcity, one must have something that other people desire and sell it them. One must market something to other people and in so doing make a living.

 I market ideas on how to have peace and joy.  One should never be a sponge on other people and depend on society to support one. Buddhists say: fetch water and cut wood, meaning that while seeking nirvana, oneness, that one nevertheless must do what this world requires of one to make a living in it. This is a realistic approach to living. Escaping into monasteries and having others support one is making ones self a parasite.

THE AMERICAN EXAMPLE

      Consider Americans. They have material wealth but are afraid to die, so terrorists hold them in bondage. A few more Muslim terrorists attack on Americans and they would pass laws that take away what they call their civil liberties; they would crawl into caves and pay some persons, military, to protect them from attack and in doing so seem to survive. This is living like slaves.

 If Americans accepted no separated selves, loved all people and were not afraid of death, they would have no fear of terrorists, and terrorists would not threaten them.  One can only threaten a person who so desires to live as a separated self that he fears its death. One cannot threaten a person who accepts unified self and its deathlessness.

But as it is, Americans and the terrorists threatening them are operating from the same frame of reference, separated self and fear.  Given their beliefs that the son of God is subject to death, terrorists attack Americans and Americans counter attack terrorists. Both have renewed the war they began 1400 years ago (Christian and Islam ego wars).

 Real liberation comes from the realization of our unified nature, followed with love and forgiveness for all human beings.

       The teacher of God must teach love and forgiveness; that is his vocation in this world. He is not supposed to depend on other people; he is not to have other people support him while he does not teach what he came here to teach. If other people support you, you must do as they ask you to do.

 To do what you do, you cannot engage in the world’s vocations of teaching fear and defense hence cannot easily make a living in the world but you can make a living by teaching love and freedom from fear. 

It is unnatural to be fed by other people; it is not good for ones elf esteem for one to be supported by other people.  Indeed, it is exploitation of those who feed one for one to do so.

Go into the world and sell what it needs to liberate itself from separated self and its perpetual fear and defense.

       (I made the preceding comments because often teachers of God, ministers, are tempted to become parasites and have other people support them. Priests are the world’s worst parasites; they suck their hosts’ life blood. The individual must work to support his existence; he must sell to the people what they demand: things to adapt to the egos world or things to return to the world of God.)

CONCLUSION

        The Hindu and Buddhist notion that the world is an illusion, a dream, a view echoed in Gnostic philosophies, such as A course in miracles, is not proven by empirical science. Proven or not, it seems a useful approach to living on earth. It helps to see the world as ephemeral and transitory and not take it too seriously. That way one takes life’s ups and downs in stride and lives with equanimity.

       Human beings seem in need of reasonable philosophies to live with, to use in coping with the terrible reality that they are mere animals; their bodies are waiting to die and smell like feces.  Whatever makes them tolerate their awful existence seems useful.

       I think that the idea of life as an illusion helps the intellectual but religious person to tolerate the devastating reality that life on earth, as existentialist thinkers (Sartre, Camus and Jasper etc) pointed out, is totally worthless, valueless, meaningless and purposeless. Religions like Christianity and Islam give the masses a means of coping with life, but those religions tend to appeal to the emotional rather than the intellectual person. Life on earth is something endured.  However, science and the search for understanding of how the universe works, and improving the quality of human existence, seem to make living on earth fascinating.

       The fascination of science not withstanding, human beings seem to need the consolation of religion and or philosophy; the idea that the world is an illusion seems a useful consolation for those needing such consolation to tolerate their lives on earth.

Ozodi Thomas Osuji

October 2, 2006

Robot  Villager

# 1 ...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 02.10.2006 21:26

onyekanwelue  JJC

# 2 Thank you so much for this compelling article. Well, I would say that, although I have no religion, that I have smelled Hinduism to the fullest and found out that like other religions, Hinduism can only WORK by faith, and that there is no MAGIC in it. But to the long last, you have written a must-read article. Namaskar, Onyeka Nwelue Posted by onyekanwelue| 02.10.2006 22:04