Illusions

Because of my early fascination with such things, I spent a great deal of time
with Vishnu, “bugging” him with all the unanswered questions from my early fasci-
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nation with metaphysics and science.
“I always hear references to life being an illusion, or what we are perceiving is
actually an illusion. Does that have to do with our limited senses?”
“Life being an illusion is more a question I think I’ll let you save for Zain, but I
can answer you about sensory perception illusion.
In part, because of the limitations of our senses, much of what we perceive is
an illusion. A table, for instance is not what it seems to us.”
“In moments of higher consciousness, I have seen what looks like a crawling
or vibration in wood or stone, is that what you mean?”
“It is part of what I mean. You may be seeing the life of the molecules of the
object, or the auric vibrations. But I would need to know more specifics of your perceptions
- which we’ll discuss later perhaps.
To give you an easier-to-understand example of obvious illusions, consider the
modern invention of television, and the ‘picture’ you see on it. The ‘pictures’ we
see are not pictures at all, but many individual lines of parts of the picture, flashing
at us one at a time. They start at the top or bottom of the screen, and go to the
other end. But these lines appear faster than our human perception can process,
so we don’t see them as individual lines being ‘flashed’ one at a time. Instead, the
many lines seem to be there all the time, making whole pictures. Movies are similar.
As many as 30 still pictures are being flashed in one second. We see it as a
seamless presentation, and have the illusion that the people and things on the
screen are moving, but they aren’t. Certain animals with better perceptions just see
the lines on a TV, or the still pictures flashing during a movie.
That is just ONE of many examples. But there are even more far reaching illusions
about life and the world around us. Even the TV set is not really what it seems
to us.