What is an Illusion?

Written by Mathew Naismith

First one has to look at how one has defined of what is an illusion and what’s not. Believe it or not I have just defined how we define an illusion, defining what is an illusion or not has everything to do with comparing one to another.  Take conscious state of awareness of time and timelessness for example, how do we know when we are in a timeless state of consciousness if we didn’t have another state of consciousness to compare it with? How do we know when we are asleep? We compare this state of consciousness or unconsciousness to another state of consciousness, in this case it’s an awaken state to an unawakened state. Within this comparison we become aware of when we are asleep or not.

Now to define any state of conscious awareness we need a comparison like from a sleeping state to an awoken state of consciousness, in our awakened state we see everything being of our dreams as being unreal, an illusion, do we while in this sleeping state define everything within our dreams as being an illusion? No, we are however more likely to define everything within our awoken state as being an illusion while asleep. Now this depends on how aware one is within any conscious state if we are going to compare and label anything not of our present state of consciousness as being of an illusion or not.  

For anyone who is only aware of time, time is going to be and feel real to them, timelessness is the illusion, would this not also be the case for anyone only aware of a timeless state of conscious awareness?  To me it’s obvious, of course it would.  What if I was also aware of time while in a timeless state of consciousness, in other words being aware of time within a timeless state, would time then be defined as being an illusion?  

Let’s ask a similar question using a different scenario, when I become aware of an awoken state while I’m asleep, do I then define my awoken state as being an illusion? As soon as I become aware of my awoken state in my dreams, I for some reason don’t define this awoken state of consciousness as being an illusion but on the other hand when awake, I define my dreams as being unreal, an illusion.

While only accepting a particular state of consciousness, all other consciousness’s are going to seem unreal, an illusion, this is because I have compared one conscious state to another to define what is real and what isn’t while only aware and accepting of one conscious state. I have defined this while only being aware and accepting of one consciousness, what if I was aware of another consciousness like while asleep I’m aware of my usual awoken state of consciousness?  While in a timeless state of consciousness, most of us are totally unaware of time, now let’s compare this to how many of us are aware of our awoken state when asleep?  The only time we can be aware of our awoken state while asleep is when we are lucid dreaming or having some kind of OBE, how many of us are aware of our lucid dreams, how many of us are aware of our dreams period?

    

Now relate this scenario to when we are in a totally timeless consciousness, how many of us are aware of any other kind of consciousness like time for instance? When we become aware of any other consciousness, these consciousness’s are obviously going to seem like an illusion through comparing one to the other because we are not accepting of any other consciousness but why?  

Being only aware and accepting of my dreaming state is like being only aware and accepting of my timeless state of consciousness, each state is a different state of consciousness but it’s still consciousness.

But we become awareness itself within this timeless state of consciousness, what else is there but awareness itself? First of all how do we define when we become awareness itself, what have we compared this state of awareness with?  To a lesser state of awareness like in time, so if time is so unaware to this feeling of being awareness itself, even though it’s not aware of the consciousness of time, it’s got to be an illusion. This is saying anything of a lesser awareness is an illusion, so anything of a lesser illusion to this feeling of being awareness itself is an illusion!!    

So to define what isn’t or is an illusion has to do with how consciously aware a certain consciousness is. This would mean an ant or a snake to me is an illusion, so if I came across a deadly snake on my path, I can just step over it or on it because it’s an illusion as it’s less aware than I.  I have now defined what is an illusion by comparing that I am more aware therefore less of an illusion than an ant or a snake!!   

This of course doesn’t work for the main reason it doesn’t matter what consciousness we are talking about it’s still consciousness. I really can’t believe we are still comparing one consciousness with another and defining what is or isn’t an illusion. The question is, are a lot of us aware of time within a timeless state of conscious awareness like are a lot of us aware of lucid dreaming while asleep?  We all lucid dream and experience OBE’s but how many of us are aware of this and because we are unaware of this, does this make lucid dreaming and OBE’s an illusion? To a lot of people unaware of this, yes. To me this is no different to when we are in this timeless state.

To me we need to move forward from this old consciousness of thinking everything else not of this feeling of awareness itself is an illusion, it has served it’s purpose of making us aware of a more aware consciousness, I think we need to move on from this. It’s funny though, we deem everything else not of this feeling of being consciousness itself as an illusion, the funny thing is, we needed these lesser aware consciousness’s to become aware in the first place of awareness itself but only through comparing one consciousness with another.  Who is truly more aware, the teacher or the student?  In this case the teacher being the lesser aware teaching the student about itself, the teacher and the student are but one, one consciousness no matter how unaware or aware the other seems.