Illusions
Versão em Português
How to talk someone out of an illusion? If I believe that a mirage is a lake, the only way to really dispel that illusion is to walk to it and see really what is there and what is not there.
Even if someone were to tell me: "that is not real water, that is just a desert mirage, I know that there is no water there, look at the map, there is no lake there". Faced with such arguments, I may even agree that it makes sense, it is most likely a mirage, but somehow in the back of my mind, the possibility that there might be real water there, is still present. To decide how something is as a result of some thinking or argument can build a patch, like a patch over a hole, or a stamp on top of paper, but the hole is still there under the patch, the paper is still there under the stamp.
Using a process of analysis to try to understand something or correct some illusion will create a patch, it will place a stamp on the mind, placing one idea on top of another, but it does not remove the illusion.
That is why, in thousands of years of spiritual traditions, is it the contemplative, the meditator, the mystic, that pierces through the veil of reality to see the face of his own being, leaving the philosophers and scholars to debate, discuss, and produce endless ideas and arguments.
It is through the direct experience of tasting, seeing and direct knowing that illusion is seen through. A mother will say to the child, as so often happens, "how can you say you don't like it if you have never tasted it", in an attempt to dispel the child's illusion about the flavor of some food. Trying to persuade with arguments someone regarding the nature of an illusion is the same as the mother trying to persuade the child that the spinach actually tastes very good using all kinds of words and ideas. In the same way, this words that I am writing here cannot persuade anyone that any of this is actually true just by themselves. Only a keen awareness and observation of mind can do that.
by Aja Das
