Welcome to the Grand Illusion

"Welcome to the Grand Illusion, come on in and see what's happening. Pay the price, get your tickets for the show." - Styx

 

All material existence is illusionistic in the sense that, what to all appearances seems independently real, in actuality, is generated by thought.

And when was the first thought?

There was no "first" thought, that is, thought or intention has always existed, independent of the human mind, as an organizing principle in the universe. It is the principle of action, or karma, which generates all activity, such as the stars with planets in synchronous orbit, and all other spontaneously arising phenomena.

All of which gives new meaning to the Dennis DeYoung lyric in the Styx song, "suddenly your heart is pounding, wishing secretly you were a star".

And so, human thought, equating movement and structure with a sense of self, imbues this activity with personality, calling it god or source energy. All well and good, as long as its understood as a symbolic overlay toward greater clarity. For the star continues to shine in the night sky, whether or not it is called by any name.

All these formations are indications of sentience, even down to the most minute level. Sentience is not limited to gods, or humans, or animals, but resonates at all levels throughout the universe. That is, all material things vibrate at various frequencies as a means toward self-organization, giving the appearance of solidity to what is mostly empty space.

The dense stone that we hold vibrates at a much slower wavelength than the air around us, yet it all is in flux, all always changing. And what of us humans? We are caught somewhere in between, materially composed yet with the potentiality for awareness of higher planes, of the immaterial.

So why? If an answer is needed, then perhaps why is to play the game, to participate in the grand illusion, yet to do so with full awareness. Whatever form our consciousness finds itself in, its first job is to become aware of itself, and then to move progressly upward and outward, to greater levels of awareness and interconnection.

For indeed, these skandhas, or heaps, of which we are formed, is just the stuff of the universe, animated by the prana, the life force, vibrating now at this level of organization, now at that, always moving on to other forms, all interrelated.

And that is what Nagarjuna meant by śūnyatā, or emptiness. Not that the world itself does not exist, but that our understanding of it is fundamentally obscured.
 That awareness, and indeed all experience is interrelated, none of it having an independent, unchanging essence.

And so by penetrating to the heart of experience we find that it is all the same awareness, manifesting in different material appearances, reality hiding in plain sight, a masquerade of the real hidden within the illusion.

So cue the synthesizer solo and sing along with me: "just remember that it's a Grand Illusion, and deep inside we're all the same".

All the same.