Is Reality Illusory?

Have you ever looked at a double-exposed photograph (like the one above) where one can see through the physical body(ies) on the image?  The picture owes to how the camera captures light in two instances, rendering the foremost object transparent.

Just such a result inspired the belief in Eastern religions that physical reality was an illusion.  To them, the physical body was a part of One Soul (called Paramatman) slowed down to produce a dense tangible body. At death, the body would pass away and the soul would rejoin the One Soul, regaining its invisibility.

The belief that the body is an illusion is still prevalent in Eastern religion and philosophy.  Many gurus practice asceticism, teaching and training themselves and their students to not obey the needs of the body.  There may be a higher level of consciousness in which one overcomes physical reality and can treat the burdens of the body as optional.  For those not trained in those traditions, the body is real because of how the senses perceive physical reality.

Today we know that certain frequencies and wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation reveal different aspects of the same reality.  For example, a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine shows the interior anatomical details of the body.  Because humans are not naturally equipped with the lens of a MRI machine, we do not see what is revealed by a MRI scan.  It does not mean that the body we see is not real but that light reveals different aspects of reality.  Thus, whether physical reality is illusory depends on our ability to perceive all of it. 

 Share your theory of whether physical reality is an illusion with scott@theorism.org.