The Elusive Facticity of Ilusion

[Guest guest]

No illusion is pure illusion. Behind every Illusion

is a fact masquerading, impersonating,

pretending to be another fact. The cheapest

trick in spirituality is to dismiss the unpleasant

and the troublesome as mere illusion.

 

Even a phantom pain (a pain felt by an amputee

in a missing limb) is caused by physical neuro-

transmitters attaching themselves to the receptors

of brain cells. Pain is never an illusion, its allocation,

or interpretation could be one. In this case, the brain

assigned the pain to a nonexistent leg. It projected

the sensation to empty space.

 

Find the fact behind the illusion, unmask it, understand it,

stay with its naked reality without interpretation, and

the urgency of pain, or trouble becomes pure sensation,

still unpleasant, but lacking the maddening urgency of

wanting to escape.

 

Pete

 

Pete

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

Nisargadatta , Pedsie2@a... wrote:

> No illusion is pure illusion. Behind every Illusion

> is a fact masquerading, impersonating,

> pretending to be another fact. The cheapest

> trick in spirituality is to dismiss the unpleasant

> and the troublesome as mere illusion.

>

> Even a phantom pain (a pain felt by an amputee

> in a missing limb) is caused by physical neuro-

> transmitters attaching themselves to the receptors

> of brain cells. Pain is never an illusion, its allocation,

> or interpretation could be one. In this case, the brain

> assigned the pain to a nonexistent leg. It projected

> the sensation to empty space.

>

> Find the fact behind the illusion, unmask it, understand it,

> stay with its naked reality without interpretation, and

> the urgency of pain, or trouble becomes pure sensation,

> still unpleasant, but lacking the maddening urgency of

> wanting to escape.

>

> Pete

>

 

Scientist have discovered that the brain has a great plasticity, i.e.

has the capacity to modify itself to a large extent (

http://www.physiology.gu.se/gustafsson ). Maybe spiritual practice can

be an effective way of creating changes in the brain.

 

I have an idea that fear is an illusion; not a pure illusion, but

rather a temporary effect for regulating hehaviour in mammals. In

humans fear is perhaps more of a problem than a means of helping us

survive. We probably don't need fear to run our lives - common sense

would be enough. Yet fear is there in most humans, a fear related to

expectations about the future. Humans have a very great capacity for

creating a future, and maybe this capacity has become too powerful so

that fear and anxiety comes in, not as a help to survive, but as a

stopping mechanism that prevents the mind from spinning too far into a

self-created future.

 

My idea of spiritual practice is to rewire the brain to desire what is

now _more_ than what is in the future.

 

al.