There are many theories relating to the working of the universe and still many theorists are working on refining them. But none of these are philosophical. The theory you are just about to read deals with the reality and existence of the very universe all other theories took for granted. In short, this theory will enable you to perceive the world around you through the spectacles of philosophy and may even make you question that same perception, because there is more to it than a simple theory.
How would you react if I say everyone and everything around you is just an illusion? That people around you are images shaped by your mind? And that what you hear, feel and smell are just unreal and fragments of your subconscious imagination? It may be an absurd feeling of incomprehension initially, but may turn into shock as realisation of the possibility of such a model begins to settle in.
This is exactly what the theory of illusions propounds. Everything, including our mortal body, is an illusion. So you may be tempted to know what else is real. It is the soul, the immortal fire burning inside, and the person who created it, be it lord Shiva or Jesus Christ or Allah or any myriad form of His, which is the truth.
By now I hope that the absurd feeling of incomprehension that I mentioned before has filled your mind. Let me move on and explain things to make it easy. Take off your eyes from this line and look outside your window. You may see poorly constructed roads, newly engineered buildings and fast food restaurants and if you are lucky, a few trees – a typical Chennai scene. Now you are reading this. The roads may not be there; the buildings may not be there and even the few trees you were fortunate enough to see may not be there. They were momentary illusions contrived by Him to give you a sense of surrounding. Even the sense of itching caused by insect bites is an illusion. Not just these, even your friends and family are the same. They may not actually be there, but just intervene in your life to influence it and to twist and turn it in the way things were planned. Some may be helpful illusions and some may come to disrupt your life.
Now I hope the feeling that such a model is possible has settled in. This is a very beautiful theory in two ways. The first one being, it can explain everything from why an apple falls down to the electrodynamics of moving bodies and from when and how the universe was born to when and how it will end. This is so because, there is nothing called an apple, relativity and for that matter universe. All are momentary illusions. It is just the soul and its creator. So we don’t have to bother to explain the natural phenomena and scientific events and more importantly, we can’t. The second beautiful fact being, what we see around us is unreal and what we can’t see is the ultimate truth!
This proposition can certainly be called a philosophical and spiritual theory concerning the working of universe. We don’t know if this model is the actual truth, it may even be tough to take it in, but it certainly deserves consideration as it is just another perception of our world.
I believe this philosophical theory is called solipsism. It says that nothing outside one’s own mind is real. You provided a very beautiful walk through it.
Though it is a very alluring concept, the only thing I don’t understand about it is if we consider only our own self to be the real thing and rest all an illusion then won’t it be true for all others too. For a bee, for our friends, for the tress we are an illusion and they themselves are real. Then it creates the confusion whether everything is either real or an illusion and for an illusion to occur someone who is not a part of this world(the illusion) must be experiencing it. This would mandate us to believe in God or someone greater than us who is doing all this and that is something I’m skeptical about as a person of science but not as a human.
I hope this was not too long. There is a movie about this too, an artistic kind, I don’t remember the name.
You gave me an idea for a story. What if our world is an illusion of someone from another planet! or maybe something on a microscopic scale.
Thanks. As always it was wonderful reading this.
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Hey, yes it is called Epistomological solipsism 🙂 It plays an important part in my novel… I am a firm believer of it. And very true… Advaita Vedanta says we have to consider everything outside our consciousness as illusions… but we should not take this at face value… illusions in the sense, ephemeral things, unlike the Supreme One… However in solipsism, for an individual, he is the only real being; this applies to the entire world… More clearly, it says, we can’t be objectively sure of anything outside our mind.
I am very glad you are going to write a story on that 🙂 I am looking forward to it 🙂
P.S.: I still don’t know your name!
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Let me know when your novel is ready. I’d like to read it.
I’ll have to spend some time thinking about this concept before I form a solid opinion about it.
I decided to use an alias instead of my real name here on the blog. You can call me jia😃. Hope you don’t mind since someday I might decide to move my practice to some other country and I would want to appear professional.
This might change if I actually publish a novel.
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I totally understand 🙂 I will call you Jia! And my novel has been ready for the past many months…
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That’s great. Congrats. Name of the novel please if it is published of course.
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Unfortunately it is not. It is called ‘Shiva Purana and the Novel for Nobody’
There is a page on my blog dedicated for this. I would really like you to read the synopsis there 🙂
Thanks, Jia!
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Sure I would
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Thank you 🙂
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