Illusion and Essence
Our human lives begin in a place of unity. We are one with our mothers in the womb: breathing the same air, eating the same food, and feeling the same feelings. Then, birth heralds the shift into separateness. The baby becomes a child. Still trusting, but now a product of their environment. The child becomes an adult, carrying identities, beliefs, and burdens. Then, after we suffer enough to muster the courage to heal, we begin the path of remembering: the journey of letting go of our accumulated protective barriers. After much meditation, seeking inwards, and ceremony, we can arrive where we began… in connection, totally open and loving, and feeling Oneness once again.
Spiritual teachers describe the experience of enlightenment as a non-dual state of Oneness. The separateness between good and bad, self and other, and subject and object dissolves, giving way to the underlying Truth: polarities are no longer separate entities, but rather aspects of the same underlying reality. This realization is often described as a direct and immediate experience of the true nature of reality, which is seen as fundamentally interconnected and unified. It feels like bliss, peace, joy, gratitude, and love all wrapped into a single experience. It is an experience that can only be described by the most ineffable of ideas: God.
This experience is the manifestation of subject (ourselves) and objects (what we perceive) being one and the same. Can you imagine yourself as the same as your brother or sister? What about someone you feel anger towards? The reason why this is so challenging is because of illusion.
In Eastern philosophy, illusion is the idea that the physical world we experience is an illusion and that our perception of reality is limited and distorted by our senses and minds. Our attachment to material possessions and our identification with our ego create an illusion of separation from the world around us, which causes suffering. Illusion is seen as a veil that separates us from the true nature of reality, which is said to be eternal and unchanging.
When we feel, we are experiencing the accumulation of impressions on an object. Think of the first time you experienced money. To a child, this is just green paper or a word with no meaning. Then, you might have witnessed your parents argue over money or told that there is not have enough money for the toy you want. Now, an impression is formed: this green paper is now imbued with emotional charge. It is something good or bad, necessary or unnecessary, and easy or difficult to acquire. Later, you might experience money satisfying a craving. A new, overlapping impression is formed: money is now a tool that can generate happiness.
Now, think of money in this present moment. What you feel and what you believe about this object comes from the accumulation of impressions that you’ve had and not let go of in your lifetime. This applies to every being, thing, event, or concept you have experienced. We hold impressions on love and loss, life and death, and all the things and beings we have ever contacted, even if it was through a television screen. We hold all the paradoxes, the untruths and falsehoods, ignorant of the true essence of what we see: that an object just is. The universe does not see good or bad; only our ego perceives it, and it does so depending on the identity we wear at the time.
We are the subject perceiving objects. We have experienced all of life through the prism of our ego. Every object we perceive is perceived through identity. When we see money, our impression about it is determined by our identity of rich or poor, capable or incapable, lucky or unlucky, and more. Our sense of self in contact with an object is also perceived through the accumulation of our impressions of ourselves. A wealthy man might see money differently than a poor man; but a homeless man might see money with less scarcity than a wealthy man.
To truly experience freedom from suffering, to enlighten such that subject and object as one and the same, we must shed the illusion of our impressions—all of them. We carry so much in our unconscious. The only manner to surrender is to make the unconscious conscious… to be aware, to continue to peel back the layers of our ego, and let go. We can perceive the essence of existence: that all in which we see, feel, and experience just is.
