One of the great truths agreed upon by many religious traditions is that the world we perceive and experience is influenced by our own minds even as our minds are influenced by our actions. That is, our normal experience of the world is not the world as it is, but the world as it is veiled by our minds, indeed, our experience is usually based upon what we make of it due to our minds and the way they engage the world than it is the world as it is. Even science agrees that our perception of the world is influenced by us. This means that what we experience can be said to be an illusion superimposed upon what is real. Most of these religious traditions suggest that we can transcend such an illusory experience, but they also say, it is not easy, and requires much on our part (and sometimes with some external help, such as grace).
The world of our experience must not be confused with the world as it is. This is not to say they are completely separate things, for they are not. The world of our experience is based upon the world that is, but it is a distorted vision of the world, a distortion which is created by our minds and what our minds expect to perceive. Those expectations are influenced, and come about, due to our actions and the consequences which emerge from them. The problem we face is therefore a problem connected with our mind, as our mind tries to create the world it wants, superimposing upon the world as it is the objects it wants, acting as if it were a god; the problem is that no matter how much it tries to create a world to fit its desires, what it creates is never satisfactory. There is something about its creation which is tainted, and it is tainted by the defilements found in the mind itself. Sadly, the mind tries to reinforce its position as a god over the world, and so the more it experiences the defilements it has created for itself, the more it will try to push itself to create the world it wants, and in doing so, separate itself more and more from the real world, and, therefore, from the source and foundation of reality itself, which is God. Hinduism calls the unreal world, the illusion, maya, while in the Christian tradition, we find those, like Fr. George Maloney, describing it as being like a dream (or nightmare) which we try to dwell in:
We live in a psychic and spiritual sleep. Most of us dwell in a world different from God’s true and real world. The great deception is that we do not realize that we are asleep to God’s reality because our false egos have constructed around us a world of illusion. Even “religion,” our own interpretation of God’s revealed truths found in Scripture and in the teachings of the Church, can help to keep us locked into our self-created world.[1]
We create for ourselves our own prison, a prison which gives us some things which we desire, things which attract us to our prison, sometimes making us think we are not imprisoned, but we are, as becomes obvious as we experience all kinds of things which we do not want to experience. This prison is established by our ego, by its desire to become a god, and in doing so, it can be said to partake of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil to try to establish itself as a god who decides what is good and evil. We create for ourselves a false self which then is treated as real, and what we do acts, in a way, to preserve that false self and to give it what it wants. This false self keeps us locked up in the prison it creates for us as long as we let it thrive. It sets itself up and preserves itself based upon its innate selfishness, upon unlove. To get out of our self-imposed prison we must die to the constructed, false self; when we do so, the illusion it creates will also vanish. Thus, to overcome the false self, to let it die, we must follow the path of love, as it will direct us to deny that false self, to deny we can be a god unto ourselves, as love leads us to open ourselves up and be united with others, including and especially God. This is why it can be said that the morality of the church must serve love:
The ethics of the Church have nothing to do with this essential indeterminacy of good and evil, whose conclusions and development cannot be other than conventional. They preclude relativity in values, and do not have reference to any convention, whether customary or consciously accepted, which would permit objective valuations and juridical calculations. The Church’s ethics “judge” man by revealing the image of God in the human person, distinguishing existence and life from ephemeral survival and the illusion of self-existence. [2]
So long as we embrace the falsely constructed self, the false self which pretends to be self-subsistent and therefore, a god, we find ourselves drawn into its illusion. It constantly tries to reinforce that illusion by having us act in ways which reinforce the notion that the false self is real. That is, the false self has us act in such a way to recreate itself, and unless we stop this process, it ends up becoming an infinite loop, a “bad infinity” as Bulgakov described it:
The spirit that has closed itself up in itself, alienated from reality, finds itself in an emptiness that it fills with its own emanations. And an imaginary, “bad” infinity of emptiness is thus created, where metaphysical boredom and a multiplicity of illusory forms reign. [3]
Through pride, we try to become the lord over creation; when we embrace pride, we find ourselves falling from grace, from the real world, creating a false sense of self which tries to separate itself from all things, including God. Due to the fact that we do not have the means to create an experience of the world which will completely satisfy us, we will find ourselves in a never-ending circle trying to create it, finding something which temporarily gives us pleasure, only to have it or something else cause us further pain and sorrow. What we try to create and establish as real is not, though it has the appearance of reality similar to the illusion a magician creates for their audience: magicians uses real objects, but manages to find a way to have them perceived in a way which is not true to reality, that is, they create an illusion for their audience using real objects. So, our mind is acting for us as a magician, having us interact with the world in such a way we perceive the illusion it wants us to believe instead of the reality as it really is. Our sins create defilements in our mind, defilements which then serve as the foundation for the illusion. To transcend that illusion, we must not allow such defilements, and the illusions they create, to have any power over us:
The defilements do not dwell in objects, nor in the collection of the senses, nor in the space between. There is nowhere else for them to dwell, and yet they churn up the entire universe. This is but illusion! So, heart, free yourself from fear, devote yourself to striving for wisdom. Why, quite needlessly, do you torment yourself in hells? [4]
When we cut ourselves from God, we not only sin, but we hide from ourselves the presence of God in our lives. This is why, to overcome the prison which our mind makes for us, we must repent, transforming our actions so that instead cutting ourselves off from everyone and everything (through unlove), we open ourselves to everyone and everything (through love). Then. as Maloney explains, we can find the illusion being dispelled, allowing us not only to perceive God’s presence with us, but to realize that presence was always there and the problem lay in the way we have obscured it from ourselves:
Sin separates and alienates us from the triune life of God within us;
Repentance removes the illusion of God’s absence and makes him even more present to us through humble conversion.[5]
Thus, as various religions tell us, each in their own way, we must deny pride, and the false self pride has us make for ourselves, so that illusion that false self creates and imposes upon our experience can be overcome. Christianity points out, yes, we do have a role in this, but God has a role as well, indeed, that without God and God’s grace, we will not be able to overcome our false self and the prison it has imposed upon us. With grace, with God’s intervention, we can find ourselves reconnecting to the rest of creation, and in doing so, begin to perceive the world as it is instead of as it is experienced through the illusion our mind has made for us; then, having joined ourselves to the rest of creation, we will also be able to see how, with the rest of creation, we are also called to participate in and experience the divine life itself (with the incarnate God-man serving as the bridge which makes this possible).
[1] George Maloney, SJ, Death Where Is Your Sting? (New York: Alba House, 1984), xii.
[2] Christos Yannaras, The Freedom of Morality. Trans. Elizabeth Briere (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984), 37.
[3] Sergius Bulgakov, Bride of the Lamb. Trans. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002), 158.
[4] Śāntideva, The Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra. Trans. Kate Crosby and Andrew Skilton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995; repr. 1998), 29 [4.47].
[5] George A. Maloney, SJ, Your Sins Are Forgiven: Rediscovering the Sacrament of Reconciliation (New York: Alba House, 1994), 19.
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