This image-making faculty characterises us, and the images are made out of the mental material which we receive through our senses. You see the point. There is only a certain limited amount of mental material which comes into us, that which comes into us through our particular senses. This living organism, this human being, is restricted to that. Nature has made him so that he cannot escape that. Supposing we had twenty, a hundred different senses, think of the oceans of impressions that would be flowing into us. Just with these few senses that we have, these images are made in the mind and they are named, and the brain’s activity is ceaseless, it goes on chattering away all the time, and the images which we make falsify the actual reality of the thing in itself. The thing in itself, the event in itself, the person in himself or herself I don’t know. I only know my particular image of it. My brain keeps chattering and playing about with the thing all the time.
There is the One Total Reality which is no illusion at all.This is one great meaning of the word māyā, meaning illusion. These images are partly, in fact very considerably, false representations, re-presentations, of the reality. It is a curious thing that even in India, where they did know something about this to start with, they have made curious mistakes and they have said that the whole world is an illusion. No, nothing is an illusion. There is the One Total Reality which is no illusion at all. But my image of it is an illusory image. This is what we must bear in mind, that the way in which we are conscious of the world is an illusory way. There are flaws in the images in our minds, considerable flaws.
With thanks to the The Phiroz Mehta Trust
[Taken from an article entitled ‘Freedom from Illusory image-making’ published in The Phiroz Mehta Trust Newsletter, issue 121 March 2021.] Click here to read more from Phiroz.Share:
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