' The Illusion within the Illusion '...

Follow this one carefully...

At night in a dream, you are looking at a beautiful sunset over the ocean, so it seems.

But you don’t have actual eyes that can see nor functional ears that can hear the waves breaking on the shore. Yet, the experience seems identical to past experiences while awake.

The sunset and beach are 3D projections of mind, not real objects seen. Your body is also a 3D projection. Yet it seems your eyes are really functioning to make it able to see. All your thoughts, decisions, emotions and self identity (feeling like me) are also being projected by the mind.

When you wake up in the morning, you look around the room and believe your eyes are like windows through which you see the room. It seems “you” are in the skull looking out the eyes.

But we know in neuroscience, that eyes don’t function like windows or a camera lens through which a ghostly entity is looking out at a world.

Instead, we know the eyes are merely passive receptors of photons that trigger a series of electro-chemical reactions that result in a hologram-like 3D image appearing within the brain or mind. “We” are looking at this internal, mind generated hologram, not the actual outside world.

But then, who is looking at the 3D image of our bedroom within the brain/mind?

Just like the brain/mind generated a sense of personal identity (“me”) in the dream, the imagined one who was looking at the mind generated sunset, the mind is also generating the sense that a self (“me”) exists, as the one looking at the images of the bedroom. The mind is also generating the thoughts, the “me” seems to be thinking.

When the body gets out bed, the body “you” see, is also a 3D image produced in the brain/mind, that the brain/mind’s generated self, seems to be looking out at, through its eyes.

The self that feels like a real personal self-entity, as “me”, is just a thought construct produced in the human brain/mind. There is no self in there who thinks, sees or hears; just like in a dream at night.

Our self fully vanishes at night while in deep, dreamless sleep. But since that self isn’t being generated, it can’t report upon or remember what occurred during its absence.

During the dream when horrible things occur, the brain/mind generates an afraid “me”, but there isn’t some real self-entity in there that is afraid; it’s an imaginary self. There is no actual real self in there.

Likewise, when occurrences go horribly wrong in daily life, the brain/mind generates an afraid “me” who suffers, yet no other real self exists who actually suffers. The only possible self is the imaginary self generated by the brain/mind from prior memories and conditioning; just like the dreamed self.

Understanding this fully, it can be seen that the “practitioner” or “seeker” self doesn’t exist at all, and is only a momentary, mind generated “self” illusion. This is why no one can become enlightened or liberated, because no actual self exists to become enlightened or liberated.

How can progressive practices help a non-existent or imaginary self? How can “sudden” path insights liberate an imaginary self? There is no self to understand this and to benefit from this understanding. There is no other real self lurking backstage somewhere, waiting to be liberated.

Maybe this can clarify what’s been shared here continually regarding “no self”. In that case, the whole notion of a “practitioner following a path to enlightenment” is like an illusion pursuing an illusion.



-Jackson Peterson