Is physical reality just an illusion?

Brandon Mitchell said:So, I was reading somewhere that everything physically surrounding us is actually just an illusion. Honestly, that sounds a little insane to me. It makes me wonder what "reality" even means, because trying to identify myself as some kind of infinite consciousness feels totally out of reach. To me, everything boils down to the body and the mind. I wouldn't go identifying my spirit with some abstract soul or any of those similar concepts, because at the end of the day, it’s all just brain chemistry and psychological states. One is inextricably linked to the other and they both function in tandem, so trying to separate them feels like nothing more than pure fantasy. I don't see how that could possibly be real, so... I guess you guys can weigh in? I've never really been into spiritual circles or anything, so I don't actually know the full depth behind these ideas. I've dabbled in looking into Buddhism and Krishnaism here and there, but that's about it. I'm not a believer in God.

I wouldn't call it an illusion—it's more like a creation. Think about it like how our minds construct dreams. When you're deep in a dream, you don't walk around thinking, "Wow, this is all fake," even though it’s light-years away from the actual reality we experience when we're awake.

Brandon Mitchell said:So, I was reading somewhere that everything physically surrounding us is actually just an illusion. Honestly, that sounds a little insane to me. It makes me wonder what "reality" even means, because trying to identify myself as some kind of infinite consciousness feels totally out of reach. To me, everything boils down to the body and the mind. I wouldn't go identifying my spirit with some abstract soul or any of those similar concepts, because at the end of the day, it’s all just brain chemistry and psychological states. One is inextricably linked to the other and they both function in tandem, so trying to separate them feels like nothing more than pure fantasy. I don't see how that could possibly be real, so... I guess you guys can weigh in? I've never really been into spiritual circles or anything, so I don't actually know the full depth behind these ideas. I've dabbled in looking into Buddhism and Krishnaism here and there, but that's about it. I'm not a believer in God.

It makes sense that it feels unreachable—it's exactly like a single drop of water trying to wrap its head around the ocean it's actually part of.

When I look at this world, I see the spiritual and the material as being equally real. I've always had this gut feeling that we are way more than just our physical bodies, and I've had plenty of experiences that point toward that spiritual side. Plus, logic backs it up—there are just too many coincidences happening to simply ignore it.

Everything we perceive is essentially an illusion. Reality isn't actually the thing we think we're experiencing.
Take vision, for example. We only see a specific spectrum of colors—whatever our eyes are physically capable of picking up. From those limited signals, our brain constructs a coherent image. In truth, there is a massive portion of the spectrum that our eyes simply fail to register.
What we end up with is an effective illusion: a mental picture that doesn't actually align with objective reality.

Ryan Wilson2 said:You're really talking nonsense here.😁

I fail to see any logical connection whatsoever between my previous statements and what you've just proposed.😁

You're mistaken... honestly, just stop for a second and look at the world around you and the people surrounding you... it isn't that difficult to see.

The thing is, spiritualists here have been posting for years about how our world shifts based on our own beliefs and intentions... and then someone comes along who has spent years posting in spirituality forums without even knowing their own "why," claiming they didn't see something.
Well, of course you didn't, because the universe doesn't work that way. Just like you can't fall off a tree if you aren't climbing it, you'll receive confirmation for exactly what you believe in.

It would be like me going over to a football forum right now—even though I don't care for the sport, never watch it, and barely understand the rules—and spending the next ten years posting about how football should actually be played with hands. I'd do it just for kicks, because I love wasting my time on things I don't care about and don't believe in.

Steven Cruz3 said:The soul is the Psyche.

To me, the best way to wrap your head around how these things interact is through the Greek myth of Eros and Psyche. Psyche (the soul) was innocent and clueless—she entered this relationship with Eros, which represents some kind of vital life force or spirit, but she didn't grasp his true nature. And because of that? She lost him.

Then Aphrodite / Nature—acting as Eros's mother—throws a series of impossible tasks at Psyche to prove herself worthy of reuniting with him. First, she needs the ability to discern—to separate individual seeds from a massive pile—and ants end up helping her out with that. Then she needs a broader perspective to grab water from a wild river in a narrow canyon; an eagle steps in to help there. Finally, she had to snatch wool from Golden Rams that were incredibly aggressive—those represent raw instincts that she had to learn to harness. But she had to do it carefully, under the cover of darkness, just to avoid being attacked. You can't face the forces of the unconscious with pure, cold logic alone—you need a much more subtle intuition and gut feeling.

Psyche's final task was to descend into Persephone's underworld to retrieve a sacred object. The catch? She wasn't allowed to look back on her way out, or she'd hear the cries of the dead left behind. She failed that one—she looked back, got trapped in Hades, and that was that. But then Eros came for her and pulled her out. It’s all just a metaphor for psychic regeneration.

So, essentially, the Psyche/soul had to acknowledge its own nature—its instincts and its limits. It had to develop the power of analysis and synthesis (the ants and the eagle), confront its own mortality, and overcome it with the will to live. All of that leads to integration—this "mystical marriage"—and finally reaching a state of full self-awareness.

Gave me actual chills reading that..

If everything is just an illusion, then debating this whole thing is pretty much an illusion itself 🙂

It’s an illusion, but also it isn’t... honestly, it all depends on how you define "illusion." You could argue it’s just interpretation, or a version of subjective reality. Since most of us are human, our experiences tend to look similar, though we all perceive things slightly differently based on our own unique psychophysical makeup. So, maybe we aren't dealing with a true illusion, but rather just limited perception—a narrow window through which we view ourselves and the world around us...

Basically, our conscious awareness is boxed in by sensory input and all those little mental games we play with ourselves. That state of being feels like an illusion once consciousness starts to break free and expand. Some people manage to experience multiple layers of reality during their lifetime, which is really just a fancy way of saying they've managed to shatter certain illusions.//

Daniel Castillo11 said:In Buddhism, the concept of "illusion" isn't really about some false divide between the physical world and a non-physical one—that’s a bit of a misunderstanding. It’s more about our own psychological attachment to concepts, like the idea of a permanent self (whether you call it high or low), or our refusal to accept mortality and the inevitable shifts in ourselves and in Nature. At its core, we're talking about attachment and reactivity in all its various forms. It feels much more like a matter of individual human Psyche and how we perceive our surroundings rather than a statement about objective reality itself. If we look at it that way, Nirvana would be a kind of "numbing" or letting go of those attachments to object-oriented models of existence and human experience. In that light, traditional notions like the soul or the spirit basically just dissolve into nothingness...

I haven't exactly witnessed ideas splashing into the water yet; maybe a few pebbles here and there, or perhaps some people jumping off a pier, but nothing else.

Matthew Young35 said:Everything we perceive is essentially an illusion. Reality isn't actually the thing we think we're experiencing.
Take vision, for example. We only see a specific spectrum of colors—whatever our eyes are physically capable of picking up. From those limited signals, our brain constructs a coherent image. In truth, there is a massive portion of the spectrum that our eyes simply fail to register.
What we end up with is an effective illusion: a mental picture that doesn't actually align with objective reality.

Is it an illusion? Or isn't it? Honestly, I think it all depends on what level of consciousness you're operating from when you look at the world—both the stuff outside us and what's going on inside! For our normal, everyday lives, physical reality is undeniably "real"—we see it, we touch it, it’s right there... and hey, that’s perfectly fine! But, say you move up to a more refined state of awareness? From that vantage point, the entire reality we perceive starts to feel totally illusory. Whether we want to admit it or not, physical reality from that higher perspective looks somewhat thin—it doesn't really have that sense of "solidity" we rely on in our daily grind, you know?

Reality isn't actually what we experience it to be.
Take vision, for example. We only see a specific spectrum of colors that our eyes allow us to process. Based on those signals, our brain constructs an image. In actual reality, there’s a massive part of the spectrum that our eyes simply can't register.
Effectively, we are experiencing an illusion—we've created a mental picture that doesn't fully match objective reality.

Now, this definitely falls under the category of an illusion! Our interpretation and experience of anything is shaped by our attitudes, opinions, beliefs, and mental patterns—basically, our unique perspective. Because of that, everything automatically bends into these illusory constructions. After all, everyone is going to interpret what they see through their own personal lens, right?

Reality might just be a projection. We're basically sitting in a dark movie theater, watching reality play out like some film, while the actual truth remains completely out of reach.

Ryan Wilson2 said:Fine, if we follow that logic, then we're strictly talking about psychology. Personally, I remain highly skeptical that there's anything more profound at play here than mere mental processes.🙂

The soul—or the Psyche—is layered. That's why it has to express itself through symbols. They're essential building blocks for human philosophy, culture, and art, but they need to stay fluid—interpreted individually and synchronized. Your unconscious isn't the same as mine.

The real mess starts when religion grabs hold of symbolic language. It basically copies social hierarchies of "high" and "low" onto our conscious planes, which ends up stripping away the integrative magic of symbolic thought—the kind that actually reconciles different paradoxes.

Take a paradox: I can view my soul as a cluster of psychological traits or brain activity, or I can see it as the eternal flame described by Heraclitus, or even some metaphor from the I Ching. I can experience Jungian mysticism on one level while staying refreshed by the pragmatic ideas of evolutionary psychology on another. Sure, my perception is limited by my own tastes, experiences, and beliefs—but I'm not losing sleep over it. I'm not out here hunting for something "higher." If something higher actually exists, it'll show up without me having to try too hard. 🙂

Anthony Hayes2 said:Reality might just be a projection. We're basically sitting in a dark movie theater, watching reality play out like some film, while the actual truth remains completely out of reach.

And in this little cinematic masterpiece, we’re all stuck grinding away at a Chase branch from 8 to 4, probably daydreaming about jumping out the window just to escape the sheer monotony of the daily grind.🙂

Matthew Young35 said:Everything we perceive is essentially an illusion. Reality isn't actually the thing we think we're experiencing.
Take vision, for example. We only see a specific spectrum of colors—whatever our eyes are physically capable of picking up. From those limited signals, our brain constructs a coherent image. In truth, there is a massive portion of the spectrum that our eyes simply fail to register.
What we end up with is an effective illusion: a mental picture that doesn't actually align with objective reality.

That is a classic attempt at seduction, using abstract concepts and sweeping generalizations to make a point.
To be honest, those words don't carry much weight; it’s like saying "everything is just a figment of our imagination" or claiming we don't even exist, only that some abstract concept does. If you use a generalization like that, you have to ask yourself how much value that abstraction actually holds for us in practice.

Furthermore, if you were to simply remove the word "EVERYTHING," your entire argument would shift into a completely different dimension.

Anthony Cook8 said:You're mistaken... honestly, just stop for a second and look at the world around you and the people surrounding you... it isn't that difficult to see.

The thing is, spiritualists here have been posting for years about how our world shifts based on our own beliefs and intentions... and then someone comes along who has spent years posting in spirituality forums without even knowing their own "why," claiming they didn't see something.
Well, of course you didn't, because the universe doesn't work that way. Just like you can't fall off a tree if you aren't climbing it, you'll receive confirmation for exactly what you believe in.

It would be like me going over to a football forum right now—even though I don't care for the sport, never watch it, and barely understand the rules—and spending the next ten years posting about how football should actually be played with hands. I'd do it just for kicks, because I love wasting my time on things I don't care about and don't believe in.

That whole Law of Attraction thing? It's dangerous. ☕

Steven Cruz3 said:That whole Law of Attraction thing? It's dangerous. ☕

It’s flawless. It works perfectly every single time, and we always end up receiving exactly what we need...

Anthony Cook8 said:It’s flawless. It works perfectly every single time, and we always end up receiving exactly what we need...

Look, that’s just your personal take and your own taste. 🙂

To me, the whole thing sounds like straight-up brainwashing. If people actually believe their negative thoughts act like a magnet pulling in a matching reality, then I totally get why practitioners are constantly fighting this mental "clench"—it's exhausting. It’s basically living in constant fear that if you have one weird thought, like "I'm going to grow a second head," it might actually happen tomorrow because you "attracted" it. Sounds insane to me.😁

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Steven Cruz3 said:Look, that’s just your personal take and your own taste. 🙂

To me, the whole thing sounds like straight-up brainwashing. If people actually believe their negative thoughts act like a magnet pulling in a matching reality, then I totally get why practitioners are constantly fighting this mental "clench"—it's exhausting. It’s basically living in constant fear that if you have one weird thought, like "I'm going to grow a second head," it might actually happen tomorrow because you "attracted" it. Sounds insane to me.😁

.

I didn't say that; I said we get what we need, not necessarily what we think about...

It is impossible to control every single thought; there are just too many of them, and conscious ones are actually quite rare. That said, if you mean being able to intentionally attract a specific situation through focused thought when you really want to, then absolutely.

Steven Cruz3 said:That whole Law of Attraction thing? It's dangerous. ☕

It’s certainly dangerous for anyone prone to making sweeping generalizations—honestly, everything is risky for people like that.

Anthony Cook8 said:It’s flawless. It works perfectly every single time, and we always end up receiving exactly what we need...

I have to say, you really are something else—completely out there!

Whether this was actually what you were looking for is anyone's guess, but judging by the outcome, it seems you got exactly what you asked for.

🙂

I truly hope you can see where I'm coming from with this.

hiddenbear3 said:I have to say, you really are something else—completely out there!

Whether this was actually what you were looking for is anyone's guess, but judging by the outcome, it seems you got exactly what you asked for.

🙂

I truly hope you can see where I'm coming from with this.

Haha,

well, obviously. 😁

Anthony Cook8 said:I didn't say that; I said we get what we need, not necessarily what we think about...

It is impossible to control every single thought; there are just too many of them, and conscious ones are actually quite rare. That said, if you mean being able to intentionally attract a specific situation through focused thought when you really want to, then absolutely.

The issue isn't whether you want that for yourself—it's that you're presenting it as some universal truth for everyone else. You've been pushing this angle relentlessly across several different threads now, and honestly, I’m starting to worry you’ve fallen for some "guru" cult. The symptoms look pretty familiar to me. 🙂

Here’s one way people interpret the Law of Attraction:
'' If you listen to someone complaining and you focus on their words—empathizing and coddling them—you’ll end up attracting those exact same miserable situations into your own life. ''

I mean, what a load of crap. By that logic, every psychiatrist in America would have lost their minds long ago, and oncologists would be dropping like flies from cancer. Not to mention the blatant, immature egoism that seems to fuel almost all these "modern" spiritual concepts we see today.

The psychopathic culture of the West—shiny cellophane on the outside, but total chaos and emptiness underneath. The only thing that can stop it is thought—conscious, free, expressive, critical thought—the kind that actually deconstructs things. We need more of that. 🙂

Steven Cruz3 said:The issue isn't whether you want that for yourself—it's that you're presenting it as some universal truth for everyone else. You've been pushing this angle relentlessly across several different threads now, and honestly, I’m starting to worry you’ve fallen for some "guru" cult. The symptoms look pretty familiar to me. 🙂

Here’s one way people interpret the Law of Attraction:
'' If you listen to someone complaining and you focus on their words—empathizing and coddling them—you’ll end up attracting those exact same miserable situations into your own life. ''

I mean, what a load of crap. By that logic, every psychiatrist in America would have lost their minds long ago, and oncologists would be dropping like flies from cancer. Not to mention the blatant, immature egoism that seems to fuel almost all these "modern" spiritual concepts we see today.

The psychopathic culture of the West—shiny cellophane on the outside, but total chaos and emptiness underneath. The only thing that can stop it is thought—conscious, free, expressive, critical thought—the kind that actually deconstructs things. We need more of that. 🙂

Well, why does it bother you so much?
I don't necessarily read everything; I just know what the Law of Attraction refers to. It’s like when I see a book title—even if I haven't read it, I instinctively know what it's about and why. When I first came across Transurfing, I was drawn to it because I met someone vital for my personal growth, and I understood every single concept even though I had never opened or read a single one of those books. How? I don't know... I just knew the "feeling" behind everything they talk about, whereas the masses who actually read them often miss it because they can't perceive what they see with their minds. My truth comes from within.

Regarding that quote, when you listen to other people's venting and connect with it, you block your own energy and end up feeling worse (though that doesn't happen without reason; two people can be complaining, but you won't necessarily catch both of them). From the moment I wake up, I have an amazing flow of energy and everything moves quickly. In the past, whenever I felt a surge of anger, I would experience intense physical pain in my chest—so sharp it would force me back into the present moment. That has stopped now, but previously, every time I had a mental spasm, some uncomfortable or shocking situation would occur... (which the Law of Attraction interprets as a response to my low vibration).
But I know that those situations aren't negative reactions to my "bad vibes," but rather created circumstances designed to lead to the release of whatever is bothering me. It happens every single time, perfectly.

Even here on the forum, I don't read 90% of the posts; they don't attract me. Even in the middle of a long thread, I can usually skip most of it. I am here specifically for the school; when something catches my eye, I do what needs to be done. Once that thing is released, I leave. I live by impulse as much as my mind allows me to; I don't live by convention.

Expressive and critical thoughts are, ultimately, products of the ego. They can only help you realize that you aren't quite where you should be. Temperament is great because it can lead to realizations and the breaking of old patterns, but the "problem" is that it often doesn't lead to letting go. Instead, it turns into a permanent state of living out, enjoying, and feeding off that very behavior.

And just so I can point something out to you—you used the wrong example because you misunderstood the quote...
Psychiatrists don't latch onto other people's problems, nor do they feed anyone's illusions (that's what the part about "indulging" refers to), and they certainly don't identify with them...
They don't let patients drag them down into their personal turmoil; instead, they experience the narrative from a healthy distance. If they didn't maintain that boundary, they wouldn't be able to do this work at all. The quote is really about avoiding letting someone else's fear and darkness pull you under, where you end up identifying too closely with them and just feeding that anxiety together.