If this world is an illusion can you describe how it is so ?

Question

If this world is an illusion can you describe how it is so ?

Answer 1

...life is teeming everywhere among all creatures and old age is respected...

Answer 2

If this world were an illusion then the illusion would be the reality.  This issue was profoundly explored by Rene Descartes in his exploration of that very topic.

An excellent essay was written by O. K. Bouwsma, "Descartes' Evil Genius", 1949, The Philosophical Review, LVII, pp 141-151, that covers this issue very amusingly.

Basically Bouwsma assumes that an evil spirit has been able to transform the world and everything in it into paper.  The poor unfortunate philosophy student in this world discovers that his skin can peel away like paper and everything is composed as paper.  He asks himself, is this just an illusion?  No. He decides.  The fact that the world is made of paper is the reality.  And the evil spirit fails to convince the student that there is an illusion.

Now.  Can we know reality?  Immanuel Kant was very interested in this question.  He determined that we can only know what our senses tell us, and the reality is ultimately unknowable.  But what our senses tells us is not an illusion (unless we are having nightmares or silly beliefs) but rather approximations of reality.  We attempt to describe reality and as time goes by we refine our models of reality and get better and better approximations.

Answer 3

its an illusion in the sense that the way you view the world will never be shared exactly by anyone else... you are therefore living in your own seperate, much immagined universe, simmilar yet seperate from mine, and that of the 6.5 billion other persons alive today.

what we see is not necessarily what is.

<- abuszaK A.

Answer 4

The world is an illusion because it is always changing from one form into another. As the saying goes, "The only permanent thing in life is change." The illusion is that what we see and think as 'solid' isn't so at all. Matter can be dissolved into its elements of origin. This substance out of which all forms are created can never cease to exist for it is eternal, only the form will change, from one thing to another. (ice, water, steam, ether)

It is LIFE that gives form to the substance, and in biblical words, God created all things out of this universal substance.

MATTER IS MIND MATERIALIZED.

Answer 5

Perception is reality.  Or we have computers plugged into the backs of our heads...

Answer 6

The world is real.  The reality that we are presented with is an illusion.  The mass media tells lies, a great many lies.  So many in fact that they frequently contradict themselves.  However, nobody remembers what has been said before so very few people are aware of this fact.  Those that are just get laughed at when they try to tell anybody.  The education systems teach only the truth that the ruling class wants people to learn; which isn't necessarily what happened.  Religion.  Which religion, there are dozens to choose from; perhaps you believe the one that you had forced down your throat at school, or by mum & dad.  That doesn't mean is true though.  Freedom.  We are all free to lose our useful life making somebody else rich.  Perhaps we get a holiday or two each year.  Very few are free to do what they want with their life.

For the majority: at school you're programmed, at work you waste away and in retirement you live in poverty.  While all the time we are being lied to by the media.