Is Your Version Of Reality Just An Illusion

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one"
Albert Einstein


How do we know that the version of the world we think we are living in now is real?

We can’t rely totally on our perception of what real is. We need some hard facts to back up what our instincts are leading us to believe.

I’m not talking about the kind of reality you perceive because of your inhibitions, or the taboos you accept as gospel. I’m not talking about the kind of reality that has your imagination running amuck. I’m talking about the real thing whatever that is, or is all this just an illusion.

Don’t swear on a star that hurricanes and floods are real. Maybe they are only images of the fear mechanism we live with. Maybe the truth is that in some ways we cherish the dark side. Maybe we invented terrorism as an escape from a boring reality. Maybe there is no threat. Maybe we are only bit players in some Game Master’s virtual reality game. How do you know that any of this is real?

Are we wandering aimlessly in a barren desert inventing a lush landscape, a wonderful family, and the bounty of a full table merely to blind us to how stark and forbidding our world really is?

Somehow we must discover the truth about ourselves. Is this our real environment? Somehow we must learn to live with the truth. Maybe it’s not as bad as some of us fear. Maybe the illusion we live in is as real for us as it is going to get.
Let’s hope that a beautiful blooming rose bush out there in the front yard is really not a monument to the rotten carcass of a former life.

Let’s hope for the best and try and comprehend that our concept of God is based on something we cannot see or understand.

Maybe what we do see and think we understand is not half as good as the real thing. Perhaps there is no reason to fear the miracle of a wonderful future we cannot even envision.

Maybe what we think we see is not as good as it is going to get.

Maybe there is more, more than we can possibly imagine: more beauty, more love, more happiness, and more peace and security than we can conjure up as a worthwhile real image of the world in which we live.


Hi, this is Arthur Levine, the author of the novel Johnny Oops. Please join us in a quest to determine what is real and what is illusion at http://johnnyoops.blogspot.com