What? Please see:
You know very well that I’m not talking about determining the order of priority for providing treatment to injured individuals. I am a nurse, don’t lecture me on my field of expertise.
I’m not going back to that discussion.
I wasn’t. Triaging away opposing views is not nursing.
oooooooo you may need some balm of Gilead for that sick burn, Nurse.
1 Like
Deepak Chopra in his book “The Third Jesus” defines faith in a way that makes sense to me, as “ believing in a higher reality, and interpreting it “through Jesus’s constant reference to “the light”. He says “When you stop believing in the illusion of the material world and see everything for what it really is—light—you have faith. The reason all things are given to someone with faith is very simple: The light can shape itself into anything at will. Physical obstacles can’t stop the free flow of light.”
By “light” Chopra is, of course, not referring to natural light, but the light of consciousness. Does that fit with your new perspective?
1 Like
Chopra’s interpretation is poetic and aligns with certain mystical traditions, and his idea of “light” as consciousness resonates with aspects of my evolving view, particularly in seeing divinity as something more immanent and experiential rather than strictly doctrinal.
Strangely, people are reserved about framing faith as rejecting the material world as an illusion. They’d rather see the material and spiritual as interconnected—perhaps even as different expressions of the same underlying reality. Some may find value in his emphasis on perception and transformation. The idea that faith allows for a deeper engagement with reality, beyond surface appearances, does fit with how I’ve been thinking about spirituality lately.
But of course, many Eastern traditions, like Advaita Vedanta and certain Buddhist schools, describe the physical world as maya, or illusion, in the sense that our perceptions are limited and do not reveal reality as it truly is. From a microscopic or quantum perspective, this idea finds some interesting parallels: what seems solid is mostly empty space and matter itself is a play of energy and probability rather than fixed, tangible substance.
I find it interesting that many associate illusions with something meaningless or something to be escaped, which is a common way people interpret it—especially in Western readings of Eastern philosophies. When we hear that “the world is an illusion,” people take to be a dismissal of physical existence, as if the material world doesn’t matter or is something to transcend entirely.
If the illusion is not the material world itself, but rather the importance we place on physicality—our attachment to it as the defining aspect of reality—then it’s more about a shift in awareness than a denial of existence. From that perspective, I experience how the “observer” in meditation reveals something deeper—an awareness that is not bound by physical form, aligning with Advaita’s idea that our true self (Atman) is ultimately Brahman, the infinite consciousness underlying all things. That idea resonates with certain strands of mysticism across cultures, even in early Christian thought, where divine reality is sometimes described as light or logos, beyond ordinary perception.
What is interesting, is that the wisdom teachers have always maintained that a non-clinging service to others, teaching love and compassion is a part of that recognition, which makes it so compelling—true wisdom doesn’t retreat from the world but engages with it differently. The recognition that the self is not just the body or ego doesn’t lead to detachment in the sense of indifference, but rather to a deeper form of compassion. If we see others as part of the same consciousness, then love and service arise naturally—not out of obligation, but from an understanding that in helping others, we are, in a way, tending to the whole.
It reminds me of the paradox in many traditions: realizing the world is an illusion doesn’t mean rejecting it but moving through it with greater clarity and care. The Bodhisattva ideal in Buddhism, for instance, embodies this—awakening not just for oneself but for the benefit of all beings. Similarly, in Christian mysticism, figures like Meister Eckhart speak of detachment not as withdrawal but as surrendering the false self to act from divine love.
The advice given is to allow it to become spontaneous—acting without attachment to the act itself, like Wu Wei in Daoism or the Bhagavad Gita’s teaching of karma yoga, where one acts without attachment to results. It’s not about forcing oneself to be good but about being so in harmony with reality that compassionate action flows naturally, without self-consciousness.
There’s something profoundly liberating in that—when service and love are no longer calculated efforts but expressions of one’s being. It dissolves the tension between self and other, between action and inaction. A river doesn’t think about quenching thirst, and yet it does. A tree doesn’t strive to give shade; it simply does. The sage, in this view, moves through the world with that same effortless grace.
There’s no absolute illusion. Even hallucinations exist as hallucinations. Relativity doesn’t absolutely exist or not exist. The phenomenal world is analogous to Kastrup’s dashboard or Donald Hoffman’s desktop icons. It is the phenomenal field we have evolved as homo sapiens to perceive in order to survive briefly as individuals in the cycle of birth and death until we discover who we are.