Is physical reality an illusion?

"yup"

 

I believe we all share the same reality, though our senses may interpret it differently. That reality exists and we are inside of it, experiencing it. That questions of the mind, of the soul, of the supernatural all belong in the same reality. Picture a river in outer space, just floating there nothing around it with the current flowing very fast. That is the river of reality only it is not in outer space, outer space is in it. I do not know what lies outside this river, but the river is real and we are in it. It is not an illusion it is the all too real reality. Cold and Hard. Yet Amazing and Mysterious and Wonderful.
However, number48's outlook on the subject is the one that should be adopted. There is no way of finding out and so it is literally a waste of time to try. Instead live reality, enjoy it, loathe it, love it.

 

Interesting topic!

i say yes, it is illusion. reality looks as it does because of how we learn to perceive it.

there was some study i learned about in a neurobiology course, in which people who had lived in a forest their entire lives were taken to the edge, to a large open field, and could not accurately judge distance because they had never seen that far (all they had seen prior were dense forest landscapes), their brains had never developed to consider such a thing.

everything we look at, we look at a certain way because of what we think about it, whether we've seen it before, and what we've seen previously.

reality without us is indefinable, it only gets categorized and made sense of in our own heads.

perspective dictates everything, and i think perspective is an illusion.

 

illusion in the sense that the appearance and behavior of solidity is the result of physical forces acting on objects too small to see that are as far apart, relative to their size, as stars and planets. not illusion in that something out there to stub your toe on doesn't begin and end only in your mind. even if everything we think we know about resides there. but nothing depends on our thinking we know anything about it, or even having the slightest idea that it does, in order to exist.

so things that aren't part and parcel to our individual selves do exist,
but,
everything we think we know about them,
could
be just our own blowing smoke
collectively
just as individually.

what is important is how avoiding contributing to suffering,
(of both self AND others),
enables the world that surrounds us, (to the degree all of us together do)
to be one we can all find gratification living in.

 

I don't think that we can call physical reality an illusion because it is extremely real to us. Now, I think to someone observing us, our physical reality and the things we hold dear would seem unimportant, but not an illusion.

I guess it just depends on just how conscious you are?