Skip to main content

Illusions


The first time I read Richard Bach was in 1980. I read Jonathan Livingstone Seagull and it obviously led me on to Illusions. As a 20 year-old man who was terribly immature and even silly, I found the two books a great inspiration.  Both the idealistic Jonathan and the reluctant messiah of Illusions grew in my consciousness for many years.  Then I grew out of them.  The other day I was looking for a light read as I was recuperating from a viral fever which left me rather debilitated.  Illusions caught my attention.  It kept me riveted though I now don’t agree with quite many of the things in it which were gospel truths for me some three decades ago.

The basic assumption of Illusions remains true even today.  It will remain true any day.  The world as seen by most people is an illusion.  We keep chasing shadows such as money and positions, luxury and redundancy.  We seek to fill the ineluctable vacuum with religion and god(s).  It’s only a few rare beings, highly evolved beings like the protagonist of Illusions, that realise the futility of all human endeavours. 

Human endeavours keep the world moving forward.  Achievements and more achievements.  But the world keeps becoming a worse place for living in.  We are still living in illusions.  All the progress, all the religions and gods, all the gurus and preachers haven’t added a modicum of refinement to the human soul.  The really refined being will continue to be shot dead like in Illusions.  Perverts rule the world.  Religions and gods are the palliatives that soothe the bruises so that we can go on with our perversions.  Illusions are the only truths.



Comments

  1. What made you grow out of that illusion? Practicality of mundaneness? I suffer from solipsim, I still believe in the illusion that I am living in.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The stupidity of the practical world steals our illusions. And then gives us perversions in their place.

      Delete
  2. There seems to be not much difference between the concept of 'illusion' of Bach and the Indian concept of Maya, which was enunciated in the philosophy of Adi Shankaracharya.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, there's much similarity between the two notions.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Joys of Onam and a reflection

Suppose that the whole universe were to be saved and made perfect and happy forever on just one condition: one single soul must suffer, alone, eternally. Would this be acceptable? Philosopher William James asked that in his 1891 book, The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life . Please think about it once again and answer the question for yourself. You, as well as others, are going to live a life without a tinge of sorrow. Joyful existence. Life in Paradise. The only condition is that one person will take up all the sorrows of the universe on him-/herself and suffer – alone, eternally. What do you say? James’s answer is a firm no . “Not even a god would be justified in setting up such a scheme,” James asserted, knowing too well how the Bible justified a positive answer to his question. “It is expedient that one man should die for the people, so that the nation can be saved” [John 11:50]. Jesus was that one man in the Biblical vision of redemption. I was reading a Malayalam period...

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...

Loving God and Hating People

Illustration by Gemini AI There are too many people, including in my extended family. who love God so much that other people have no place in their hearts. God fills their hearts. They go to church or other similar places every day and meet their God. I guess they do. But they return home from the place of worship only to pour out the venom in their hearts on those around them. When I’m vexed by such ‘religious’ people I consult Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov in which there are some characters who are acutely vexed by spiritual questions. Let me leave Ivan Karamazov to himself, as he has been discussed too much already. In Book II, Chapter 4 [ A lady of Little Faith ], a troubled woman comes to Father Zosima, the wise monk, and confesses her spiritual struggle. “I long to love God,” she says. She knows that she cannot love God without loving her fellow human beings, or at least doing some service to them. The truth is, she says, “I cannot bear people. The closer they ...