"liberals" are just as guilty of thinking highly of themselves as are "conservatives" To put labels on individuals is an act that you can determine to who you think they are... on a personal level. May or may not be a correct determination One's first impression could be an illusion
The first impression you get of a person suffers from the same as the first impression of reality since the person is a part of it. All is a matter of own perspective. There is a phrase, though. Saying..."The first impression you get from a person is the right one." Well..it's actually flawed the same way as saying my reality is the reality... The difference of knowing a person only a little bit and knowing a person very well is that you 'learn' more about his own reality and how he is reflecting. We can develop mutual understanding and we discover similarities. The more, the more we get friends. If reality includes anything and own reality requires a subject which has got an own perspective to own reality, then yes. "Reality" is now, had been before already and will ever be...reality cannot change, is beyond time. Time is already an own product of it, relative to 'us', to our perspective. (The BBC documentation where the one falls down from the sky, Einstein, etc....) To grasp that intellectually is hard, though since any attempt is made from that 'common' perspective. 'Extraordinary' life situations can give insight though. I once have read a sentence which impressed me a lot: "Death is the end of all illusions and wise men die before their (physical) death "... It firstly meant nothing for me...in the meantime it has changed...
... energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed from one form to another. Everything is energy in one form or another, the illusion could well be the manipulation of the energy in the system. Don't know why people always assume a simulation.
I've seen some good posts in this topic. It's actually very interesting this topic and people's opinions regarding whether Reality is an Illusion. In my opinion, so I wont hurt anyones feelings, if reality is really an illusion, then we have no choice then but to play the game so called reality. This so called game is then up to us to play the game as well as we can, which means understanding it in the most reliable way we can, which brings us to the methods of science and philosophy for understanding what we commonly call objective reality.
there's that elusive illusion. When your dead, your body is a useless waste of space. Do we have souls? When you die, there is no way of knowing where your souls goes if it exists
I think when thinking about what real is, you had to see the world much deeper. Are we walking on earth? Are we breathing air? The sensations you get from feeling those "reality" can be felt by your senses. Illusion on the other hand, can only be created from your imagination. Your mind perceive something but it actually playing tricks on your senses. For a people with no imagination at all, they can feel the world the as real as he can. They does not think of why, they just feel. Imagination makes us think, adapt, create, simplify, makes things works how we wanted things to do. The illusion of flight in the early days are basically human growing wings to fly, but now the reality of flight comes from other object.
I'd say this is right. I try to illustrate what "Death is the end of all illusions and wise men die before their (physical) death "...means to me personally. Another term here (I use) for energy is consciousness. The total of all energies is always the same, in relation to individual energy it comes and goes (changing). Individual consciousness taken as a part from absolute consciousness, became (appearance) and will be released again. The body needs energy taken from food, from different sources. If you don't 'refill' or biological functions fail 'you' won't be able to 'keep' it. But that is made from the perspective of you=individual/body. It happens every now there is birth and death all the time so to say...from Reality to own reality and back away. From the perspective of all the 'substances / cells / matter' of which the body consists there has been rebirth and death already. (coming and going). Anyway 'you' are still here. As posted already all is a matter of perspective. There is a 'moment' this moment where you are choosing 'your' perspective. Changing it to you=your body /your reality makes death coming real. To most of us this is an enforced mechanism. Anyway 'extraordinary' life situations can be able to interrupt. The differences of things are based on own relations. Awakening to Reality is death of individual reality. One 'remains' there in peace and lets anything come and go. One knows anything is changing constantly but Reality is always Reality. Nobody can take something away from it, can change it, will affect it. The mind rests in peacefulness. At meditation one learns to change the state. But meditation is nothing worth when it doesn't become 'your' life. If my post should be too much....short. One doesn't have to 'wait' for physical death to awake to Reality, but most religions also say one has to. That is wrong. Reality is noting future, nothing past. It is ever this moment where one is taking a perspective. So there is always this moment as opportunity for Reality.
Reality is merely an illusion, although a very persistent one. - Albert Einstein There is a nice article here to any interested.
@R29k: Your article lends credence to the principles of the Kabbalah. Was that your intent? https://livingwisdom.kabbalah.com/illusion-versus-reality