On the History and Concept of the Theory That the World Is an Illusion

That the world’s objects change and decay ordinarily, and that the sky and seasons appear to change obviously provided an observation opportunity for early philosophers to regard and hypothesize as being temporal and illusory perhaps even derived from a perfect world of designs or forms. Plato described an ideal world of changeless forms, while Sakyamuni considered the temporal world Maya- illusion.

The idea of illusion and dualism is anthropolgically primordial. One finds its elements in the religious evolutions from Europe-India through the Vedic and in Zoroastrianism. Hegelianist evolution of the spirit as a world consciousness is another form. Neitzche and Shopenhauer were influenced by Zoroastrian ideas-the latter believed the world is an illusory, bad world with an implicit nature of evil (The World as Will and Representation). Karl Marx was inflluenced by a dualist criteria as a student of Hegel and his dialectical evolution is a kind of godless evolution toward utopian social reality through the maya of social dichord.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_(illusion)

The Mayan calendar expiring in 2012 is held by some to be a reason to tour in the Yucatan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Vedic_religion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-Iranian_religion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_religion

http://dunedinschool.wordpress.com/category/religion/purification/ death of Mithridates by Zarathustran king

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrianism Ahura Mazada (good) vs.forces of chaos (druj) (bad)

With the pain and suffering of this world, with extended unemployment and the impermanence of lot ownership, one may regard the experience of life itself as illusory. With relativity and the evolution of time the manifestation of actualized forms may take unusual, unpredictable twits and turns. Even the calculation of probabilities is saturated with uncertainty including that mysterious beyond the parameters and premises potential for unknown force overthrowing the formalization of theory.

It reaches its terminal moment when as Sartre said death emerges as 'the complete triumph of the other'. What the otherness of being is that permits a universe badly defined and human beings to be and become is unknown.

It is yet challenging to posit that A is B or life is illusion. One might contemplate the odds of any existing event or process being and illusion I would guess...

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/probability-interpret/#KolProCal

One should want to define the meaning of illusion and 'world' before applying the formula 'world=illusion' and decide if it is just the Earth or all of the solar system that are illusory. At some point in the Universal set there must be some real or existing entity for which the world is an illusion. If everything were an illusion without a real observer one might have an interesting cosmology yet an improbable one.

One may opt with Kierkeguaard to rely upon the transcending power and person of Jesus Christ to establish an eternal relationship with ‘The One’ God.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_of_faith

The solid-state mass of this universe is at the smallest conjectured level believed to be energy. E=mc2 at least indicates the convertibility of energy into matter. Matter can be regarded as a steady state of energy. Energy is 'locked' into a steady state as mass. If one reads about the nuclear mechanic of the sun as a hydrogen star, and learn about the production of helium etc, and also about the primordial creation of baryons early in the history of the present math of cosmological theory one is reading of energy and mass as a steady state.

Simultaneously mass and energy are believed to be sustained immediately by a quantum field.

Quantum superposition and entanglement of particles, the wave-particle duality of mass-energy (vis the double slit photon experiment) is a remarkable field to read about. Quantum particles for themselves may exist in a field of uncertain nature in other dimensions that extrudes into the four dimensional universe and is snared by virtue of relations to other particles probabilities of cancelled out of being elsewhere into a steady state.

The mechanics of the underlying fields are unknown. How the steady state field relates to the underlying sustaining field is uncertain. Does time exist in that quantum field where every particle can be anyplace in it universe and doe not appear in this one until observed or entangled? Does relativity apply in the quantum field as it does in this universe with four dimensions?

The question of the universe being an illusion or not is really the wrong question. It’s real enough for what it is, and there are real sentient beings living in it. An illusion is a contingent term given a particular value like all other words I would think. Is the Universe like some other illusion, or is it like an emergent and apparent relative phenomena like the apparent wind speed aboard a sailboat of zero when it sailing along in a ten mile an hour wind from the stern with 100% efficiency?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfPeprQ7oGc