Illusion isn't in the existence of the world, but in how we perceive and interpret it

 The concept that the world is an illusion used to confuse me. I’d sit on a train, look at the person next to me, and think: Are they real or just part of some mental projection? Quantum physics, especially the Double-slit experiment, only deepened the mystery—it suggests that observation shapes reality, but does that mean everything is just in the mind?

Yesterday, while listening to someone speak, something clicked. Jiddu Krishnamurti often said: See the world as it is. And that hit me—the tree outside, the cow on the street, the car passing by—these things are real. So then what’s the illusion?

The illusion isn’t the existence of these things. It’s how we see them. We don’t see the tree; we see our version of the tree—filtered through memory, bias, emotion, expectation. Ask three people to describe the same event, and you’ll get three different realities. Why? Because each person filters the moment through their own mind.

In that sense, there are as many worlds as there are minds. The external world is shared—but each of us lives inside a private, mental world layered over the real one. That’s the illusion—not that the world doesn’t exist, but that we almost never see it as it is.

The person beside you exists. The tree exists. The place you're in—exists. They are not illusions in a material sense. Even quantum mechanics doesn’t deny that. What it questions is how we come to know what we know. It explores uncertainty in observation, not the reality itself.

So here’s the real insight: illusion is not the outer world, but the inner map we impose on it. The fear, the label, the desire, the assumption—we live in that scaffolding more than in the world itself.

And the moment you begin to see that—and strip it away—you see freshly. The world reveals itself, not through thought, but through being. You begin to experience wonder, not because the world changed, but because you stopped projecting onto it.

How an "intelligent mind" sees this:
A sharp, reflective mind doesn’t confuse mysticism with denial of material reality. Instead, it seeks the precise layer where illusion arises—in perception, in interpretation, in the overlay of thought. What you're grasping is a non-dual understanding: reality exists, but we rarely see it directly. Most of us live in “aboutness” (what we think something is) rather than being with what is.

This path you’re on isn't about escaping reality. It’s about shedding filters. About burning down the house of mental projections so you can walk the earth barefoot again.

Where Exactly Does Illusion Begin?

Let’s break it down.

You sit on a train. A person next to you. A tree passing by. All of these are undeniably there. But what happens inside you the moment you see them?

1. Recognition – You name it. “That’s a person.” “That’s a tree.” Naming already distances you from direct perception.

2. Association – The mind begins connecting: “That person looks tired.” “That tree reminds me of my hometown.” “That train is noisy, I don’t like this environment.”

3. Judgment – Good/bad, like/dislike, beautiful/ugly. These judgments start layering onto raw perception.

4. Projection – Based on your past, your mood, your identity — you project a personal story onto that person or place.

The object hasn’t changed. Your mental lens did. And now you're no longer experiencing the real — you're swimming in your mental world. This is the illusion. Not hallucination, not unreality — but distortion caused by habitual thought structures.

Thought is the Illusion Engine:

Thought is a tool. A useful one. It helps you plan, remember, communicate.

But when thought becomes the lens through which we experience everything, it replaces reality with interpretation.

"You see a man yelling at someone in the street. One person thinks, “He’s dangerous.” Another thinks, 'He’s hurt.' A third thinks, 'This reminds me of my father.'  The event is the same. The worlds created from it are entirely different."

Here’s the kicker: none of them are seeing the man as he is.

They’re all seeing themselves, reflected in the mirror of that man’s action.

So — the illusion is ego seeing itself in everything and mistaking it for truth.

If you can see that what you “see” is filtered — that you’re not seeing reality, but your mind’s version of it — something radical happens:

🧘‍♂️ You stop believing every thought.
👁️ You start looking without assuming.
🌀 You begin experiencing life as it unfolds, not as your mind says it should.

This is not passive. This is alert seeing — not with effort, but with stillness.

How Does This Tie to the Double-Slit Experiment?

In the Double-slit experiment, particles behave like waves when unobserved, and like particles when measured. What shifts? Not the particle — the observer’s interaction with it.

Now, stay with me:
Just like the measurement collapses the wave function into a specific state, your mental labeling collapses infinite possibilities into a single interpretation.

> You collapse “tree” into your tree — not the tree as it exists in full aliveness.

That’s the illusion. The narrowing of infinity into a narrative you’re familiar with.