On Thoughts and Aphorisms

Aphorism - 18

18—Chance is not in this universe; the idea of illusion is itself an illusion. There was never illusion yet in the human mind that was not the concealing and disfigurement of a truth.

What does this mean: "the idea of illusion is itself an illusion"?

We live in an illusion; no thoughtful person can deny this. But according to some people, behind the illusion that we see and live there exists nothing; there is nothingness, emptiness. Whereas others tell us that what we see and feel, the life we live, is a deceptive and illusory appearance behind which, beyond which, within which, there is a Reality, an eternal Truth which we do not see in our present state, but which we can experience, if we take the trouble and follow the appropriate methods.

Page 44

In this Aphorism, by "the idea of illusion", Sri Aurobindo means the philosophical theory which states that the material world has no real existence: it is merely an appearance created by an aberration of the ego and the senses, and when this aberration disappears the world will disappear at the same time.

Sri Aurobindo affirms, on the contrary, that behind all appearances, even the most illusory, there is a truth, a conscious will that presides over the unfolding of the universe. In this unfolding, each thing, each event, each circumstance is both the result of what has gone before and the cause of what is to follow. Chance and incoherence are only a deceptive appearance as seen by the human consciousness which is too partial and limited to see the truth of things. But this tangible and real truth exists behind all appearances and their illusory incoherence.

What Sri Aurobindo tells us is: The world is real, it is only our perception of it that is false.

10 February 1960