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In a letter to a friend who had lost a young son, Albert Einstein described the experience of self as somehow separate from the rest of reality as an “optical delusion” of consciousness, a delusion he likened to a prison. He said that to break free of this prison would require “widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
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Above excerpt is from Pictures of the Mind: What the New Neuroscience Tells Us About Who We Are by Miriam Boleyn-Fitzgerald

It is very impressive to see how Einstein's views closely match the views expressed in our scriptures.

I have made specific words bold to highlight their relevance.

Reality ( as we see it) is 'optical delusion'. This is really classic. 100% match.

Our mind  which part of overarching consciousness (i.e. Brahman) manufactures the "reality" as it finds appropriate.

Than's the reason why Vedantists say life is only as real as a dream. We experience dreams as real as we experience life. It's just that dream lasts only for few minutes or hours where as the dream known as life goes over a few years to start off again.

It's no surprising to see this coming from some like Einstein who was all for coming up with a unified theory. He had unified so many disparate concepts into such a nice and tightly knit theory of relativity. Only if he had few more years, may be he would have included 'consciousness' also part of his unified theory.

As long as we do not see the unity among everything, we are under the spell of very strong optical illusion.

Knowing that and trying to get out of that is fun. Even if it takes multiple lives to get out of that, it is worthwhile.

As there is tremendous pleasure in solving puzzles and riddles, same with solving this complex equation which when solves shows us how this optical illusion results.

The book also a great read. It documents experiments run of some Tibetan masters in the hope of discovering the benefits of mindfulness.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 11:42 AM EDT

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