SQUARE TOWER SEEN ROUND

Those who like optical illusions report that a common one is that square towers, such as a lighthouse, may appear from a distance to be round. The common judgment about this illusion is that the squareness is real while the distance involved causes the apparent roundness to be unreal.

Those who make this judgment are right in one way but quite wrong in another. When seen from a distance, the mind replaces the real "squareness" of the tower with a mental representation of "roundness" which is also real. The mental representation of "roundness" is just as real as any sensory representation would be. There exists no reason whatsoever to judge the sensory representation of "roundness" to be real, while judging the mental representation to be unreal. The mind can use the idea of "roundness" just as well as it can use the sensory representation of "roundness." For instance, if one is planning to build something round, then one must use the idea of "roundness" in order to make an effective plan. The usefulness of both sensory "roundness" and the idea of "roundness" proves that both are equally real. Only the bias of the empirical behaviorist's explanation of reality causes them to judge sensory perception to be real while judging mental representations to be unreal.

Therefore, one who sees a square tower as being round from a distance sees nothing that is not real. "Roundness" and "tower" and "distance" are all real. Yet, one senses that there is something unreal about this view because, after all, the tower is really square. There is something unreal about this optical illusion, but this unreality does not adhere to that which the mind sees, but to that which it does not see.

The mind sees "nothing that is not real." The unreality of the optical illusion does not adhere to "roundness" or "tower" or "distance," but to the false combination of these real elements. What does the mind see in this falsity? Why, it sees nothing, nothing at all. The falsity of the false combination equals nothingness.

This is what we mean when we say that anything is "not real." We mean that its unreality equals nothingness.

Yet, when we think about it, we realize that this idea of nothing must itself be real because we can use it to identify falsity that is not real. But if the "idea of nothing" and "falsity" are equivalent and useful, and therefore, real, then where is the unreality? The simple answer is that it can be found nowhere. "Nothingness" is real and "reality" is real, but unreality non-exists nowhere and at no time. Unreality non-exists as an absolute nothingness. We can only get a sense of it by using the idea of nothing.

All of this must mean that all that appears to our minds, whether mental or material, must be real exactly as it appears to us. First, because all of it is useful; and second, because even if all that we observe were a distortion of something not observed, this unseen something can only be unreal and useless to us while all that we observe can be our only reality because that is all we have to work with.

From all this, we can only conclude that all false appearances; whether they be mistakes, misjudgments, misidentifications, illusions. hallucinations or dreams, can be quite literally nothing but real elements in false combinations, and that this nothingness can only be a real idea that hides an unreality that we never observe.