“Death is the illusion we present when we can no longer live,” the white bearded lector concluded. “A dream we share of dreamlessness. A dream of never waking.”
A scattered illusion of clapping followed, and the lector’s worn eyes gazed out at us with the stern severity of sorrow. It was the illusion of tears without tears. I wondered if he would see me in the crowd, recognize me as I recognized him. No, it was too dark; or, the illusion of the room was too dark for the illusion of his weeping but tearless grey eyes.
Illusion. That had always been his favorite word. He knew all the world’s a stage and the mind the director; how he longed to close his eyes. He was tired of the show.
He was moving his papers off of the podium and back into the darkness of his satchel. I called to him.
“Brother Micah.”
He stopped. Shielding his eyes with his hand, he squinted into the darkness of the auditorium.
“We close our eyes,” I recited, “for we are tired. Yet then we dream. Who can say if we ever close our eyes or if we are not always opening them? Brother Micah, are you not tired of dreams?”
“Who’s there?” he asked.
“An illusion,” I answered. “If a man stares too long in the darkness, he begins seeing shapes swirling in it, and if he sits too long in silence, he may hear strange voices indeed.”
“…Or music,” he gasped in a whisper.
“Be careful, Brother Micah. All you see may be an illusion, but the darkness, at least, is real.”
“Yet,” he answered, “if I probe long enough, will not even darkness show itself to be illusory as all things have before?”
“It will be an illusion,” I replied, “that it is one, or a delusion, I might say. You cannot explain away death, Brother Micah. Death doesn’t like it.”
“How would you know?” he stuttered. “All that I’ve shone light on disappears into the mind. All there is is perception, illusion. The eye sees nothing but what it imagines.”
Suddenly, the power in the auditorium went out, and all illusion was lost in darkness. A woman screamed, and a general din of moving feet began to grow as people searched for the exits they would not find.
I began to sing as the bustling chaos grew all around:
There’s an ocean of dreams full of monsters unseen,
there’s a darkness in all of our hearts,
where the waves and the wind toss the saints into sin,
where the moon may illumine the fool.
At these words, I pulled out my flashlight and shone its light upon my face.
“Brother Micah!” I shouted. “The last illusion is illusion. It is the final defense of the mind against reality. If you continue to look through things, you will look through all things, and all you will find then is darkness.”
Tale Told 