The Old Woman, the Young Woman, and the Great Cosmic Joke

What you think you see is only what you’ve been taught to believe exists.

This illusion is one of the first we’re shown as students… the old woman and the young woman. Most treat it as a fun exercise in perspective. Who sees what? Who’s right? A game of division - the mind’s favourite pastime.

But, you can look deeper:

What does this reveal about the truth of perception itself?

The Reveal

Everything you perceive is an illusion of unimaginable scale. And a clue of unparalleled significance.

Not only the world “out there,” but also the world “within”: thoughts, emotions, sensations.

All of it appears and disappears in awareness. A dream world that feels completely real. That’s the great cosmic joke.

Waking. Dreaming. Deep Sleep. And the sense, “I am”. Universal for all of us. Before all words and concepts.

What’s constant beneath them all?

Unconditioned. Unchanging. Infinite.

The Clue

To perceive anything, there must be something prior to perception — the background that allows every experience to register.

Like the paper beneath your words. The silence between notes. The space in which a tree grows.

That background is not an entity, not a thing. Nothing.

Let’s slow it down a little. I don’t want to rush this.

When I say “nothing”, I don’t mean the substance of the word “nothing”… that’s hollow, like all words.

Words are pointers to the real. The water you point to on a map or photo is not the actual water. It’s a representation.

So when I say “nothing”, I mean the reality of That the word “nothing” points to. Which clearly isn’t an empty void or vacuum.

That which is the source of everything we perceive, including our illusory sense of personal self. All one field, a singular happening.

Ask yourself:

What is it that knows you slept deeply last night? Who is it that responded to an alarm or the morning light when you woke up today?

The Illusion

Perceiving gives rise to the illusion of a perceiver. It births a conceptual mask called “I”, stitched together by memory, language, and repetition.

Parents, teachers, systems: all reinforcing the story of a separate self. And once the story takes hold, the storyteller forgets it’s a story.

Who are you, without words to define you?

The Door

Nothing is more obvious, yet more hidden.

The very instrument you’re using to understand reality is the blocker to your understanding. Using the mind to “know” what’s beyond the mind is a futility.

It’s like using a telescope to see your eye… when all you need is a mirror.