Conflicting Realities, A Giant Illusion?

What are the potential conflicts when one person's reality is another person's illusion?

Spirituality is important to everyone at least to some degree. There are those who go above and beyond the definition of devotion, while others focus their importance on the matter to harnessing others' perceptions to render a lack of importance. That is, they care about not caring. So many texts have biblical allusions and potentially the guidance of a higher power, but at what point, to whatever extent you believe, do they draw the line in intervention? Does divine intervention remain omnipresent in one's real life, despite their belief that a higher power is an illusion?

In my summer reading choice,The Magus, by John Fowles the protagonist Nicholas is stuck living his own perceived reality in what he believes to be Conchis' illusion of a reality. The reader is left also caught in this same vulnerable state of assumed reality, until the end where all is questioned and Fowels puts down the pen leaving questions so immense that it is a wonder to find the book tangible anymore. The eloquence and subtle nature of the conflict between these two character's very real illusions and the diliberate nature of Fowle's ambiguity makes it too entirely possible that the novel itself is entirely an illusion applied to the reader's notion of reality.

Also, in Oedipus, his fate is decided for him by the prophecy. Although it seems that Oedipus does what he can to avoid fulfilling this prediction, he ends up failing in his attempt and killing his father anyway. If spirituality was not so highly valued in these times, if the words of prophecies were not viewed as truths, as realities, would Oedipus' doom have fulfilled itself anyway?

Prepare to question everything.

Happy Reading! :)