15 Park Avenue

Few days ago I was watching Aparna Sen’s latest movie, 15 Park Avenue. The movie is about a delusional girl who gets these hallucinations that she is married and has five kids. In the movie, the doctor who was attending to her said something really though provoking to this girl’s sister when she asked the doctor how real her delusions are. The doctor said that her delusions are as real to her as this world seems real to us. The doctor asked her this question that what if, what she sees as a candle is seen as a flower vase by everyone around the room, would she still say that it is a candle.

What if I think my eyes are black, but everybody around me thinks they are blue? Would I say that everybody else is having delusions about the color of my eyes or would I say that since everybody else is seeing them as blue, I must be deluded? If you conclude that it is you who is having delusions, it would merely be an intellectual understanding, but, would you actually start believing that your eyes are blue? No, you see them as black and that is the reality for you.

Swami Nithyananda Paramhansa says the world that we see is nothing but our own creation projected by our own mind. If that is so, then aren’t all of us deluding? Then can the delusions of the girl in the movie be called as surreal? Her family appears as real to her as the world we perceive does to us.

So, the question really is if all of us are deluding then who has the authority to decide whose world is real?