We humans are good at making illusory magic

Almost everybody enjoys a good magic show. I sure do. But hardly anyone actually believes in magic. We understand that when a magician does something that appears to violate everyday laws of nature, that trick is based on illusory magic, not genuine magic.

An article in the April 12, 2025 issue of New Scientist, "Magicology," talks about how psychologists are looking to magic tricks to better understand how our brains make sense of the world around us. I found this example fascinating.

A classic deception known as the “vanishing ball illusion” – already well-known when Binet discussed it in 1894 – provides an ideal example. In this trick, a magician repeatedly tosses and catches a ball. At one point, they make the same movement, but, having concealed the ball in a pocket or with their hands, they don’t throw it. Quite remarkably, most spectators report seeing the ball fly up into the air before it vanishes into nothing.

The effect can be startling. “It produces a distinct feeling that’s more than just basic surprise,” says Geoff Cole, a psychology researcher at the University of Essex, UK. “It really does look like it’s disappeared.”

The illusion is thought to work because of “predictive processing”, a theory of consciousness that is gaining ground among cognitive neuroscientists, psychologists and others. This framework suggests that the brain is constantly making predictions about the world around us to inform complex simulations that help it make sense of the imperfect data gathered by our sensory organs. Our experience of reality is dictated by these mental models.

Most of the time, they match what is occurring in the real world – but they can sometimes make incorrect predictions, producing a sense of something that isn’t there. In this case, the expectation that the ball will rise out of the magician’s hand creates a split-second impression that it is rising in front of us. When the data from our eyes catches up with the brain’s simulations and corrects them, the perception of the ball vanishes while it is in mid-air.

“We don’t have a picture of the world as it is,” says Cyril Thomas, a cognitive psychologist at the Marie and Louis Pasteur University in Besançon, France. “We add a little bit of anticipation.”

Tricks like the vanishing ball illusion demonstrate just how easy it is to prime the brain’s simulations. Kuhn, for instance, found that around a third of people will experience the illusion with a single fake throw, for instance, without any of the usual ball-tossing beforehand.

This is an important point: "We don't have a picture of the world as it is." Sure, as the passage above says, usually our mental models make use of predictive processing in a fashion that gives us a mostly accurate view of the world.

But sometimes we are fooled. A good magician can do this so skillfully we're unaware of how we've been deceived. All we know is that something which ordinarily seems impossible appears as if it actually happened -- as when a ball thrown into the air suddenly disappears. 

A magic show advertises that unusual events will be observed by the audience. We pay the price of admission because we want to be fooled by the magician.

And often we do something similar with a religious, spiritual, or mystic leader. We willingly put ourselves under the spell of their "magic" because we long to have a miraculous experience that seems to violate the ordinary laws of nature.

When I spent two weeks in India back in 1977, I wanted to do this because I'd never seen in person the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) guru who initiated me in 1971. So I traveled to the RSSB headquarters in the Punjab, the Dera, to get myself some up close and personal time with Charan Singh.

A short way I've used to describe those two weeks is It was magical. That was true for me when I was still an active member of RSSB and it's still true for me now that I've left the organization and become a proud atheist. 

My memory of that time at the Dera isn't affected by how I currently view Charan Singh -- not as God in Human Form, which is what I thought in 1977, but as a warm, gentle, kind person. I realize now that the magical feeling I experienced during my visit to India was produced by the expectations I brought with me, not by the guru or the surroundings of the Dera.

I expected to have a magical experience. I did have a magical experience. The expectation was the primary reason.

Just about every encounter I had at the Dera was suffused with a difficult-to-describe "specialness." Not because it was outwardly special, but because I'd looked forward to my India trip so intensely, I imbued the experiences I had there with an overlay of what can only be described as magic.

So what I did was similar to the people watching a magician toss a ball into the air that disappears in a magical fashion. There isn't any actual magic going on with that trick, just as there wasn't any actual magic in the words and actions of Charan Singh. 

But since my mind was expecting to have a magical experience in the guru's presence, I did have such an experience. And the good news is, since magic comes from within, not without, each of us is capable of fashioning our own unique personal individualized magical moments. Just expect magic to happen and, who knows, maybe it will.

No need for magic to be attached to special experiences. Ordinary experiences will do just fine. After all, Zen reminds us that all we need to do is chop wood and carry water, or otherwise engage in our everyday actions. Magic is in the ordinary just as much as in the extraordinary. 

Comments

[Appreciative Reader]

The ball thing? Cool trick. And how it's explained, in terms of the brain doing its prediction thing, ties in perfectly with what we've seen of the mechanism of how the brain works, in past posts and discussions here (including the fascinating series of discussions here around Chandaria's work).

[UM]

@ BRian

The question is ...Did you have the same "quality experiences" later on and are you able to produce them now, now when you are a self declared atheist?

Given what you wrote about your experiences in Dera, I suppose you might like to have these quality experiences again and again.

Of course it was all in you ...no question, no problem...but why can you njot recreate it at will whenever it suits you?

[Ron E.]

Anyone interested in predictive processing may be interested in reading Lisa Fieldman Barrett’s account of her research in her books: - ‘How Emotions Are Made’ and the more compact: - ‘Seven and a Half lessons About the Brain’. The over-riding message I get from these books is that the brain did not evolve for thinking but to predict how to respond to sense data and equally important to internal (interceptor) sensations.

The brain's network of neurons and their clusters (hubs), continually carry information of how to deal with external and internal data. This information is being continually wired and updated into the brain – and interestingly it is not 'stored' as a static memory bank but is reconstructed on demand from concepts existing within its network. It seems incredible that there are no controlling ‘centres’ in the brain, only neural networks predicting the bodies responses, but current studies show this is so.

As light waves, chemicals, sound waves etc. enter the brain it has to interpret this ambiguous data coming in through the senses to make some sort of meaning out of them. But the brain has an additional source of information – memory. What we experience in the moment is subjected to prior information to give the best course of action for the body to act on.

I have long understood the mind as being a repository of information, of past experiences that arise or are drawn upon where conditions demand. But I can accept that 'information loaded neurons' arrive in awareness creating a predictive response to deal with a given situation.

This means that the term mind does not denote a ready source of knowledge and experience to be drawn upon, but the end product of the brains' prediction (or predictions) as they arise in awareness. The mind then has no existence whatsoever but is merely the name we give to an end-product of the brains' predictive networking. (And yes, that leaves the question of awareness still open.)

[sant64]

Last week I came across a video by an American guy who'd been a Hare Krishna for 50 years. I thought he seemed pretty down to earth for a Hare Krishna until he said that Prabhupada could levitate if he wanted to, The old the perfect guru has vast powers but chooses not to display them.

Not long ago, I heard the same kind of thing from a long-time RSSB satsangi. Again, a normal nice guy, but he told me Gurinder "can see both the past and the future" and can impeccably answer any question we put to him.

People seeing magic where it doesn't exist, or indeed, can't exist.

Also last week, I had a conversation with a long-time acquaintance. Very successful guy, who by the way isn't religious or woo at all. Prompted by another friend, he told the story about how, when he was 40, he developed a stomach ailment. Went to doctors repeatedly, they told him he was fine, or gave him antibiotics. But the ailment persisted, and one day while at home, he collapsed. Before losing consciousness, he called for his son to help him. Then he began noticing that his body suddenly had a "Casper the Ghost" quality, as he could see through his arms like they were luminous dust. Then he felt like he left his body completely, and was staring down at it from the ceiling. He also noticed a cord from his physical body to his luminous body. He began floating around the room, at one point over a heating unit on the wall. He noticed an empty paper chewing gum wrapper on top of this heating unit. He thought, "That's dangerous, it could catch fire." Then he looked at his desk and had the impression he still had work to finish before he actually died. At that point, this out-of-body experience ended, and he found himself in the hospital. Turned out he had advanced peritonitis, which can be fatal. The doctors told him he almost died.

He wondered about this apparent out-of-body experience. Had he dreamed it all? When he returned home, he examined the heating unit. An empty paper chewing gum wrapper was right where he'd seen it.

[Spence Tepper]

Every moment is filled with light and harmony. Every split second is exploding with the light of spirit and the music of the spheres . But we have been conditioned not to see things every split second, but instead to move only from one expectation to another.

If we can simply learn to see things as they are, in real time, and to hear it, every moment and every place is sacred, busting with spirit
There isn't a square millimeter of space without it.

"By means of all created things, without exception, the divine assails us, penetrates us, and molds us. We imagined it as distant and inaccessible, when in fact we live steeped in its burning layers."
Pierre Tielhard De Chardin

[Kranvir]

Gurinder singh dhillon and his RSsb cult circus is nothing but a illusionary show. There is definitely a strong spell that he creates that influences peoples perception at a dera and once your trapped by this illusionary shit show, you could be there for lifetime's. You have to step outside this illusionary box, and you will see you have a mafia crook , with a very dark energy, which is very deceptive, that operates behind the scenes. Gurinder is a liar, a hypocrite, a wife murderer, sex beast that sympathizes with pedophiles, and loves seeing the suffering of lost souls. Why else do you think he does Q and As , all his answers are shallow copies of what's in other litetature, with no depth or personal insight. But if as one comment said here, gurinder can see the future, he would see himself locked up with Ram Rahim where he can share fresh rottis with like minded criminals. This crook has gone into hiding ( early retirement ), exposed as a fraud, in shame and embarrassment. Its game over for you kaal - gurinder singh dhillon

[Anon]

My memory of that time at the Dera isn't affected by how I currently view Charan Singh -- not as God in Human Form, which is what I thought in 1977, but as a warm, gentle, kind person .................and a con artist and liar who suckered me into believing he was God.

[UM]

@ Anon

>> ....... a warm, gentle, kind person .................and a con artist and liar who suckered me into believing he was God.<<

In those days I HEARD about many concepts,[perfect]masters, god, love, shabd ...you name it. Then and now I knew how these words had to be written and used in conversations, but ...beyond that there was and is no experience.

What I did experience, there and then was what you write about a human. So I am really curious to understand how ..."HE" ....."managed to sucker you into believing that he was god"

Writing here and now I remember something that happened now and then in reaction to the audience ... grabbing his legs with both hands and with a little raised voice addressing the audience saying ..."LOOK ..THIS is not the master" ..and ..."YOU ...are not the disciple.

So again I am really curious to learn from you HOW HE managed to make you believe he was God.

Not in those days but now, being on my own, I have come to the conclusion that ..HE ..never said a thing, as he had nothing to say that could be said...he answered the questions of the audience as to how to live Sant Mat given their personal circumstances and he would speak about what previous teachers had to say about santmat, its practice and teachings .... the only thing ..."I"...can attribute to him personally is ...and invitation to practice ...PLEASE ...do your meditation.

[October]

Illusion is real. It can be experienced.

Some people see coincidences in some frequency. Then there are all sorts of signs in the world.
Synchronicity work with signs. Delusional disorder is natural way of experience it,though generally it doesn't lead to pleasant experiences.
Once one sees the working of illusion, magic remains no more magic. It becomes reality.
i will tell how delusional disorder works.

when one sees some signs, he may assign it some meaning.e.g.
green color means something
Nike shoes means something
Particular number means something
Sound of some particular word means something
etc

over a period of time person builds thousands of such signs and their associated meaning.

and when one comes across such signs in daily life,,meaning of this or that sign takes its place in mind.

so as one lives through this world of signs and synchronicity, one starts building his own story.A story with context. in medical term it may be referred as psychosis.

With in this psychosis ,one lives through thousands of signs and symbols.

and that's when Maya or illusion shows itself up.
And one completely absorbs in this psychosis , Maya start responding. slowly slowly Maya can be unraveled.

that's how one sees through illusion. and when one becomes adept at it, one may start influencing it. That's coming out of illusion(matrix) slowly and steadily.

in normal people psychosis leads to medical intervention as person doesn't know how to process such experiences.

But if one has got hold of his own mind, this psychotic experiences becomes subservient and one remains in touch with both this reality and reality formed by psychosis(illusion).

The quote, often attributed to Joseph Campbell, is: “The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight.”

just if psychotic learns to swim on his own, he becomes mystic with added advantage of outside world experiences while mystic will look for internal experiences and map it to outside world.

All the spiritual traditions can be mapped to such experiences. That's the way to experience 'self'.

[Karim W. Rahmaan]

Here's a quote from the man who taught Charan Singh Ji:

"Regarding the time limit to reach the first stage, [NO] time limit can be fixed for an individual, nor is there
an average. It is entirely a Path of Love. I have known cases where, at the very time of Initiation,
people have conversed with the Master within. And there are cases as well, where, even after thirty [30] years,
the attention is still wandering out.." -Sawan Singh Ji, Spiritual Gems, Ltr. #25

[manjit]

"it is entirely a path of Love""

[Donald]

When I was about 18 years old and too young to be initiated I wrote a letter to Charan Singh complaining of that technicality and thought it was just " red tape" , to please just initiate me right then and there from where he was in India ( I was in Texas). Well the best part was getting a letter back and him using my own words he said " there is a reason for this 'red tape' " . I carried that letter with me in my pocket until that thin blue stationary totally dilapidated. And years later when I finally did get initiated they tell you that there's no telling when you were initiated. Getting the words ( mantra )is just another technicality. So in fact he did initiate me right then and there.lol