that there is a nothing, and then to make an attempt to heal it, is to make it a something. If there isn't any isn't, why treat that isn't? To deny disease is to say that there isn't any disease to deny. To call it an illusion and then to give a treatment to get rid of the pain of the illusion is in itself an illusion. How do you know but that the treatment itself is an illusion?

To state that one lives in a world of illusions is mental assassination, for it plunges us at once into a dream-life and an unreal world wherein we lose all of our bearings. It is virtual insanity; and the crazy man playing at George Washington is as fortunate as we who only dream fantastically. To state that all is illusion is to state that there is nothing upon which to base reason at all. Then the reason by which you state the illusion is itself an illusion, and so is the statement. Thus confusion is doubly confused by a system of denials that affirms that there is a nothing which is so much of a something that we have to get rid of it.

And it is just as unreasonable to say that it is something if we like it, but nothing if we do not like it; that wealth is something; and poverty is nothing. And yet we are poor. Poverty is as much an experience as wealth. Everything is an experience; and therefore we have to find the solution of our problem, not in denying the experience but by changing it. Instead of allowing the unpleasant experience to occur, we must substitute a pleasant one. In the same way, dyspepsia is as much an experience as a well-digested potato. It is produced by the some process, --- thought acting upon the intelligence of the stomach.