Spiritual Forum

Everything is reality. The fact, that observing something makes it reality. The mere thought of it makes it reality.

I think a better question would be, is there anything that isn't reality? I think not. It doesn't transpose from non-reality to reality. We don't consider it reality until we perceive it. But in fact it is reality before that point.

The futures of all things are connected, and that all things are a part of reality, whether we perceive it or not.

But surely there is a line between reality around us and the fictional reality we imagine. Even though, for example, our dreams draw from our past experiences with reality they still don't constitute as something real, tangible. So there are entire worlds, which have nothing to do with reality but have everything to do with the human psyche.

 Take the big question: is God real?….. ‘Real’….. I find more meaningful than the ‘existence’ question. We cannot prove the existence of ‘dark matter’ or of the electron or alpha particles or even such matters as market forces, compassion or philosophy. But we see their effects, and assuming they are real makes sense of great swathes of our experience.

God is at least as ‘real’ as an idea like ‘compassion’.

The problem ‘what is reality?’ arises from a consciousness of ourselves as living in a world which seems to be outside of, and yet is the cause of, our conscious life. Our reflections on this lead us to wonder if we can know of the world beyond our perceptions – the underlying cause of our consciousness of appearances. This world of the underlying cause we call ‘reality’.

Is reality mental – mind; or is it physical– matter and energy? If mind, is there a deeper consciousness underlying appearances that unites us all and is the source of our conscious thoughts? If matter, can we understand how the play of material objects and forces can give rise to conscious life?

If reality is mental, we might best connect with it by skilful introspection, by a pure, deep, and penetrating way of thought that would see past appearances and show reality directly to the mind. Alternatively we might passively receive, by a process of revelation, a mental image of reality. In revelation, the cosmic mind could speak directly to us, in apparitions or visions.

If ultimate reality is instead composed of matter and energy, the method recommended is more empirical; that is, more reliant on the senses. This method, which we call ‘science’, involves the formulation of statements of proposed facts (observable truths) about the physical, along with statements about relationships between the facts, in the form of physical laws. In science, these statements of laws and proposed facts are subject to criticism and testing by observation and experiment. The statements that at any time best convince, after testing and criticism, are given the status of ‘actual fact’, or if you wish, reality.

Revelation resists and endures, because science gives scant comfort to the desire for unification with cosmic reality. But science is relentless, and facts, ultimately, are irresistible.

In discussing the nature of reality, we must distinguish between physical reality and immaterial (non-physical) reality. Physical reality is that which is constrained by physics or physical laws.

Immaterial reality then pertains to what is not constrained by physical laws, eg concepts such as ‘character’ and the ‘mind’, Forms, the realm of God and spirits. If physical reality is all that is ‘real’, then what is the relationship of immaterial concepts, such as ‘character’, the ‘Good’, and ‘morals’, to this physical reality?

Are concepts such as these just the content of our brains and products of our reasoning and emotions? If so, then it is probable these concepts are just subjective and thus non-absolute, since the contents of our beliefs is contingent and always changing. Conversely, if there is a separate and distinct (non-subjective) immaterial reality, and the aforementioned concepts of character, the Good, and morals etc exist as aspects of this reality, then the existence of objective, absolute concepts is possible (maybe even necessary), since the nature of reality is not contingent, dependent on subjective opinion.

On the other hand, some questions now arise: if immaterial reality does exist as separate and distinct from physical reality, how would these two realities interact? Is there a distinct location for an immaterial concept (or a form, or spirit) in somewhere such as heaven, perfect realm, or perhaps a more local area in the universe? And is there a distinct nature for logic and mathematics, or for the connections that exists between these realities.

Definition 1. A reality consists of the interactions of a particular thing with what ‘becomes’ for that thing.

Definition 2. Reality (with a capital R) consists of all realities.

Definition 3. The nature of a reality, or of Reality, is a description or explanation of that reality, or of Reality.

A reality for a particular inanimate object…eg.the stone or the perceived animate person consists of that stone’s or person’s interactions with changing environments – ie with what becomes for them. The nature of reality for the stone is not available to any person, since stones do not speak or understand a language any person can understand.

However, the nature of a stone’s reality can be imagined or inferred by people. Geologists do this, so do poets like Shakespeare (“sermons in stones”), and so could you if you try.

People would infer that a person’s reality is different in kind from a stone’s reality since, for example, people infer as a result of their interactions with what becomes that they can have more elaborate interactions with environments than stones can.

One way people interact with what becomes is by way of their senses. Another way is by reasoning and feeling, or perhaps by way of intuitions or revelations. Stones don’t have these capabilities….or do they?

A hypothesis, which can entertain people, is that together all the realities – for stones, for people, for whatever – form a single Reality. One can then ask whether or not all these realities, the parts of Reality, have something in common. One answer is that they have in common interacting with what becomes. One can ask further, what is the nature of what becomes? An answer is that what becomes is realities, ie, what becomes consists of interactions with what becomes.

That is, the parts of Reality, the realities, interact with each other. Thus Reality is the interaction of realities with each other.

A more difficult task would be to explain how one particular reality interacts with another reality, and with all the realities it interacts with. One can then contemplate how all the realities can or might or do or did or will interact with each other. This is how one can contemplate the nature of Reality.

One thing that everyone agrees on – idealists, materialists, and dualists – is that there is sense to our question. Another thing all these views share is that we all share the same reality. The nature of my reality and your reality is the same – it is all constructed out of mind-dependent ideas.

We should be wary of the idea that the nature of reality is relative to what someone believes. Suppose I believe that the Earth is flat and you believe it is round. Therefore, the line goes, we have two different realities. This cannot be right, for we are talking about (referring to) the same thing. We just differ in our beliefs about it.

But whatever the nature of reality is, it cannot be hostage to anyone’s view of it. It must be independent of any individual’s mind. We can only hope to understand questions about its nature once we admit this.

Of course, this rules out solipsism, the view that reality – all of it – is a function of ‘a private’ experiences. This view is deeply mistaken, for the beliefs and other mental states the solipsist takes to be the sole furniture of his/her world depend on there being a shared environment.

And as many scholars have all stressed, the development of language and of thought cannot occur in isolation. So, there must be someone else on the scene for the solipsist to have the beliefs he/she does, even if it is only Descartes’ evil demon…..

With two, at least, in reality, we see that the nature of reality cannot just be how the world seems to any (one) individual. While this is not a full answer to our question, it is a fact we cannot ignore. At the very least, we can now say something of what the nature of reality is not.

Reality is the independent nature and existence of everything knowable, whether it is knowable by logical inference, empirical observation, or some other form of experience. Reality’s existence and nature are independent because reality does not depend on our mind’s apprehension of it to continue to exist or to maintain its character.

Consider the idea of the ‘thing in itself’: that aspect of existence always outside of our perceptions of it. In this view, we can never truly know reality in itself, because we are limited to our mind’s imposition of fixed ‘categories’ of knowledge upon our perceptions of it (this giving us what is called ‘phenomenal’ knowledge).

So it would seem we are forever cut off from reality, as it is in itself, that is, distinct from our minds’ apprehension of it.

Furthermore, it does need to be pointed out that our perceptions of the world around us cannot be knowledge, since perceptions can logically contradict each other. For example, I may say, “This chair is brown,” while another may say, “No, this chair is not brown, it’s beige.” Since these perceptions contradict, perception cannot produce genuine knowledge, since truthful knowledge cannot contradict itself.

Therefore, genuine knowledge of reality would have to be direct knowledge of the object itself. And so reality itself, comprising the independent nature and existence of everything knowable, exists independently of our minds’ apprehension of it. At best, perceptions are not that which we know; rather, perceptions are that by which we know.

While much of reality is shared conceptualisations, a great deal of it is personal to the individual, for reality is how we describe the world: it is how the world seems to us to be. Therefore the foundation of our reality is our language use.

We must resist the tendency to think of reality as a fixed state of affairs that language merely identifies or labels. Reality is the product of language. The impressions that flood our mind provide food for thinking, and the language we use provides us with the means to ‘cook up’ a reality; clearly: “Our idea of what belongs to the realm of reality is given for us in the language that we use. The concepts we have settle for us the form of the experience we have of the world.”

What we know of the world we can only know through language, and as our language is subject to change, so too is our reality. The world will not change in the sense that physical objects may come into existence as a result of language use, but our comprehension of our impressions of the world (our experiences) often change as a result of language.

When Harvey discovered that blood circulates he did not discover red and white corpuscles or plasma. But though corpuscles and plasma existed as part of the perceived world they were not realized. They held no place as conceptual elements of reality. Realization is an act of discovery governed by language use.

In this sense, cultural differences in language use often create cultural differences in realities. New Guinea tribesmen who have only two basic colour words (light and dark) have a different apprehension of reality to us. They live in the same world we do and they are capable of receiving the same impressions, but their reality is different from Europeans as their language use obliges them to divide the world into different categories.

How does reality appear to us? What are the circumstances that could cause one’s reality to be different from another’s?

Our perception of reality is a generation of sensations caused by our minds, and the sense that they make of the inputs to the brain, be they aural, visual, tactile, taste or smell. These sensations, particularly the visual, will give us a sense of our surroundings and their dimensions. It is very easy to distort this perception, and this can be done through mind-altering drugs or through the loss of one of the senses.

People who have never seen can have their own sense of reality, which may be vastly different to that of a sighted person. They may have an internal non-visual ‘visualisation’ of bodily form for example, which if drawn or created could be completely different from what is normally visually perceived.  Alternate realities, can now be induced by wearing computerised headsets, which can place a person inside a virtual reality. As graphics become more sophisticated, will this visualisation always be distinguishable from ‘actual’ reality?

How different would an insect or animal’s perception of reality be to ours? A fly for example will have a distorted (to us) representation of its visual stimuli, caused by the need for the fly to be aware of different aspects of its surroundings.

In a dream state, situations often occur which seem absurd when awake. Therefore, we seem to have a dual existence; one conscious and the other subconscious. The subconscious state can seem as real as the waking state to a person who is dreaming or having a nightmare. How often is it that you wake, and then go over your dream to realise that some of the things you were doing are impossible…… Or are they?

The Way Things Actually Are…and in ‘reality’ (there’s that word again) we have no real way of knowing, ‘what is?’

These are questions for the philosopher and physicist to ponder, and perhaps answer, together. Though I think however it will be forever pondered by human beings and ultimately probably never answered.