How do we define reality?
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." --Philip K. Dick
"Things that are real, are things that will never change." --Parmenides
"Change is Reality, Reality is Change." --Heraclitus
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistant one." --Albert Einstein
Over the years many people have tried to define reality in their own way, what seems ideally suited to their own set of beliefs, THAT is where the paradox lies - Reality is what you THINK it is. You might begin to wonder, if reality is what is percieved then reality becomes relative.YES, reality is relative. Just look backwards, what you think is real is what you have been told is real.
Lets take a simple example, You look at a shiny gold box. All your senses tell you something about the box, your eyes tell you that the box is shiny and gold, your fingers tell you that it is smooth and solid, etc etc. Hence according to you this description becomes a reality - That the box is shiny, smooth, solid and golden. Lets take another person, similar in intelligence, height, weight, academic background, hometown etc etc. but the only problem is that he is colour blind(completely, he can only see black, white and shades of grey). Now when this person looks at the same box his senses tell him nearly the same story, the box is solid,smooth and shiny but he doesn't see the box to be gold in colour, what he can see is a shiny grey box. This becomes his reality. But, as an interesting turn of events, the box inherently does not possess any of these qualities. Ultimately - up close it is a storm of sub-atomic particles, and we only perceive it to be shiny and golden(or grey) because of some other quality in the material that makes the IDEA of shiny and golden apparent to us. This brings us back to the original statement, what both of them percieved as reality is, in fact, not the ultimate reality but it is what their senses told them is real.
Right from the time we're born, our senses are constantly bombarded with information. All this information is open to interpretation. Whatever our brain interprets is registered as a system of beliefs, and this system of beliefs becomes our reality.Who makes these so called "belief systems"? We live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups — and the electronic hardware exists by which to deliver these pseudo-Realities right into the heads of the reader, the viewer, the listener. Our constant thirst for information has proved favourable to the manufacturers of these realities, who use these channels of information to dissipate information and in turn cause us to create realities for ourselves. All of us agree to the fact that every person is unique and same piece of information is liable to be interpreted differently(like in the example of the golden box). but the "accepted" reality is the most common interpretation, i.e. what a maximum number of people percieve to be real. These "commonly accepted" realities become religions, laws, rules , ethics, morals and truths within a society. (In a city FULL of homicidal maniacs, would murder be a crime? think about it.)
But the fact of the matter remains that reality is still relative, and what may be true/believable to a certain number of people may not the same to certain others. This conflict in perception of reality causes segregation. When we are born into a group with a certain belief system we are conditioned so as to build the same belief system as the rest of the pack, and however intelligent we may be, we aren't able to break the shackles of our own belief system. eg: Suppose we come across a theory that shakes the very foundation of our belief system(Galileo and the Pope), what do we do? do we accept the new theory with open arms and modify our belief system instantaneously? No we don't. We fight it, although every ounce of logic suggests that the new theory is correct, we refuse to believe it. Why? because our belief system is not conditioned to accept it that quickly. This totally breaks open the concept of free will doesn't it? We want to believe it but we cant? how did that happen? Free will in my words is just rationalization of an act that has already been done. in simpler words your "Free Will" is dictated by your belief system, a system created by the group in which you were born, which means that the choices you make using "Free Will" has already been made for you by the creators of this belief system. How does that make you feel? Angry? Sad? Surprised? Unfortunately even these reactions are a result of an inconsistency between my opinions and your belief system. Although my statements seem very logical and seem to reach a sufficient conclusion, you will never really completely believe what i have said. "Free Will", for all practical purposes, is non-existent.
We have now established that reality is an illusion you have created for yourself, to protect your collective beliefs, thoughts and ideals. We arrive a startling question, In a world where reality itself is not real, what is? I'd like to propose a theory here, There is a Reality that transcends all the parallel realities that we have created. Lets say you are asleep and dreaming. Suppose that in this dream you are having a conversation with your friend. Although its your friend who is in the dream, it is your brain that is doing the thinking for him . Which means that you are thinking for yourself and your friend in the dream i.e. your consciousness is divided into two in that dream, one for yourself and one for your friend. If there are three people in the dream, your consciousness is divided into three, and so on. Lets say you are having a very vivid and detailed dream about a busy market scene, your consciousness is divided between every entity present in that scene, animate or inanimate. Your brain is the source of every complex movement, emotion, action and reaction that is occurring in that scene. i.e. your brain creates REALITIES for every entity in your dream. These realities you created for them serve as barriers that hide them from the fact that YOU are the ultimate reality, YOU are the creator, YOU are the destroyer and their realities do not surpass yours.
"Last night I dreamt that I was a beautiful butterfly fluttering through the fields. Now I awaken. My question is this; how do I know if I am Chuang Tzu, who dreamt himself a butterfly, or if I am a butterfly, now dreaming itself Chuang Tzu?" --Chuang Tzu, Chinese Taoist Philosopher
Thinking along these same lines, we realize that, our universe is just a part of a SUPREME consciousness. The Consciousness that has created us and our universe. Each and every one of our actions and inactions is governed by this supreme consciousness. THIS is our Ultimate Reality, The Reality of the Divine, the Infinite, the Almighty, God or any other word that has been to use to describe this Reality. What is being fed to you on a daily basis as "reality" is just a barrier between you and the Ultimate. Free your mind, free yourself from the cage of your own thoughts. Our existence is nothing but an endless pursuit to realize and recognize its existence and to gain immortality by merging with the Ultimate.
