The Nature of Reality

The nature of 'reality' is not only stranger than you imagine, it's stranger than you can imagine!

There is a saying that "truth is stranger than fiction" and this certainly applies to the nature of reality, because in the light of increasing evidence, what we have accepted to be the 'truth' about our everyday reality is much more like the 'fiction' of our everyday reality.

Some of the most searching questions that we may ask ourselves in the course of our lives are:

Who am I?

What is my purpose in life?

What is the meaning of life?

What happens when I die?

Our most basic understanding of 'reality' is that we are born, we live, and we die. But for many of us this is not enough; we instinctively 'feel' that there is more to life than just producing the next generation of humanity and trying to do our best in our allotted 'three score years and ten'.

Our intellect cries out for rational answers and to satisfy this aspect we look to classical science. Scientists generally work in terms of a mechanical universe of solid and separate bits and pieces fitting together to make up the equivalent of a giant machine. However, many people feel there is another side to their nature, which some call 'spiritual', and it is to satisfy this aspect of themselves that they look to the various world religions.

Science and religion have been at loggerheads for hundreds of years in their attempts to prove their worldview as the correct one. Despite each gaining the upper hand from time to time, they both divide reality into two, the 'physical' and the 'spiritual'. In truth, neither of them has provided a satisfactory explanation of the human experience, nor have they been able to unite to form a single, all-encompassing worldview.

The mechanical view of the universe held by classical science fails to include and explain non-mechanical phenomena such as telepathy, remote viewing or out of body experiences, to name just a few. These phenomena are far too well tested and documented to be dismissed, so they must be incorporated into whatever scientists propose as a plausible worldview.

Similarly, religions have failed to explain how, in a universe presided over by a loving and peaceful, almighty 'God', immense human suffering can be seen or experienced. This suffering can be on an individual basis through hideous diseases such as cancer or AIDS, or the staggering loss of life in such disasters as a tsunami, earthquake or volcanic eruption. We inevitably have to ask the fundamental question, is 'God' unable or unwilling to prevent this suffering? Whichever way this question is answered has to create serious doubts about the religious worldview and what 'God' is supposed to be.

It is therefore obvious that there is something drastically wrong with the prevailing scientific and religious worldviews; with the common understanding of the so-called 'physical' and 'spiritual' worlds and the general explanations provided by either science or religion.

This leads to the staggering conclusion that we have a flawed approach to understanding our world and its problems. Inevitably this impairs our ability to subsequently solve these problems, whether they are on a personal or world scale.

If our approach is flawed, then what is the correct approach?

In their search for answers to this question, increasing numbers of people have turned to 'alternative religions' and belief systems. Within the vast array of these belief systems there are some that provide genuine insights into the nature of reality, but there are many that are misleading.

A large number of 'new age' belief systems have borrowed from the eastern philosophies. They generally talk about the 'wholeness' of reality or that everything is 'one', but then continue to philosophise about the nature of reality in the 'dualistic' terms of 'spiritual' and 'physical'. This is, of course, necessary to some extent because of the limitations of language and intellectual conceptualisation, but it becomes a real detriment to understanding the true nature of reality if 'dualism' is part of the belief system.

So where are we to go to find satisfactory answers that will not burden us with yet another set of dogma?

To answer this we need to ask 'what is the true nature of reality'.

The quest to find answers for our modern times has been taken up by the 'new science' of quantum physics. Discoveries of the last 100 years have taken physicists investigating the quantum world to new understandings that are truly astounding.

What is most interesting is that quantum physics seems to have brought science closer to what the ancient wisdom philosophies have alluded to for thousands of years but do not explain in words and concepts that are of practical use in everyday life.

The 'physical' world that we have taken for granted to be solid and separate from us can be shown to be a trick of the senses, which in themselves are aspects of consciousness. The apparent 'materiality' of the world is no more and no less 'real' than a dream-image.

Physicist John Wheeler, a one-time colleague of Einstein, has stated "useful as it is under everyday circumstances to say that the world exists 'out there' independent of us, that view can no longer be upheld". More recently, physicist Professor Fred Alan Wolf has stated that "there is no 'out there' out there".

This could all sound like the old idea of 'mind over matter', but it is vastly more than that. The implications start to become a little clearer when we consider the words of physicist Professor Amit Goswami who states that "Energy, Consciousness and Matter are the same thing".

The consequences of that one seemingly simple statement are so far-reaching that it requires us to reassess everything we thought we knew about ourselves and our world.

It has led physicist Hal Puthoff to reassess Albert Einstein's famous equation, E=mc2. Puthoff states that we should think of Einstein's equation as a recipe for how much energy is required to give the appearance of matter, that is, the appearance of something 'solid'. This begs the question "is there actually such a thing as a 'solid' object"?

This may sound like a crazy proposition as you sit on your 'solid' chair reading this article, but just think about it for a minute. Think about what happens when we are in the state of consciousness we call 'dreaming'.

In dreams we can experience all the everyday activities of our waking state, such as walking, talking, meeting people, driving a car. We can see mountains, rivers, fields, houses. The dream floor we walk on seems to be 'solid'.

All the objects and people we encounter in our dream state appear separate from us, external to us, and 'solid'.

While we are deeply enmeshed in our dream, it is our total reality and we are aware of no other. It is only when we 'wake up' that we realise that all the objects and people that seemed 'solid', separate from us and external to us, were not. They were all creations of consciousness produced by us.

We need to remind ourselves of Professor Goswami's statement, that "consciousness, energy and matter are all the same thing".

The astounding conclusion to be drawn from this is that, as we create and control 'dream' objects, which are energy, we must in some way create and control everyday so-called solid objects, which are also energy.

Are you starting to feel the implications of this proposal?

If you are, then you will realise that there must be a process with which we create and control all of our everyday experiences.

Knowing the process will provide the radically new approach needed to solve our personal and world problems.

If you would like to know more about this ‘process’ and the true nature of reality have a look at http://www.thenatureofrealitycourse.com