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The Nature of Reality

deborah

deborah

Director Emerita
Staff member
Super Moderator
Hi,

Wolfgang Pauli a famous physicist entered into the debate between Einstein and Bohr regarding the nature of reality. Einstein believed that there was a "real" objective world "out there," while Bohr held to the notion that we cannot speak about things that are in principle incapable of being observed. Naturally it was about the nature of observation.

To make a long story short, Pauli was convinced that a new conception of reality had to include matter and SPIRIT as complementary aspects of one world. That spirit and the unconscious does indeed observe reality. The others suggested that there is no reality unless it is "observed" reality.

So where does this leave the soul or spirit within us? We know it is there, yet we cannot consciously observe it. Science has yet to define it. Your thoughts?

------------------
Deborah

Finding my joy

[This message has been edited by Deborah (edited 10-17-2002).]
 
I think it's a subtle mistake to think of our soul or spirit as being "within" us. This puts spirit squarely on the physical plane when we start defining it's location in space-time.

Instead I like to think of the soul as being in a place that MIT Physicist Edward Fredkin calls "Other". It's not "in" the physical realm at all. In fact, it would be more correct to say that the body is "within" the soul, just as the physical realm is but a product of the spiritual realm. But this is just my theory.

Fredkin has quite a lot to say on the subject of the nature of reality, and although his writings are not exactly light reading they are worth digging through. In his paper "On the Soul" he says:

Reincarnation is possible in almost every way that has ever been imagined. However, just as a program needs a compatible computer as its host, a soul needs a compatible brain-body or a compatible computer system in order to function in a complete fashion.

The complete paper can be read at On the Soul
Click to expand...
Fredkin is also the only person other than myself who I've ever heard mention the idea that with a super-advanced computer it would even be possible for a soul to reincarnate into that computer rather than into a biological body.


[This message has been edited by fiziwig (edited 10-17-2002).]

[This message has been edited by fiziwig (edited 10-17-2002).]
 
Well, I'm no deep thinker, nor am I a scientist. I guess I go more by feelings or intuition. I just don't believe that just because something can't be observed doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

I have felt and have communicated with others' souls - just a chosen few up to now - but those experiences have made me realize that our bodies are all just physical shells that house our souls - our souls are IT. I haven't physically seen souls, but I have FELT them, and it's led to some profound insights - well, for me anyway! Hard to put into words, though.

Deborah, I'm not sure if my answer was what you were looking for...unlike you and Fiziwig, I don't have any literary quotes to back me up!
 
Hi Deborah,

Let me try to define terms. This is what I think:

I know that "I exist", and I believe that other "I's" also exist. We exist. We are persons, and can be called spirits. This is the starting point.

Everything that a particular person perceives by seeing, touching, feeling, thinking, dreaming, hallucinating, imagining, remembering etc., constitutes his personal world. Personal worlds are all different.

There are parts of personal worlds that can be qualified as common to many persons. For example, the Eiffel tower in Paris is a common element of personal worlds (one can just go to Paris and see it.) Certain historical facts and memories of the past are also common parts of personal worlds.

This common part of personal worlds is what can be called reality, or common world. Parts of our personal worlds that are not common do not belong to reality.

Thus, for example, what one perceives in a dream or remembers as "past life on another planet" is part of his personal world but is not part of reality. This seems to agree with the common sense in which the world "reality" is used.

Thus, all we know is that "we exist" with our personal worlds and our common reality; but where do these worlds come from and how communication between them is established in which this common reality emerges? It certainly does not come into being by our will: our power on it is quite limited; on the other hand, this reality displays wonderful order, harmony, and wisdom with which it is designed. Is it not obvious that it must have cause? The cause which people call God.

With love,
Candide
 
Deborah,

you said
What IF.........there was no difference? No separation between you/me and what we precieve to be reality - out there? What IF.... within you/me are all possibilities?
Click to expand...

Imagine you are asleep and dreaming and in this dream you walk a half a mile down a road. This road is entirely inside your mind, but how did this road fit inside your head which is obviously not big enough to hold a half mile of pavement?

In fact you can dream of looking up at stars that are millions of miles away, and those millions of miles of dream space still fit inside a normal human skull.

So how big would God's mind have to be to contain all of what we call reality? One cubic foot? Two cubic feet? And who's to say that God's soul-mind and your/my soul-mind are not one and the same thing? And that we hold all that "exists" in "reality" within our soul-mind.

And who's to say that this "reality" is the only "reality". So people wonder if they've reincarnated on a different planet, but what about reincarnating in a different "reality" altogether?

This would not be a reality located in this reality. You couldn't ask where is this other reality and expect an answer like "7.3 billion miles due north of Pittsburg." This other reality is in a different place entirely. In a different one of God's dreams.
 
Yes, Fiziwig, and scientists in their latest studies of quantum physics have concluded that there are very probably an infinite number of other "universes".

It all gets very mind-boggling...

In the line of religion that I follow, Candomblé, it is believed that there are, in fact, nine "realms of reality".

Charles
 
"The face of truth is covered by a golden disc. Remove it, Oh God, so that I may behold the the nature of reality." ---- Isha Upanishad.

Indian tradition holds that reality is something that we all, each and every one of us, can experience, and it encourages us to do so. For thousands of years, Indian sages have maintained that any desciption of reality in worlds will only be approximate. Words can only be like a pointer that points to the real thing but can never be the real thing. Unfortunately, most of us like to take short cuts and expect to get 'there'. That, I am afraid, is not possible. No one has yet come up with a sugar-coated pill that we can swallow and then get the vision of reality. In the quest for truth, one needs patience and right effort. Truth will not reveal itself to those who do not care about it. Knowingly, or not, most people simple don't care enough about truth. In fact, most delight in clinging to unthruth and falsehoods. Our longest held and most cherished falsehoods come in the guise of religion. These are not easy to shake off. Reality will just have to wait till then.

Kris
 
Fizwig, Kris and Charles -

Here's an interesting article -

Consciousness as an Active Force

At least read paragraph one and two through to paragraph three which follows; --

Interestingly, just as my work as a computer scientist became more and more practical, my inner life became increasingly metaphysical. Over the years, I have come to believe that much more exists than meets our limited awareness; the universe is not the mundane three-dimensional mechanistic place that it appears to be. Indeed, I believe it is filled with energy fields and forces we have yet to measure. It is through an examination of human interaction with these energies that, I believe, humanity will ultimately expand its understanding of consciousness.

The primary goal of this paper is to describe what I believe we may find in these explorations: that consciousness is an active force that we can exert upon the universe, not merely a passive perception or awareness of that universe.
Click to expand...

I really liked the article and her reflections. Sums up a lot for me.
------------------
Deborah

Finding my joy

[This message has been edited by Deborah (edited 10-19-2002).]
 
Wonderful thread!
Great links...Fiziwig, I encourage others to read your first link. I've spent some time with it the last few days. Worth reading over and over. On the Soul And your comic strip.. gets your pulse really going I know that! You're very good.

Deborah, on my way to read your link.

I relate most with the imagery of us "being within" the mind of god. In keeping with the subtle anatomy, templates and the chakra system..it makes perfect sense to me. Not that soul is within us be we within it.

Love,
Angie
 
Deborah:

What could this be referring to regarding sleep?.. and mortal must put on immortality?

Since it is a mystery, it may not have a unique explanation.

Regarding sleep, it can refer to death. It's the way of expression in Greek and in other languages. Paul may mean that we will not all die, referring to the last days of this earth. Then this reality will pass away in a moment, and another reality will take its place, in which there will be no death.

But it also can mean the following: As we fall asleep, we sort of lose all awareness; our consciousness is inactive (except that we have dreams sometimes). When we awake, we somehow know that we were asleep for certain amount of time. Then, as regards this passage, Paul may be saying that with death it is not like falling asleep and being inactive for hundreds or thousands of years, but that death is in fact perceived as an instantaneous transition to another reality.

This common world, this reality, will be instantaneously replaced by another comon world (new heaven and new earth), and it is like an abrupt awakening from dream.

Death can be seen as a transition to a completely unknown reality, and it frightens us precisely by this uncertainty. Absence of death in the new reality means that there will be no such unexpected and uncertain transitions. This does not exclude evolution and qualitative changes, this only excludes abrupt changes with frightening uncertainty. No death, no fear.

Just love,
Candide
 
Deborah, thanks for a very good link.

Like the seekers of the past, we continue to seek better and better metaphors to explain the mystery of man. Multidimensional reality is a an interesting way to get insight into this mystery. Vedanta pictures man as an inner essence covered by five sheaths (koshas) like the layers of an onion. The five sheaths starting with the outermost are as follows:

(1) Annamaya kosha or the sheath composed of food. This is our physical body we identify with most naturally. This is also what modern medicine tries to 'fix' when an illness is diagnosed.
(2) Pranamaya kosha or the sheath of vital airs or the energy body that Amy Lansky refers to. This sheath corresponds to the faculties of digestion, circulation, excretion, perception and thought absorption. This is where illnesses start according to Ayurveda. The next three sheaths are:
(3) the manomaya kosha or the mental sheath,
(4) vijnyanamaya sheath or the intellectual sheath and
(5) the anandamaya kosha or the sheath of bliss.

This structure of man assumes that the inner sheaths can control the outer sheaths and are therefore more important; hence the idea of repairing the energy body to cure the physical body. Like the multiple dimensions, sheaths are also an attempt to understand man with metaphors.

A variant of this classification describes a human as being made up of three 'bodies'. First there is the gross body (Sthula sharira) which corresponds to the food sheath and material aspect of energy sheath. Next is the subtle body(kshyushma sharira) which is composed of the subtle portion of the energy sheath together with mental and and intellectual sheaths. And finally, there is the causal body (karana sharira) which is composed of the sheath of bliss. Incidently, the causal body is thought to be the carrier of impressions and memories from one life to the next.

Kris
 
Hi,

What wonderful reflections!!!!!! Thank you all for posting your thoughts and or experiences. Such vast perspectives -- so interesting. My good friend Szofie gave me the link - ages ago -- so thank her.

Angie - can you or others - who have shared thier thoughts here -- relate to the experience of being "within" the whole or mind of God-- as you put it-- due to a vision? Dream? or possibly as an OBE?

Beyond our research -- such as the link I provided or Kris's references to ancient text (which I love BTW) how have you or others experienced reality as beyond our perceptions of matter?

------------------
Deborah

Finding my joy
 
Science has never been able to derive a connection between the physical and the metaphysical. The true reality is in the conscious spirit, matter is only a playground for the soul. The fact that scientists are now beginning to realize that the entire physical universe equals zero when all opposite particles are combined should shed some light on this.
 
Thanks Fitzy - I agree. Light - mmmm Light --

OK I'll share one experience that made me realize there is so much more than our physical reality.

In one meditation - I felt I was outside walking near the Temples of Giza Egypt. I walked up to a pond or small lake and looked into the reflection of the water...I could see myself, and reached out and touched the water with my fingers which in turn created ripples. Upon viewing the ripples there was a stunning realization that I had touched a form of consciousness and then the water expanded into LIGHT.

Suddenly... I was exploding from the inside out with Light...I looked down and could see this light within me, my whole being WAS LIGHT! It was such a wonderful feeling -- of love, peace, and joy.

I think when science fully engages and studies LIGHT - then...we will begin to understand.
 
Hi Deborah,

I guess I was out of it around 20 October as I didn't see your question- "Angie - can you or others - who have shared thier thoughts here -- relate to the experience of being "within" the whole or mind of God--as you put it-- due to a vision? Dream? or possibly as an OBE?"

I'm going to copy and paste here from another thread in the "Good Books" section:
I was under the age of six years when I first had the experience of a spontaneous meditation or concentration that I believe is holographic in nature. It seemed to happen often throughout childhood and grew less frequent as I got older. A series of eliminations would start to take place. I would think of all the things I knew.. my family, friends, school, toys, etc. One by one I would make these things invisible. I remember I would think in images, something like this: "What if there were no toys, no house, no trees, grass or sky?" "What if there were no brothers, family or mommy?" Then I'd see myself above the earth and I would make it disappear. At that point I'd feel as if I were about to disappear, or to be more exact..it was a feeling of being able to fade in and out. This scared me to a degree, but not the same type of fear that I later developed with age when this would happen. I remember clearly the whole process of elimination and that I'd shake my head at the point of feeling invisible. Shaking my head would bring me back right away.

As I said, as I got older this happened less often and anytime I tried to make it happen it never would. It always happened "out of the blue." With age and certain control of language, I could describe it better to myself, but never really tried to explain it to others. Through the years I've come to think of the spontaneous nature of this experience as having many possible origins..but the word I've used to describe the sense of it is "panoramic." The process of viewing things fading in and out of existence happened in a continuous stream. The feeling at the end was one of no distinction between myself or any other person or thing.

The last time it happened I was 19 and I reacted badly to it. I was really afraid of the "fading in and out" part. It had alot to do with my life situation at the time. A version of it happens rarely now and is less indepth. Mostly its the memory of those times that can put me in a place of much peace. Its not altogether holographic, yet it is! The feeling of distinction between self and others is gone -after the elimination process- and I'm left with a feeling of timelessness. It's one of the most difficult things to describe.
Click to expand...

This is, for reasons I find hard to articulate, where I "sense" being "within" the mind of God. And this is where the contradictions begin!! Holographically- it really feels like the superimposition we often write about here.

Please pardon the length of this.




------------------
With Love,
Angie

"You know that there are no guarantees in life, my dear, only commitment."

Please remember to support your forum.
 
I am hoping to hear more experiences

And looking forward to others thoughts. ;)
 
extrusion

Dear Deborah,
What is this attribute, supposedly outside ourselves which is termed physicality? It is a difficult concept and for many years I was content with the scientific claim that the "outside" world exists objectively and that we identify ourselves as also physical and in this world. But this world is unreal because it is constantly changing.

So, the "objective world" is a primitive way of looking at things. The truth is much different in that the mind manifests the world and all therein. In a word, the world is but the dream of the Supreme, that Reality which does not change.

Conceive of it this way. A person in sleep dreams a dream-world. This world always expands on inspection and can only be recognized upon awakening. Otherwise it is totally consistent.

As consistent as is the world of physicality into which we are born (or more properly, in which the ego expresses itself). Yet this also is a kind of dream and we may see it so upon the ultimate awakening. This awakening-point is sometimes called Self-Realization, it is the act of remembering who we really are. The One Self from which all derives. Furthermore, the recollection carries with it the indelible comprehension that all of physicality is a mental construct. This is so because the physical world, the body and so forth, “fall-away” revealing the One Eternal being as the origin of all. This is a unit self–identity experienced through asking the question "who or what am I?"

The Eternal Self formulates the world of physicality by thinking, “I am the body”. Spirit formulates the hypothetical construct of physicality and man is expressed therein. But there is a “twist” in that though Spirit “extrudes physicality” it does so within the context of itself and thence identifies itself therein as the ego (man). Thus physicality is created by and exists within mind in the same way that the dream-world is produced by the sleeping consciousness.

Sarma, a devotee of Ramana, formulated it this way: The world and the mind arise as one but of the two, the world depends on mind alone. That alone is Real in which this inseparable pair (the world and mind) have their rising and setting, The One Eternal Self.
:)
 
HI Robin,

Interesting line of thought, which I feel has a lot of truth to it.. ;).

You said -
This is a unit self–identity experienced through asking the question "who or what am I?"
Click to expand...
I prefer to alter the question slightly -to "Why am I

........Thus physicality is created by and exists within mind in the same way that the dream-world is produced by the sleeping consciousness.
Click to expand...
Quite an interesting concept -indeed!

The One Eternal Self -- I tend to associate with the omnipresence of the LIGHT which -in my experience is -- The One --The All. No form, no boundaries..it is everywhere and in everything.

Robin -could you share an experience you had that will help illustrate your point? If you already have in the forum -could you direct us to it? Sorry if I missed it.
 
the light

Deborah,
“Why am I?” is germane, but truly it has no answer except “I am THAT I AM”. What does this mean? Only that I am is the Self, in all (conscious) life-forms and indeed in everything, and has always been and is the cause of all. Identify the being asking the question” why am I?” and you will have the indelible answer.

The light, as you describe it, is a valid register of this identity. (In my experience) and This can be expanded into Being-Consciousness-Bliss. The state of knowledge and beyond.

Now, if you get hold of a copy of the CD by Kate Bush called “The Red Shoes”, crank up the volume and listen to “Lily”, pre-track 3 (if I recall correctly). This (pre track low-volume recording) is a “rework” of one of the Upanishads that Kris often quotes. It puts the light into its “correct” perspective. It goes something like this:

Oh Thou who givest sustanence to the universe
From whom all things derive
To whom all things return
Reveal to us the true spiritual Sun
Hidden by a disk of golden light
That we may know the truth
And do our whole duty
As we journey to thy sacred feet

As you may care to note, the light here is (IMHO) correctly identified as the doorway into the Self. The Light penetrates and supports everything and every being but it is not the Self proper but rather an indelible characteristic of the Self.

The full experience is somewhat poorly outlined here.
 
Thank You

For expanding on your post. It is always a pleasure to exchange ideas, notions and spiritual experiences with you. ;)
 
shorter term answer

Deborah,
I think I was a little hasty in my answer to the question “why am I?”. Actually I skipped a bit much in order to get to the “end-point”.

Of course “why am I?” within the context of the reincarnating ego is the first question leading to awakening. “Why am I ?”is equivalent to “what am I doing here?” or “Why have I incarnated?”.

The immediate answer to this question is centered on the major samscara that has impelled the ego-self into life associated coincidence with the appropriate matter-envelope (the world, so to speak). The elucidation of this point (ie comprehension of the dynamic of the samscara) constitutes the short-term answer to the question.

I am THAT I AM constitutes the Eternal Answer, Eternal meaning Unitary Being standing beyond time, the One Self in which all share. The Self in which birth and death are imagined consequent on the representative comprehension manifested by the ego-consciousness.

No-one is born and no-one dies, Eternal Being alone is the Constant and all else passes away.
:cool
 
The whole of it is [imagination]. Even space and time are imagined. All existence is imaginary.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
:cool
 
Everyting old is new again. After reading this thread, I still believe Reality is what I percieve it to be. But maybe the questions about reality aren't that cut and dried.

John
 
Do any new members have thoughts to add to the discussion?


There is an interesting link in post # 8 some of you might be interested in.
 
When I had a simple and unchallenged mind, I thought all that I perceived was real, and I trusted what others described as real. Like everyone here, I acquired knowledge of the world, and began to realize that some things were not so real. As questions arose, I discovered that the answers only created more questions and doubts.


In my reading, lately, I have discovered that many engineers and physicists are extremely curious about the nature of reality; and I would opine that this may come as a direct result of their intense involvement with "reality". Perhaps, those who are most aware of perceived reality are in a curious position to also question it. Take, for example, the present scientific interest in Quantum Mechanics, in which what we perceive as solid matter really isn't matter at all. So, what is it?


It seems those who know would identify reality as an "Alice in Wonderland" trip down the rabbit hole and into a world in which all is not as it would seem. As a result, we now have perfectly sane and educated people suggesting that what we perceive as reality could actually be a virtual reality game created for the amusement of some higher beings. In such a world even Descarte's mantra, "I think, therefore I am!" would become a non-reality.


It seems the more we discover about what we call reality, the more we discover that it is not. Whatever the case, my back still hurts, and that seems real enough to me. :D
 
Deborah said:
Hi,
Wolfgang Pauli a famous physicist entered into the debate between Einstein and Bohr regarding the nature of reality. Einstein believed that there was a "real" objective world "out there," while Bohr held to the notion that we cannot speak about things that are in principle incapable of being observed. Naturally it was about the nature of observation.


To make a long story short, Pauli was convinced that a new conception of reality had to include matter and SPIRIT as complementary aspects of one world. That spirit and the unconscious does indeed observe reality. The others suggested that there is no reality unless it is "observed" reality.


So where does this leave the soul or spirit within us? We know it is there, yet we cannot consciously observe it. Science has yet to define it. Your thoughts?


------------------


Deborah


Finding my joy


[This message has been edited by Deborah (edited 10-17-2002).]
Click to expand...
Just some comments and personal thoughts:


This is probably the most interesting subject that I can think of at the moment. The subject is also of great interest to the general public since there is an episode of the new series, Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman, that is called "Is there a Creator?". The series features different scientists with very different viewpoints of what or who or even if there is a Creator. The series is being shown on the Science Channel on television in the US.


One scientist theorizes that the universe is a computer simulation and he actually makes a good argument for that theory, at least in my opinion - not that I think we are a computer simulation. I like to be challenged to think about reality in new ways and find that it is a growing experience to stretch the mind a bit farther than I am comfortable with sometimes.


The idea that the universe is a computer (and not a simulation) comes from Edward Fredkin who fiziwig mentioned in an earlier post. Fredkin postulated that we exist in a universe where information is finite (The Finite Universe) instead of living in a universe where information is infinite (The Continuum). It does seem, as physicists understand the nature of matter more and more, that information is indeed quantized or made of discrete data in which, for instance, there is a 1 and a 2 but nothing in between those values. Fredkin had a website that is called Digital Philosophy where you could read the paper On The Soul that fiziwig mentioned but the site is not available at this time. There is still a lot of information available about Fredkin's "Finite Universe" online. I believe the "Other" place that fiziwig mentioned is to Fredkin the place that is outside of the computer. It is all really quite interesting.


There is a segment on the "Is There a Creator?" episode where one of the physicists compares the quantized universe with the infinite universe by comparing the smooth flow of the second hand of an older electric clock to the second-by-second tick of a newer digital clock. The digital clock (quantized) counts only the integers while the older electric clock (infinite) counts the integers and every value between them. I believe all of this has something to do with the Planck Length and Planck Time which are the smallest measurement and the shortest time period that have any meaning in physics. (And all of that probably has something to do with the graininess or pixelation of space-time.)


What is it they say about the universe? We are two dimensional beings on the edge of the universe experiencing a three dimensional life projected from the "real" two dimensional universe. Where do we exist really, in that case? Perhaps we exist in more than one place at the same time (whatever that is, right?). I think it could be that we can't observe the soul or spirit because the human senses just can't detect the essence of spirit. Although, from personal experience, it seems we can observe ourselves in spirit form sometimes, such as spirit seeing spirit. We are, after all, spirits having a physical experience first and foremost and not human beings having a spiritual experience. The whole point in projecting ourselves from the edge of the universe is to be "fooled" into believing we are physical creatures searching for "meaning" and when we really start to understand that we begin the process of enlightenment.
 
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