Reality
So certain of your world, of what’s real. The smallest idea is the chance that your world is not real. A simple little thought that changes everything. ~ Dom Cobb in the movie Inception (2010)
Reality is that which necessarily is, neither dependent nor derivative. The nature of reality is at the edge of comprehension. This is more than a limitation of the mind. It is a setup.
We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality. ~ Irish philosopher Iris Murdoch
The mind is naturally constrained by its biological underpinnings: existing in a realm of symbolic patterns but obliged to perception for survival.
The last function of reason is to recognize that there is an infinity of things that are beyond it. ~ French mathematician Blaise Pascal
Beyond Conception
11th-century English Benedictine monk Anselm of Canterbury was an early proponent of ontological argument: a rationale for the existence of God. Anselm reflected upon how God became self-evident to him. God was simply “that than which nothing greater can be conceived.”
Anselm suggested that even a fool could understand this concept, and that this understanding creates a conceptualization of such a being within the mind.
According to Anselm, if the concept of God exists only in the mind, then something greater can be conceived: a supreme being in both mind and in fact; whence Anselm’s proof for the existence of God.
Even the Fool is convinced that something than which nothing greater can be thought is at least in his understanding; for when he hears of this, he understands, and whatever is understood is in the understanding. But surely that than which a greater cannot be thought cannot be only in the understanding. For if it were only in the understanding, it could be thought to exist also in reality. ~ Anselm of Canterbury
Anselm’s argument was based upon the simple-minded naïveté that anything which comes to mind must be real. Instead, as everyone knows, the mind is often a fabricator of unreality: frequently presenting a myriad of imaginings.
Is the world of things – of energy and matter – factual? Even if there were such a common world of things and forces, it is not the world in which we live. Ours is a world of feelings and ideas, of attractions and repulsions, of scales of values of motives and incentives; a mental world altogether. ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
One reason that reality is beyond conception is found in our natural affinity for objects. Object orientation overlooks the essentiality of existence, which is interactive ecology.
The perception that objects are transformed in time is a product of the mind. Instead, energies emergently compose objects via a quantized continuity of processes. Transformations occur in localized, interacting energy fields, not objects per se. The gyre of change is energetic, with materiality merely a perceived end product.
Though consistent with what is known in physics, this energy-first view from the quantum scale on up runs counter to the mind’s conception. Further, whereas the idea of entanglement may be conceptually comprehended, its intricacy in practice boggles the mind.
What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us? ~ American science fiction writer Frank Herbert
In the ambient realm, the cascading effects of human attitudes and endeavors toward coveting objects are renting societies via social inequalities, and devastating ecosystems throughout the planet via economic materialism. From the minds of the Collective, object orientation has not only been self-deception, it has spelt the desecration of Earth. The world would be much different if we perceived Nature as it is, not as we are.
Only those who know the self, who have seen beyond the world, can improve the world. They are the only hope of salvation. What is in the world cannot save the world. If you really care to help the world, you must step out of it. ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
