What Is Reality Really?
We argue about perceptions that are unique to each of us.
One of my anatomy teachers told a couple of stories about growing up in “the old country.” I believe he was from India. I will tell the stories as best I can. The memories that are well over 40 years old.
He was walking home one day and saw a crowd of people. He walked over to see what was happening. A man threw a rope into the air. It went up into a cloud and hung to the ground. A woman climbed the rope until she couldn’t be seen. The man put a large knife between his teeth and climbed the rope until he couldn’t be seen either. He heard the woman scream and saw blood dripping onto the ground. He ran home.
His other experience was sitting in a dark classroom. The teacher asked for a volunteer to go down the hall and get a light. Nobody volunteered. She asked again. One boy reached his hand out. His arm extended down the hall and brought the lamp back. As you might imagine, all the kids left the room screaming.
The professor had a PhD. He told the stories as unexplained experiences of his life. Most of us have difficulty accepting those accounts. We believe that what we see is reality.
I began working with Carolyn Jackson in the late 1990s. I loved her book, The Spirit of Reiki. One page said, “How cared for are you? So cared for that every star, and every stone, and every leaf of every tree I have created for only you.”
Some will read that and think that stars, stones, and leaves are not made for one person. I instantly recognized the truth. We believe we see stars, stones, and leaves because the light from the object goes to our eyes and impulses are sent from the retinae to the brain. The brain then converts the impulses into an image that we believe is out there. Each of us is unique. However, what we are conscious of is not what is out there. We are conscious of the image that was created “only for you.”
Professor Donald Hoffman makes the case that consciousness creates reality. He gives some great examples in his TED talk. He uses a computer monitor as an analogy to reality. He displayed a blue folder icon on a screen that when clicked would take him to a TED talk. He said the folder doesn’t represent what is in the computer. There isn’t a blue folder anywhere in the computer. It is just a way of handling the information. He makes the case that what we think of as reality is really no more reality than the icon on the computer. Reality is something other than what we sense.
With that in mind, think of the miracles in The Bible. People reported what they saw. They didn’t see reality then any better than we see reality now. Perhaps now we have the science to question our senses and understand that reality is not what we think it is.