Is reality most definitely an illusion?

I read the "You are the God particle" thread today and it got me thinking about reality once again in the back of my questionable mind.

I Googled the question and came across an easy-to-read article that just about summed up what I wanted to hear.

www.successconsciousness.com...

The five senses make us feel that the world is real. Seeing the solidity of the objects around us, feeling the impact of the senses, it is hard to deny the validity of what we see. Everything looks real and we never stop to question this reality.

The mind is attached to the five senses and accepts everything as real without questioning. When we bump into a table or a wall and we feel pain, it is difficult to say that we are imagining it. When we see with our eyes, hear sounds, smell, or when we feel heat or coldness, we accept these sense impressions as real.

Some say that the world is an illusion, Maya in Eastern terminology. Can we accept this when everything looks so real? Can we regard the world as imagination?

I was pacing back and forth thinking about whether or not reality could be an illusion. As I thinking, I began to ponder about each step I was taking. I thought about why our minds, as complex as we believe they may be, are not able to properly process each muscle movement within our own legs and feet. In a way, the way we walk is self-automated. We let parts of our brain control our muscles so that we do not have to fatigue our mind with everything else. We leave the mind to think while our motor skills do the work by themselves.

The reasoning behind this thought was to question the true greatness of ourselves as humans. Sometimes I believe we put ourselves on this pedestal and think we're the surpeme beings of this reality. When we cannot even fathom the way each muscle and tendon works together in our feet, what makes us think we can fathom the true reality of our very existence? So, that's just one thought I came across.

While as a race of human beings, we at least managed to escape the atmosphere, but we still haven't reached the outer ages of our solar system (not talking about satellites). I'm proud of how far we've come in terms of technology, but without recording down history and passing information down from generation to generation, wouldn't we remain beating each other with wooden clubs?

I may be disgressing a bit, but the point is, we did come a long way and I'm proud of it. Based on what I've seen, technology is fantastic otherwise I wouldn't be typing this out now.

The thing I got from the above article was that questioning our reality can be difficult, but with enough determination and will power, we can make our own reality. I don't mean to just use this one and only article, but it's all I need for myself at the moment.

What I got from the article (and it seems as if it was a combination of pretty much the consensus of reality vs. illusion) is that we can change our reality by seeing past the senses and experiencing a different reality. To a point, I can agree and it makes some sense.

However, what I got from the article was that we indeed can change our reality. But not in a major way that changes everything physically in our eyes. If we force ourselves to believe that we are walking on a crosswalk and see a bus driving madly towards your way, would we pretend it doesn't exist and let it hit you or would you get outta the way?

The article may hint at that from what I can tell, but the things we can alter about our reality are simply our feelings toward it. If you're living in a life where you're stressing out about deadlines and money, you can change your reality in a way that makes you feel happier by simply altering your emotions. I hit something huge in my mind that made sense.

Not trying to ramble on and I apologize if this seems jumbled up and long-winded. But I'll try my best to make sense of what I've been thinking about the past hour.

..

We put ourselves into a reality filled with stress. Being stressed clouds our mind and judgement. Like a movie which sucks us in due to the plot and characters, we naturally escape our reality for a moment to let these things into our mind.

With stress and feeling emotional, we put ourselves in a perpetual reality that is negative. Everything around us feels negative, we miss an appointment because our minds aren't on track. People look at us from the outside with a raised eyebrow and we get different responses.

Once we stop being stressed, we seem happier and in turn, the outside world responds differently. For example, you get that last DVD in the bargain bin you've been searching for all along, you meet a new friend etc.

Now that is something I can comprehend and it makes sense. Our feelings can indeed alter our reality, but only to a certain degree.

Believing a bus coming at our direction full speed is just a figment of our imagnation is hard to believe. Then again, it was probably the culmination of our senses and thoughts which eventually led to the creation of the bus in our own minds. What if we made the bus? But why would we want to end our own reality? It just doesn't make any sense.

Reading the article definitely pushed the right switches on in my mind. And my last thought was, what if the article isn't real? What if the article was designed to hit the right switches on in my mind, after all, no one knows me better than me! I then question the very article. Is this reality currently a dream?

While I have crazy, weird dreams, it seems this one is the most comfortable at least. I'd rather have this reality be about me sipping my coffee right now rather than running through supermarkets naked or escaping the police.

[edit on 20-12-2009 by LiQuiD_FuSioN]

Hey, I bought a virtue reality game and guess what? The game came with the exact equipment replica of my five senses, this equipment came with a apparatus, gloves, and whatever equipment to make me feel I'm in a computer program. Then I decided to wear the veil of forgetfulness. As a result, I went into the virtual game and concluded it was real.

Originally posted by GrandKitaro777
Hey, I bought a virtue reality game and guess what? The game came with the exact equipment replica of my five senses, this equipment came with a apparatus, gloves, and whatever equipment to make me feel I'm in a computer program. Then I decided to wear the veil of forgetfulness. As a result, I went into the virtual game and concluded it was real.

But when does this virtual game end? (playing along)

Surely you can't 100% fool yourself into believing that life before the game never happened.

Originally posted by LiQuiD_FuSioN

Originally posted by GrandKitaro777
Hey, I bought a virtue reality game and guess what? The game came with the exact equipment replica of my five senses, this equipment came with a apparatus, gloves, and whatever equipment to make me feel I'm in a computer program. Then I decided to wear the veil of forgetfulness. As a result, I went into the virtual game and concluded it was real.

But when does this virtual game end? (playing along)

Surely you can't 100% fool yourself into believing that life before the game never happened.

It ends when the virtual body dies.

You're correct, something deep down at the core of being tell me death is illusory and mind lives on despite bodily death. How can I have this feeling when I'm wearing the veil of forgetfulness?

Originally posted by GrandKitaro777

Originally posted by LiQuiD_FuSioN

Originally posted by GrandKitaro777
Hey, I bought a virtue reality game and guess what? The game came with the exact equipment replica of my five senses, this equipment came with a apparatus, gloves, and whatever equipment to make me feel I'm in a computer program. Then I decided to wear the veil of forgetfulness. As a result, I went into the virtual game and concluded it was real.

But when does this virtual game end? (playing along)

Surely you can't 100% fool yourself into believing that life before the game never happened.

It ends when the virtual body dies.

You're correct, something deep down at the core of being tell me death is illusory and mind lives on despite bodily death. How can I have this feeling when I'm wearing the veil of forgetfulness?

I don't know if you meant that as an analogy, but whatever, it works that way...lol. Personally, I see "reality" more like a holographic movie based on a 4 dimensional tensor model. You come into it from outside the "system" of this perceived reality and you can be anyone you want to be. Time is irrelevant in a movie unless you take it in a linear fashion. Whatever controls the movie can start and stop it or edit it wherever it wants.

One really also has to consider the implications of this "digital reality." The stuff we perceive as matter is made up of reduce-able quanta. Maybe Quarks (or something smaller) = bits and then there is the problem of separate and distinct realities based on quantum and classical scales. There is also no measurable phase transition between quantum and classical reality, it just abruptly jumps from one state to the other which is similar to information state-changes in a computer.

But maybe we are actually all in a real prison and this is our virtual therapy. Possibly, there's something we need to learn to get out of "stir." Personally however, I think "reality" is more like a teaching tool, after you die, exiting the system, you can come back in and try something new. Like a big reality simulator ;-)

Cheers - Dave

"Reality" is a very subjective topic. I have yet to come across a definitive explanation of it. When I was a kid, my dad always said, "You have to face up to reality."

What the hell is it!!?? I mean, I know that there are things that seem to be "reality," but there are so mant circumstances and permutations that make up that "reality," it's rather confusing.

The Church of Reality is a religion based on the practice of Realism, which means believing in everything that is real. Our motto is, "If it's real, we believe in it." Since no one knows all of reality, the Church of Reality is a religious commitment to the pursuit of reality the way it really is. We think about thinking. We wonder about wondering. We try to understand the understanding of understanding. We are Explorers, not followers. The phrase "What is Real?" is our Sacred Question and the word "Reality" is our Sacred Message. We talk about reality, think about reality, and aim to make reality more important in society.

The Church of Reality is a new breed of religion that is based on reality rather than mythology. We answer the great questions that other religions address, like what is right and wrong, how do people live together in a community, and what are our responsibilities to ourselves and to each other. We address these concerns in the context of our evolutionary history, our present reality, and our future evolution. We are particularly focused on the future, which we call the Sacred Direction.

Church of Reality

Now, what this implies to me is that there are a significant number of people who are asking questions about "reality." Whether there is a definitive answer to it or not, I don't pretend to know.

If you want to find out the truth of reality you have to achieve "nirvikalpa samadhi" in Vedic yoga or "achievement of cessation" in Theravada Buddhism or the "Emptiness" in Taoism.

There's an excellent qigong master who transmits the holographic laser energy from his third eye -- Chunyi Lin -- you can take his classes. I did and when he looks at you it feels just like a laser -- he can see inside your body.

So the truth of reality is an infinite process of energy creation due to complementary opposites -- yin and yang -- while Western logic is based on symmetric "one-to-one correspondence" and therefore our brains have our third eye closed off.

springforestqigong.com... is Chunyi Lin's website -- he works with the top hospital in the world -- the Mayo Clinic and his website has video testimonies of him healing late-term cancer, Parkinsons, M.S., etc.

My blog has more details naturalresonancerevolution.blogspot.com...

i]reply to post by LiQuiD_FuSioN

You should read up on some descartes and berkley, their philosophy is pritty much talking of the illusion of reality

reply to post by Trolloks



No,no. I don't know anything about Berkley, but Rene Descartes was very much a materialist. Now,he asked hypothetical questions about the reality of his body and senses, but he pretty much came to the conclusion that reality is just the way we see it.

P.S: Philosophically, Descartes did more harm in trying to figure out what "reality" is then he did good. He is one of the reasons that we live in the de-spiritualized society we have now.

The world is real. It is an illusion only in the sense that it is not true. It is not true because it is impermanent not that it doesn't exist. The spirit is here in the same sense that a current of electricity is there in the computer bringing it to life or functionality. Life is not make believe/ Viewing life as not real is an effort to robe you of your capacity to accomplish during your life time here. Your spirit is here in that it has a specific focus in the body and the associated planes of matter. You have a natural function in this world and utilizing your spirit here is perfectly normal. It is abnormal to believe you are not here. Abnormal meaning you are depriving yourself of being natural if you believe you are only dreaming. If you deprive yourself, you can not be fulfilled and fully utilize your life.

Spirit is only temporarily here. Your spirit has a thread going all the way back to the purely spiritual worlds. You also establish a reservoir of energy in the spiritual material worlds that you return to to replenish and heal during deep sleep.

This reality is a dream. It is a virtual reality system. Materialism is just a belief system, based on studying the end result or end product of a creative process by which reality and thought [dreams] are organized and brought into actualization by a cosmic level or god like reality generator that we are all tuned into.

Idealism however is in the end the winner of the philosophical side of the debate, which has waged on since before Christ.

May your dreams come true.

reply to post by SpeakerofTruth


But descartes states that the only thing that can deffinaty exist are his thoughts, everything else is in question, thus the reality we live in may not exist.
He even goes on to talk about reality in the awoken relm and in the dream relm, were he says that it is impossible to say which one is "real", so he pritty much is talkin on the topic we are now. Are we in a dream state, or an awoken one, it is impossible to know.

The world is our body, which is perception of "it".
The other level of existence is knowledge - cogito ergo sum, is more about "knowing therefore I am" than "thinking", as in sense of reflection.

Not thinking (perceiving) makes the world disappear. Everybody knows that

Originally posted by ReelView
The world is real. It is an illusion only in the sense that it is not true. It is not true because it is impermanent not that it doesn't exist. The spirit is here in the same sense that a current of electricity is there in the computer bringing it to life or functionality. Life is not make believe/ Viewing life as not real is an effort to robe you of your capacity to accomplish during your life time here. Your spirit is here in that it has a specific focus in the body and the associated planes of matter. You have a natural function in this world and utilizing your spirit here is perfectly normal. It is abnormal to believe you are not here. Abnormal meaning you are depriving yourself of being natural if you believe you are only dreaming. If you deprive yourself, you can not be fulfilled and fully utilize your life.

Spirit is only temporarily here. Your spirit has a thread going all the way back to the purely spiritual worlds. You also establish a reservoir of energy in the spiritual material worlds that you return to to replenish and heal during deep sleep.

No, IMHO it's not real and realizing all you can do, pahh. It's a movie! If it were real and free will actually existed then you would have control over all of the constituent parts of your body. Which is not the situation, rather, a shift of electrons within your "brain" can make you feel hungry, kill or lay down and die or any of an almost infinite number of reactions. Free will and your ability to realize all you can be is a fairy tale. It has been placed in this system of virtual reality, so that our brains ignore our connections to what we are outside the system of reality. Otherwise, we couldn't be in the movie, it seems like it's a rule. When we wake up we die. When we die however we go, we exit stage left only to appear again stage right.

When you can control all of the constituent parts of your body and brain, let us know eh ;-)

Cheers - Dave

[edit on 12/20.2009 by bobs_uruncle]

It is highly improbable that reality would be an illusion. But the ways we perceive and interpret reality might be illusionary.

And I wouldn't want to miss the opportunity to advertise myself; I've tried to address this issue in one of my threads. Basically (based on my own perception) we tend to perceive the reality from subjective view point - and more you have ego, the more perverted is your observation of reality.

If you observe reality without your subjective mind, meaning that you take reality as it is, not labelling stuff nor making false inductions, you should be able to see the objective reality.

In the end and in my opinion ideologies are illusion. And our (ego)minds are another effective illusion creator.

But I might be wrong. Just an individual observation.

-v

What is reality? Isn't that the question of the ages that the Greeks tried to answer? Materialists say reality is the objective world, everything that is outside of us made of atoms.

If we go to the dictionary, reality is something that is real or fact.

If you are real, then are you not by that definition reality? I will wager this. There are actually many states of reality beyond materialism. And you exist in all of them.

For simplicity I will break down reality into three groups:

Physical Reality - this place right now where you are reading my text.

Non-Physical Reality - This place right now inside your mind where your brain is rendering the text you are perceiving. A reality of pure thought, pure mind.

The Self - The reality of you.

I will assure you that until you die, or have your grip on reality challenged, you will probably assume Physical Reality is the important reality, the big reality. When you cease to be, you may realize that wait a second, it's me that is real. I am reality!

The true reality is the self. Every other reality flows from it. Physical reality is really just a product of the self, as is non-physical reality.

The self is the true reality. And we are all individualized parts of the same self, the same stuff...

When you have a dream, and it comes true one day later. Precognition, deja vu, deja reve, a vision, prophecy... what ever you want to call it when it happens. This is just a small window opening across the bridge between the truth that this reality is a Dream.

The mechanics, the evidence is all there. Some of us will have more awareness of this then others, but the reality is... Dreams come true, literally.

Why... because this end product of that creative process is the final product of our creation as the "self".

If you have ever had a dream come true, you are one step closer to that realization that everything flows from you. It doesn't mean you have realized yet that all there is, is you focused into many parts, but that is a discussion for another day.

I once read about a medium who was so numb all over his body, that he had to carry his girlfriend around so he could feel his body.

I get numb in my left hand sometimes, then I cant feel the things I touch with it. Been a few years since the last time thankfully it goes over in a day or two. But its irritating. I think its triggered if I focus on my hands too much.

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World

Before being cast as the role of Neo for the 1999 film The Matrix, the Wachowski Brothers asked Keanu Reeves to read this book (as well as Simulacra and Simulation and Introducing Evolutionary Psychology) before even opening the script.