Have you ever had a dream that you were so sure was real? What if you
couldn't awaken? How would you know the difference between dream and
reality? The Matrix
took the world by storm when it was first released in theaters. It
chronicled humanity’s post-apocalyptic war against the machines they
helped create.
Space and time are traditionally thought of as the backdeop to the
universe, but new research suggests they may not be fundamental but an elaborate illusion. Physicists
are starting to suspect physical reality is an illusion. The idea that
we may be living in a matrix-like universe is called the simulation
theory. Physicist Max Planck said "I regard consciousness as fundamental…" And other and scholars argue that consciousness is a fundamental quality of the Universe.
Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman
argues that while we should take our perceptions seriously, we should
not take them literally. Beliefs inherited
from family or tribe influence people's values and actions strongly.
So your eyes and ears don’t tell you the truth.
That’s not what they are
for. The senses evolved to enable us to survive in the world, not to
represent it accurately. The reality that we experience each and every
day is what we must use to survive in our environment. A human body
comes equipped to interact with only certain frequencies. But that doesn't mean other realms are not real.
The visible spectrum is the tiny portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visible to the human eye. The electromagnetic spectrum covers electromagnetic
waves with frequencies ranging from below one hertz to above 10 25
hertz, corresponding to wavelengths from thousands of kilometers down to
a fraction of the size of an atomic nucleus. So the visible light spectrum is only a tiny part (0.0035%) of the much bigger electromagnetic spectrum.
In a similar way we ordinarily see ro experience only a small bandwidth
slice of what we call physical reality.Increasingly there are reports
from people who have experiences with what we think of as non-ordinary
reality.
Richard Feynman
once suggested that nature is like layers of an infinite onion. With each new
experiment, we peel another layer of reality; because the onion is
infinite, new layers continue to be discovered. And they need not be simulations.
A parallel universe, also known as an alternate
universe, parallel world, parallel dimension, or alternate reality, which is a
hypothetical self-contained plane of existence, co-existing with our
own. The sum of all potential parallel universes that constitute reality is often called a "multiverse". Our universe would constitute just a small or subset of this multiverse.
A person having a dream, or hallucination, or a Near Death Experience (NDE) tends to argue that the experience didn’t
have the disjointed quality of being unreal. Some are able to describe
details and events that happened around them while they were unconscious
or clinically dead. A lucid dream is a type of dream in which the dreamer becomes aware that they are dreaming. During a lucid dream, the dreamer may gain some amount of control over the dream characters, narrative, or environment. Lucid dreaming has been studied and reported for many years and has shown potential for overcoming fear and other healing effects.
In ancient shamanic tradition, there are 3 worlds-states of non-ordinary reality
that are richly layered over our consensual reality (the physical world
most of us walk around in most of the time). You reach each reality
level through the process of shamanic journeying. The lower world in
shamanic reality, contrary to what many might think, is a place of
discovery, exploration, learning, and healing. And the middle world in
shamanic reality is the non-ordinary reality version of our physical
world in which your consciousness first leaves your body, before you
head to the upper or lower worlds.
The concept of an otherworld in historical Indo-European religion is reconstructed in comparative mythology. Hinduism is a major world religion, with one of the longest-surviving pantheons in history. Within its rich mythology,
elephant-headed gods clash with powerful demons and titans, preserver
gods send out their avatars to restore the righteous order of the
universe, and powerful sages challenge the gods themselves. Years, or even lifetimes of spiritual disciplines were thought to bring enlightenment to some.
Our understanding of reality has changed over time. From the scholars
of ancient Greece to the modern physicists of today, there have
been changes and breakthroughs about the way we view the world. Beginning with
Anaximander’s discovery of the Earth floating in the sky and
Democritus’ discovery ot the atom. There is now a twentieth-century
paradox in modern physics.
The West as a culture or civilization historically evolved out of Greco-Roman classical antiquity. But the rigid power structure of Western religion was almost too precarious to be analysed. Holy wars and the inquisition took a great many lives. Even mentioning possible alternate realities was forbidden. The 8th
Ecumenical Council of Constantinople even "abolished the human
spirit"
(as an abstraction). But just because we had it all wrong for a long time doesn't mean
thhere is no divinity, though perhaps different than what we thought.
And similary our idea of reality might also have all wrong.We think
of matter as atoms that are an organized group of electrons and protons
zooming around a neutron, but this figure is completely wrong. The
particles that make up the atoms have no structure or size, no weight,
and are just vibrating electrical energy. There could be infinite frequencies or types we don't know about.
Perhaps there is only one real thing which is the sum of all
frequencies. It is
similar to the idea that drops of water can exist without the ocean,
but the ocean cannot exist without dtops of water. And this water can
be solid, liquid, or gas. As gas it may be clouds or steam. As liquid
there may be lakes, rivers, oceans or even floods. As solids there may
be hail, sleet, snow and solid ice. But it is still just water.
Human beings are conditioned to hold onto culture, beliefs,
tradition and politics, even at the expense of our well being. Without
knowing it, we usually live and express these distorted ideas, practices, and
patterns that influence our perceptions of reality and in turn create
our reality. Emotion is said to be the trigger that activates thoughts.
Emotional reality, unlike physical reality, is created rather than
observed. By and large, people create the emotional reality in which
they live. Unfortunately the choice of which reality we create is
usually made by default, a kind of habitual automatic pilot derived
from temperament, metabolism, and experience. The human brain filters
information within its default choices, processing that which conforms
to them and excluding that which deviates from them.
Beliefs inherited
from family or tribe influence people's actions more strongly than
those with weaker genetic bases. Indeed, highly heritable attitudes,
such as political persuasions, may even steer our choices of the social
"niches" we carve out for ourselves. If challenged we my not have
reasons to justify inherited beliefs becuse to us it is a given that
they are the truth. People simply believe that they are right in their own ideologies and
cannot accept the ideologies of others which causes conflict. People's
political beliefs actively demand of them that they ostracize those who
do not fit with the party's agenda.
Inclusion rather than isolation is the key to peace and happiness.
There are basically only two human motives: approach and avoidance. But
like other apparent polarities such as hot/cold,; light/dark; good/bad,
each is only a degree of the opposite.
How can it be possible that the world we see
is not objective reality? And how can our senses be useful if they are
not communicating the truth? Many people want to believe that there are some extrasensory powers like the
ability to read minds, foretell the future, communicate with the dead, or with "spiritual helpers." The internet offers many "psychics," and some offer "proof" of their abilities.
As finite creatures we look to the infinite for true identity. Parapsychology is a growing field of research that studies a
number of ostensible paranormal phenomena, including telepathy,
precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, near-death experiences,
reincarnation, and apparitional experiences.
Is mankind alone in the universe? Or are there somewhere are there civilizations
more advanced than ours, civilizations that have achieved interstellar
communication and have established a network of linked societies
throughout our galaxy? Such questions are bearing on the deepest problems
of the nature and destiny of mankind. Today for the first time in human
history extraterrestrials have entered into the realm of experimental science.
They may not all come from other planets or galaxies, but from
other realities, sometimes being invisible to us, to bring about
drastic changes in our reality.
So it may be that ultimate reality is like 3D TV with uncounted
channels and bandwidths. Our body is like the TV and our brain
(consciousness) is the tuner. And whatever channel we focus on seems
more real than the other channels.
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