Reality and Illusion

 

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. "If we are living in a simulation, then the cosmos that we are observing is just a tiny piece of the totality of physical existence"   - Nick Bostrom 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. Reality and Illusion "Reality" is constructed by your brain. How the Brain Resolves Ambiguity Unreal political beliefs Time and space proved unreal The Quantum Law of Being 3D, 4D and 5D Mass Awakening of Humanity Near Death Experiences Reincarnation - Suzanne Giesemann Some people say that Beyond the Illusion - there is no death

Enlightenment

Enlightenment means different things to different people at different times. Originally it was the name of a European intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries which led to Renaissance humanism. Even then it was both a movement and a state of mind. During the time when science blossomed and revolutions in the United States and France occurred. But that was also it was also a time when millions of people were enslaved and transported from Africa to the Western Hemisphere. Now enlightenment more nearly represents a common belief in the possibility of a better world. Enlightenment is associated with the French term lumières and the German Aufklärung. The two have in common the idea of 'light.'" Such an archetype is a character, theme, situation or motif that represents a universal symbolic or shared pattern of human nature. Mythological archetypes can be found in characters such as the hero, the villain, the trickster and the mentor, as well as in thematic concepts such as quests, death and rebirth. Comparative mythology is the comparison of myths from different cultures in an attempt to identify shared themes and characteristics. Scholars have used the relationships between different myths to trace the development of religions and cultures, to propose common origins for myths from different cultures, and to support various psychological theories. Gnosis is the common Greek noun for knowledge The term is used in various Hellenistic religions and philosophies. It is best known from Gnosticism, where it signifies a knowledge or insight into humanity's real nature as divine, leading to the deliverance of the divine spark within humanity from the constraints of earthly existence. Originally Gnosis was the enlightened knowledge of the divine mysteries, which were reserved for a certain elite. Light and darkness are basic natural phenomena as well as symbolic or metaphorical meanings that are often equated with the pairs of Being and Non-Being, primordial chaos and world order. In mythology the light is in the heavens and is associated with the sun, mood, and stars and is associated with goodness, hope, and faith in the future. While the perceptions of darkness are largely associated with the past and with chaos, evil or descent into the underworld, or madness. In Greek mythology Hercules was greatest hero, a slayer of mosnters and savior of  human kind. He was the only greek hero to ascend to goodhood and he became the greek god of strength.  The hero as savior in classical literature and mythology. In Joseph Campbell's  book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), he posits the existence of a Monomyth, a word he borrows from James Joyce referring to a pattern that is the essence of and universally common to, heroic tales in every culture. He outlines the archetypal episodes that subdivide three stages of the hero's journey (separation, initiation, and return) The savior or hero in myths are more or less universal and usually represent the human soul. This idea spans various cultures (Chinese, Native American, classical European, etc.) and religions (Buddhist, Christian, Tao, etc). Religions deal with the relationship between gods and humans. Since. Buddhism does not have a central god it is a philosophy about how to live. Most people have heard that the Buddha was enlightened and that Buddhists seek enlightenment. D.T. Suzuki and some of the first Zen teachers in the West explained enlightenment as an experience that one can have at moments. However most Zen teachers and Zen texts tell you that enlightenment is not an experience but a permanent state: a stepping through the door permanently. Not even satori is enlightenment itself. Zen is a Japanese sect which was strongly influenced by Taoist philosophy,  which advocated a calm way of life. The idea of a serene mind appeals to stressed out to many westerners, and Zen Meditation became popular in the 1960's. This method provides insight into how the mind works, and slows heart rate and respiration while also improving the functioning of the autonomic nervous system. But was heavily steeped in some fairly complex and very traditional routines. More recent meditation techniques such as Transcendental Meditation and progressive relation are nonsecular and simplier. The latest trend is Mindfulness which seems to be simple and easy enough that some large coprorations, health insurance companies, and even the military have held classes or disseminated pamphlets or guidelines for stress reduction. However stress management is only one of our current concerns. Primitive religion is always dualistic in nature, divides the world into “us versus them.” It splits the psyche into a good and a worthless portion, and sees everything in terms of either black or white, either good or bad. There is no middle ground, there is no gray area, and it is always afraid of any kind of ambiguity. Holism is the idea that various systems should be viewed as wholes, not merely as a collection of parts. Most of the spiritual books and teachers will talk about spiritual things like how we are all connected. And this is true at the spiritual level. Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the late 1820s and 1830s in the eastern United States. A core belief is in the inherent goodness of people and nature, and while society and its institutions have corrupted the purity of the individual. Jung believed that Unitive awareness graces us with momentary glimpses of our participation in the greater whole. It describes a symbolically informed state of mind where we move through experience with a living sense of the unitary reality underlying all things, visible and invisible. Now we are being told that all objects are illusions; that everything is one energy; that consciousness exists outside the brain; that even our bodies are not real in the way we believed. We are also being told that extraterrestrials have come to this planet for a very long time and were thought to be gods by ancient humans. According to Joseph Campbell we are in need of a new myth to unite us. Human consciousness is veiled. But it is not veiled compared to the consciousness of a mineral a plant or an animal. Human consciousness is capable of much more than we am at. When the electrical barriers to the expansion of human consciousness are lifted or attenuated and dispersed, higher light enters the human mechanism. And we achieve what is called enlightenment. Well enlightenment is the type of Consciousness and there are different names for enlightenment such as Satori and Samadhi which relates to a higher form of enlightenment.  Enlightenment is a new relationship of the human consciousness to the factor of light. When we speak of Enlightenment we can say that in that light we shall see light additional light,since the whole universe is light of different grades and different frequencies.  Enlightenment is the apprehension of the next grade of frequency which we have not yet apprehended. Enlightenment is the apprehension of successive degrees of light in their varying frequencies. Enlightenment is a sequential process. Some people think it happens all at once and it may seem so but there is a preparation. All Enlightenment is prepared through the refinement of the vehicles of consciousness. When sufficient refinement exists new types of light will be apprehended. Enlightenment for some is the basis type of illusion for a higher being. But always there is a progressive apprehension of ever more rapid frequencies of light, and when we reach a certain point apprehending something that has simply been beyond my registration, we call it enlightenment.  Monadic Media Playlist Enlightenment -YouTube, Anthony Chene Enlightenment links list  -  YouTube Dr. Mitchell Gibson    YouTube Audioenlightenment.com