Edward’s Diary Entry 125: Is there a Reality?

O-oh! We are now hopelessly lost, like Lost inSpace! In past ages, for most people, obedience to the powers-that-be was essential. So “Reality” was first what ancient Kings said it was, then Lawgivers, then Religious leaders, then Monarchs and Emperors, and only recently what Dictators, Democracies and Schoolteachers – and of course TV and Newscasters today – tell us. That’s what Reality is for most of us…

Since Gutenberg, the lucky few could debate about Reality after reading various dense tomes and treatises wrapped in leather covers. In the 20th century, bookworms could research various opinions about Reality in silent, dusty libraries. Today, in the 21st century, Reality is right here for all of us in “0-1”, “yes-no”, binary format… on the Internet!

So we’re lucky, in a way, aren’t we? We can now see at a glance that Reality – really – is subject to about a couple of million different interpretations, not just a dozen. And if we take “reality” in the sense of “my reality” vs. “your reality”, then there are 7.4 billion “realities” in the world! See Wikipedia, where about 5,600 words with half as many external links to other pages will tell you all about “reality” according to modern thought!

This proves at least one big “reality” – that no one really knows what Reality is, because there are so many different variants on offer.

A Student of the Mind, however, after initially accepting and then thoughtfully rejecting all “realities” received from parents, youthful self-experience, book learning, schooling, and society at large, will eventually discover that Reality is everywhere, but being inconceivable and unexplainable, we never see it. We only get to discover bits and pieces of it through our sense impressions. It cannot be otherwise. The 5 inlets receive impulses of some kind from outside; these are interpreted as impressions, and give us certain information, but they cannot masquerade as any kind of real knowledge of what the Thing-In-Itself is. We only see a part of any one thing: if you look at someone’s face, you don’t see the back of that person’s head; if you look at a mountain, you only see one side of it; if one thought pops into your mind, it drives out another… So sense input is piecemeal at best, and always subject to interpretation.

Take the body, though. That is reality. The body is “existential”, meaning it exists. Bodies have been around for millions of years. They do not need any training to grasp reality and be influenced by it. They simply do it. They need air, and they get it. They need water; they get it. They need food; they get it. Rest and activity; they get it. The body is a reality in this sense.

Our minds, however, are mostly “psychological”, not "existential"; Human minds have been around for only about 35-40,000 years – built up from mammalian minds going back much further. Modern human minds suddenly popped up with enormous capacities and a degree of awareness that may or may not be developing over the centuries, from local and tribal relationships, to internationalisation and globalisation today. But does this current civilised human mind really exist? Apart from allowing the body to survive – or to degenerate if social customs include lack of exercise, use of drugs and pernicious body-and-mind-altering substances – does this mind really produce anything existential, ie, bring something into being, or existence? Is this mind real? Does it correspond to any reality? Or is it all self-made and self-invented? Our thoughts may use energy, but is there any reality to a thought? Some say a thought can be so strong that it can move an object. I have never seen that, have you? A thought can be strong enough to trigger an emotion, that’s for sure. But is an emotion produced from a thought any more substantial than the original thought? Is there not something or someone hidden behind any thought or emotion that is the real “you” producing the thought, response or the action?

The mind, in this sense, is a convenient fiction that may produce a real action in the outer world, but in itself, since it cannot grasp Reality fully, how can it be real? or let's say the degree of reality in the mind varies depending on the part of the mind involved... Taking the normal civilised human mind and referring back to our classification of the parts of the mind in previous posts, here's a short summary:

Memory (Experience). Unreal. This is just a heap of stuff picked up from the environment. Something of it may correspond to reality, other things are just dreams, fictions, or hallucinations.

Identity (Ego). Not real. It is just an attachment to (an identification with) an idea picked up from the environment or a thought produced by the mind itself. It can be quite unreal or fanciful.

Intellect (Discrimination).  A little more real, maybe. This is a kind of intelligence that says “yes” or “no” to certain things. It may correspond to Reality if a “yes” is given to something real; however, if influenced by Memory or Identity, a “yes” may be given to something quite absurd and unreal, or a "no" to something quite real!

Awareness (Chitta). Getting quite real. This comes from pure Intelligence, filtered down through the mind to our level of Self-Awareness (S-A 0, 1, 2, 3, etc), so it is our key to discovering Reality. As a sense of being “present” or “experiencing our self and the outside world at the same time", it is an essential pre-condition to discovering what Reality might be.

And so, we have to keep striving to understand how to increase Self-Awareness as the method for investigating Reality, and go beyond the "normal, civilised" mind to see if there is anything else IN THERE. Stay tuned for more.