What is Real?

AI Generated Free Photo. 

As children we are taught that something is “real” only if it comes to us through the uses of our senses or by dogma given to us by the “authoritarians”.  If we can touch it, see it, hear it, taste it, and smell it, then it must be real.  The harsh truth however is much more abstract.  Physics has proven it is impossible for us to actually touch anything since at the atomic level the atoms within our skin can not physically contact the atoms that make up a table.¹  What actually occurs is an electro-chemical stimulus is transmitted from the nerve endings of our hand to our brain.  In fact all our senses are nothing more than stimulus transmissions.  Light stimulates the cones and rods of our eyes; sound stimulates the nerve fibers of the inner ear; etc.  Our brain collates, correlates, associates, and ultimately manifests a conscious perspective related to the stimuli.

Even time is a subjective construct, created within our minds.  Tests were performed on individuals where a stimulus was applied to the nerve endings in their hand to trace the exact location within their brains the stimulation was processed.  Since it takes time for the stimulation to be transmitted through the nervous system it would be a logical assumption that the individuals would sense stimulation within their brain earlier than the stimulation of their hand.  All tests showed that the individuals consistently sensed the stimulation in their hand earlier than that from within the brain.  The conclusion was “... there appeared to be no neural mechanism that could be viewed as directly mediating or accounting for the subjective sensory referrals backward in time.”²

Many of us are fooled by the illusion of the physical precipitation of matter we call our “universe”.  We judge our own abilities to interact and manipulate the world around us based upon the myopic teachings and historic biases of our popular culture.  These teachings admittedly provide us with a multitude of tangible and necessary skills for survival.  They even granted us joyful means of expression and connection.  Our teachings however, fail us with regard to our ability to influence that larger organism within which we all exist and ultimately are a part.  In the end, these biases or prejudices manifest themselves within our belief systems as a barrier to seeing and to utilizing those powers and gifts that the Devine source has infused into his creatures.  

These myopic teachings contain within their core postulates, the idea there is a real separation between man and nature or between man and the ultimate.  This is a flawed vision that was uncovered and corrected over 6000 years ago in the east but has been repeatedly lost or ignored to satisfy humanities weakness for power and control.  For human kind to proceed along any meaningful path in the future we need to reawaken, revive, and return to the general population this essential knowledge from our past; “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”³

Because the physical world makes such an immense impact upon our consciousness, it is natural for us to focus on the large pleasures and obstacles presented to our lives.  Because the macro appearance is so apparent, we often fail to look below the surface to find those much smaller causes, which actually drive and control the larger.  In this context, maybe we should restate the old hermetic axiom as “as from the smaller, so then to the larger”.

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¹ Krumeich, Frank Properties of Electrons, their Interactions with Matter: sect. 3.1.1

² Libet, B.  Mind time: The temporal factor in consciousness: Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (2004)

³ Santayana, George The Life of Reason: Vol. 1 (1905-1906)

First © March 29, 2013

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