Dreams in here....Reality out there.
When it seemed Dougall had been confusing dreams and reality, Father Ted quickly came to young Father Dougall's aid. So Ted, with ecclesiastical authority, kindly tried to assist Dougall by creating a tremendous drawing of a man in his surroundings. Father Ted, repeatedly, if testily pointed out the error of Dougall's ways by pointing to the drawing:
"Dreams...in here. Reality...out there"!
Well, this little confusing conundrum would appear to have been put to bed once and for all by quantum physics. It seems that after all, Dougall was right... and Ted was wrong....dreams are "in here", and reality is also... "in here". It's all "in here". There is no "out there". It's all in your head. It's all an illusion. All of it.
Reality appears to be "out there", but it's nothing but electrical signals and manufactured images and sensations occurring on the stage of the brain, nowhere else. Sorry to disappoint, but you are creating everything. Without "you" or the "I", there would be nothing. Does the world persist when you're no longer there? Well, yes, but only because other myriad selves exist or have being, to be conscious of it in the first place. Take them all away, and there remains nothing. But of course that assumes that you could take consciousness away, hypothetically, which is infinitely beyond unlikely. There is no external world outside of the self, because the "external" world cannot be conscious of itself. Even if there could be an external world, it could only have a "virtual" reality, a sort of factness, a virtual possibility. As far as this external world goes, that is not what you are perceiving, even though you think you are. You don't have any direct contact at all with the supposed source of these sensations, even though you believe you do. What you perceive is a mental copy of all the information reaching the brain. As such, this mental copy has the same level of reality as a dream, memories from the past or mental projections into the future, -all mental copies. Not that these things are not "real". That does not make them any less real.They are real because your mind makes them real. It is your mind that defines what 'real' means, not the supposed external world. There is no 'real' definition, that is different to 'real' to the mind, because everything, absolutely everything is perceived with it. There is no common sense "physical" real versus "mental" real definition. It's all mental. Just as much mental as a dream, only differing in degree. Matter is empty. There is no final particle or building block. Even what we perceive as atoms are largely empty and anything but solid. If the very building blocks of the world are empty and insubstantial, how can anything we see really have any solidity or substance?
"Dreams...in here. Reality...out there"!
Well, this little confusing conundrum would appear to have been put to bed once and for all by quantum physics. It seems that after all, Dougall was right... and Ted was wrong....dreams are "in here", and reality is also... "in here". It's all "in here". There is no "out there". It's all in your head. It's all an illusion. All of it.
Reality appears to be "out there", but it's nothing but electrical signals and manufactured images and sensations occurring on the stage of the brain, nowhere else. Sorry to disappoint, but you are creating everything. Without "you" or the "I", there would be nothing. Does the world persist when you're no longer there? Well, yes, but only because other myriad selves exist or have being, to be conscious of it in the first place. Take them all away, and there remains nothing. But of course that assumes that you could take consciousness away, hypothetically, which is infinitely beyond unlikely. There is no external world outside of the self, because the "external" world cannot be conscious of itself. Even if there could be an external world, it could only have a "virtual" reality, a sort of factness, a virtual possibility. As far as this external world goes, that is not what you are perceiving, even though you think you are. You don't have any direct contact at all with the supposed source of these sensations, even though you believe you do. What you perceive is a mental copy of all the information reaching the brain. As such, this mental copy has the same level of reality as a dream, memories from the past or mental projections into the future, -all mental copies. Not that these things are not "real". That does not make them any less real.They are real because your mind makes them real. It is your mind that defines what 'real' means, not the supposed external world. There is no 'real' definition, that is different to 'real' to the mind, because everything, absolutely everything is perceived with it. There is no common sense "physical" real versus "mental" real definition. It's all mental. Just as much mental as a dream, only differing in degree. Matter is empty. There is no final particle or building block. Even what we perceive as atoms are largely empty and anything but solid. If the very building blocks of the world are empty and insubstantial, how can anything we see really have any solidity or substance?
Nice blog entry. I'd like to quote Philip K. Dick here: “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”
ReplyDeletePerhaps there is not one reality but multiple realities floating in the cosmos, each one obeying it's own set of laws. Michio Kaku compared this model of the Universe (or Multi-verse) to a bubble bath where each bubble is created from another. I'd like to believe there are multiple dimensions that exist. Unfortunately, I don't think we'll have a chance to visit them anytime soon. Well...at least not in this life.