The Illusion of Reality

The Illusion of Reality.

We often hear the reality isn’t what it is, it’s much more than what we see. ‘Maya’ or Illusion In many ancient Vedas and other scriptures to Modern quantum physics’ development also brings us to a statement, “Reality is an Illusion”.

Being human and especially conscious creature, it’s our ability to ‘try to understand the surrounding’. The surrounding in which we live, and we make; including us and everything. The human or Us have made a structure of society, of course different societies in different parts of the world, but one thing common is we are social creature and live as a part of society. Each society has his own specialty, unique culture, language and history which also differs it from other society and gives a different identity. Having different approach in social and cultural aspects, humans tend to connect to each other and share a common society. To understand the term “REALITY” understanding human’s reality is crucial. As a conscious being humans are able to understand the surroundings not just act according to moment, but also keep track of moments and create a timeline. What does it mean? It means we have ability of understanding “Time”, not just as another dimension of spacetime but also as past, present and future. Now, bringing all aspects of human realities; Time, Society, Surroundings and Us we can have a real understanding of reality.

Let’s begin from ourselves, A human. How do you perceive yourself? Despite social identity what is a human? A mere creature, with a pair of limbs. We are just like other creature trying our best to survive in this earth. Thanks to cortex, we are living as most advanced creatures and in most case, we are more concerned about what to do out of our life than how to survive in this world. It’s because we live as a conscious creature in a society, society protects us, we have a way of getting food, a standard of life which no other creatures have created and it’s working well for us. A human, lives by the society, for the society acknowledging the responsibilities of the society. Our activities are not just completion of an action but also a fulfilment of social responsibility, and we get satisfied by it. What determines the satisfaction, or the feeling of responsibility in us? Is there something within us which drives us? Of course, our brain!!! The understanding of ourselves can be easier with the understanding of our brain. Brain simulates the reality out of the data it gets from the surroundings through sensory organs. How we see ourselves, our physical form is also a perception of our brain. The ability of recognition is what makes us outstanding among fellow creatures. The Neuroscience is whole other complex part of today’s science, and we have a lot to discover and understand about ourselves. In simple terms, we are just what our brain considers we are, our physical form; our body and our presence; the projection of an identity. It’s simulated and controlled by our brain for ourselves, which means my brain can only control myself. A question may arise, what about influence? Understanding how brain does control us has the answer. Our brain craves knowledge, Understanding the surrounding helps in survival, with the development of cortex now we use knowledge from past and use it to predict the future. That ability of brain is also the reason behind our social presence, and we being directed by social conditions. Now as for us the reality is what brain assumes the reality is, especially for physical reality.

Now let’s dive into the nature of reality. Look around yourself, there are a lot of physical objects including yourself which exist in the spacetime. For readers with little understanding of spacetime, it is the universe as it seems. Things are space; apple, cars, cats, earth, moon, sun, Andromeda galaxy, Nebulae everything is space, and this space exists within time making spacetime. The fabric exists as spacetime which is made up of everything including us. The time isn’t 4 O’clock or 5 O’clock in the spacetime, it’s the continuum of time from past present to future as a linear time, we exist in a timeline for a period. The time our cellphone or wristwatch shows works for us and is real for our understanding.  The space as we can understand, touch and feel are physical reality for us. Now we are moving to the point where we understand that our brain can have actual sense of reality. We can distinguish between basketball and football, despite both being spherical and almost similar size, we have understanding which one is which. But what makes one football and other basketball? It isn’t the just physical appearance but how we use it. We use ‘football’ to play game: football and same for basketball. Game which we have constructed in our reality. In spacetime game doesn’t occurs as something “object”, of course we use objects to play but in reality, a game exists in our brain. Not just in an individual’s brain but in society, we can say in mankind. One can play foul in a game, ‘a law’ of game exists which of course we have created for scenario and can be treated accordingly by the society. It isn’t limited to a game, but also the structure of whole society. There are rules by which we live in the society, Democracy, Reserve Bank, Parties, Kingdoms, Capitalism, Communism, Socialism. They exist and are real too. Now we got different realities around us; physical one where everything exists and Illusionary one which wraps us. In philosophy and science, we define it as Objective and Subjective reality.

The objective one is the reality around us, every stone and drop of water is objective one. The Dollar? Paper is real but the essence it holds that we consider money and is used in exchanging is subjective one. Parliament and Government is also the subjective reality. The reality isn’t the major thing to be concerned about, it’s us. ‘Humans’ are the one who made the subjective reality. For example, there is a culture of worshipping a kind of god in a corner of Nepal, while people in Australia are completely unaware of. And for the culture Nepalese people don’t consume non-veg for couple of days, while for those who has no participation in the culture has nothing to do be concerned about next meal. Here, the reality of culture exists for a certain people. Same is the Citizenship, before world war there was no concept of citizenship or passport. If any advancement happens and assume we went back to 1700 and said to our great-grandparents that we need certain kind of booklet with stamp in it to travel to the other corner of the world, they’d laugh at us. But the reality is passport/citizenship gives us much more strength and social security. It’s an identity of us that we belong to certain society, and it secures our existence.

Now we have to understand the subjective reality exists just for a species. The territory of a crab on the ocean floor is less concerning for a shark, baboon’s expression for dominance isn’t a reality for an eagle. Humans are much advanced compared to other creatures; we have more realities which are subjective. We have a whole genera of study where a person spends time studying baboons and crabs, while society guarantees his other needs in exchange. This is the reality of humans, we can not just create subjective reality, we can understand it. The well-developed nervous system is the reality that is understanding “the reality”. Till today we have understood that it’s our brain behind our understanding, knowledge and consciousness. And Humans are the only creatures with this level of ability in the known universe. The odd of this happening is near to impossible and we are just getting started to understand. Through out the human History there wasn’t much knowledge about anything. The only thing that worked was rule of thumb and myths. Today we have science, with experimental results. Now understanding reality, we have come down to the point, where everything is made up of particles. For objects subatomic particles plays role in creating the essence. The screen you’re looking at is a rock modified, whose smallest part is molecule. Same applies for you and me. It’s the arrangement of those subatomic particles that makes up anything. And with different arrangement, a different reality.