What is Reality?

“Reality” is that which is real. What is real? Is this computer “real?” It is certainly comprised of matter, and matter is comprised of energy which is the building block of all things physical. There in, lays the question. Is physical existence real? The basic question here is really: Does physical reality govern the non-physical or does non-physical reality govern the physical? I suggest the latter.

The tools with which we seek physical reality are incapable of understanding that which is non-physical. Using these tools we always stop at energy. As a child I was the irritating kid that always asked ‘why?” A troublesome question since our system is not set up to answer this question. Ask “why” enough times and you will end up at “energy” or “I don’t know.” Our tool box understands reality as energy. What is energy?

Energy is spirit. Now we leave the physical in pursuit of reality. Spiritual reality governs physical reality. Since the beginning of time we have disagreed upon what spiritual reality is, I think that this is because we are using the wrong method of discovering it. We live in a world that idolizes Ultimates. If something can be reduced to its ultimate form we accept it, if not then we have not discovered it. What if there is no ultimate spiritual reality? No way of solidly stating truth? What if our world is not as constant as we so desperately desire?  What if we are truly in the abyss of which most major spiritualities speak? Judaism, Christianity and Islam all accept the Biblical book of Genesis as the explanation concerning where we have come from. Believers from within each of these traditions disagree on whether the account is literal history or poetry. Our discussion is not concerned with this argument. In either case God creates physical existence within the abysmal spiritual reality. This shows up in other spiritual traditions as well but I’ll not exhaust them all.

Is it so terrible to think that spiritually there is no bedrock at the bottom of our sandcastle? What if the deity which I call God is the only constant reality? What if his nature is so vast that we are unable to view him in constant form?

Irrational Rationality

The other night one friend of mine asked another, “Do you not want for something more?”

The speaking friend had been explaining about how she had rejected Catholicism as a young adult and was now searching for spiritual fulfillment. She had spent some time considering herself as an atheist and found it terribly unfulfilling. She was unwilling to return to the religion she had left behind, and seemed to be spinning frantically in circles reaching out to the passing, flickering glimpses of something she couldn’t quite make out.

The friend she was speaking to is an atheist who rejected the Hinduism of his family after moving to the USA and dredging through academia. He had been told that a rational person can not believe in something which cannot be empirically evidenced. His courses convinced him that, while the scientific method has not yet discovered all that there is to know, it has certainly disproved the idea of a spiritual world.

His response was simply that he did long for there to be more, but since there was nothing more, it was a silly desire.

Oh, how far we’ve come as a society! We know so much! We are so advanced that we have abandoned reality in order to map our surroundings.

One man said, “It is only that which we do not yet understand that we call God.”
I say, “It is God that we do not yet understand. It is that which we do not understand that we call not God.”

God is in everything and yet he is superior. He is not “he” and he is both “he” and “she”. He is the scientific method and he is art. He is the answer and he is the question. He is our reality yet we do not realize him. He is found all around us yet he will not be discovered. he has been called many things; he is God, he is Spirit, he is Force, he is light, truth, existance, wind, breath, life, ultimate conciousness, abyss and reality. What do you call him?