What is reality?

[benzun_1999]

What is reality??

Dear reader
can anyone explain me what is reality?
-benzun
please, explain in simple words

 

[Kamanya]

It is always easy to quote a dictionary, but that would be being too smart.


re•al•i•ty
n. pl. re•al•i•ties

The quality or state of being actual or true.
One, such as a person, an entity, or an event, that is actual: "the weight of history and political realities" (Benno C. Schmidt, Jr.).
The totality of all things possessing actuality, existence, or essence.
That which exists objectively and in fact: Your observations do not seem to be about reality.

And though this definition works for me on a base level, I dispute it.

Reality, I think, is subjective. This statement in itself has a delicious and ironic dichotomy.

Nothing in this world is true for all people and things. You can have a consensus on broad things like water for example, but the truth about water for one being can be substantially different for another. There are differing shades or spectrums of reality for everyone.

Your reality about your life and your place in it is absolutely unique and though you may have consensus on a number of areas, these are infinitesimally small when compared to my view of your reality.

It is a tough one to get ones head around because humans are drawn to seek the ultimate truth in things and thus end up in searches that either ultimately lead to the answers, answers are very often to questions that are radically different to those that started the search in the first place. Or to seek to disprove the others' "truth" or reality, the search for justification and worng and rightness.

Reality is actually about responsibility, it is yours. You can’t blame anyone or thing or philosophy for it.

I believe if we all on this Earth realized this it would be a lot less complicated and less stressful. There would be more acceptance and tolerance. We’d laugh more and love the reality we have.

Kamanya

 

[Dissident Dan]

Water is water, no matter what anybody believes. A person's beliefs do not necessarily have an effect on external reality.

 

[Kamanya]

"Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental"

Kind of sums it up.

I did not write my reply to get into a who is right debate, it is my reality. End of story. My reality does though by default insist that your reality might overlap at some point but for all intents and purposes is will be very different to mine, even on such things as water.

I kind of hoped at the least that you could agree that my view was valid but not necessarily similar to yours. Though you were welcome to it if it suited you.

I was wondering if you make a distinction between "internal" and external realities.

For the record I am not a politician, but I could be called non-extremist in my views - moderate does sound a bit, well, moderate.

As for a God, well, now we're on shaky ground.

 

[megashawn]

I'd have to agree that reality varies person to person. I personally tend to think its some sick twisted video game to entertain the immortals.

Nah, just kidding.

Its a tough question to answer. I often wonder if the world is there when I'm not looking, or does my brain generate the terrain as I come to it like in a racing game?

 

[Dissident Dan]

We are just part of reality. We are systems that interpret information in our own ways. We are a part of reality. What we think about it is just things moving around in our heads.

 

[Loren Booda]

Reality, contrary to popular endeavor, is that which you cannot escape.

 

[hypnagogue]

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."

- Phillip K. Dick

 

[Loren Booda]

hypnagogue,

The resemblence is unreal.

 

[hypnagogue]

So unreal that I stopped believing in it and it disappeared!

almost.

 

[TENYEARS]

Reality is what ever you want it to be until you see it for what it is. The question is will you be able to speak it?

 

[Dissident Dan]

Originally posted by TENYEARS
Reality is what ever you want it to be until you see it for what it is. The question is will you be able to speak it?

Can we stop speaking in riddles, please?

 

[Pyrite]

Can we stop speaking in riddles, please?

in a word, no.

There is reality, and there is what we observe. Our observations are based on our sences. We know that those sences can and often do lie to us. that is the objective, and the subjective. The truth, and what we construct from what we see and hear and feel. Whether or not the model of reality that we construct in our mind is close to actual reality or not is how we measure the truth in what we know. Lastly, reality may or may not be affected by our observations of it. (Schrodiger's Cat, anyone?) And the model of reality that we construct may or may not have anything to do with real reality.

 

[THANOS]

everything is real and nothing is not.

 

[Mr. Robin Parsons]

The first problem is the simplicity that the reality that everyone encounters (just go outside) is overwhelming to your ability to describe it, absolutely overwhelming, and from that, the perspectivizational (like that word?) problems, and descriptions, that everyone will indulge in.
It is impossible to describe, in accurate and complete detail, all of what you experience in the outside (or inside, but I know some will attempt to fool me, along with themselves in believing that they can describe it) World, hence every description results in a "partiallity of truth accounting" which implies that reality is, in fact of totality, indescribable.
The most that can every even be successfully approached, is 'selective slices' of small pieces of reality.

 

[Les Sleeth]

Originally posted by Dissident Dan
Water is water, no matter what anybody believes. A person's beliefs do not necessarily have an effect on external reality.

I like your take on reality except for one thing: why is reality only "external"?

 

[Les Sleeth]

Here's my contribution.

Reality: all that exits.

Confusion about reality stems from not differentiating between what exists, and our ability, as consciousness, to accurately perceive what exists.

Some people believe reality can be known without personally experiencing it, say by faith in other's interpretations or through pure reason. Yet those most successful in working with reality again and again demonstrate that knowing reality is predicated on personally experiencing it.

Here at PF, so often one witnesses debates about the nature of reality between people who have not personally experienced what they are claiming is true. That is why some suggest each person has their own reality, or that there are many realities. In actuality they are saying each person has their own interpretation of "what exists."

So between conscious human beings, the issue of who knows reality (IMHO) first boils down to the quality of perception each individual has developed; and since sharing what we know is important to human interaction, second is the quality of our interpretative and communication skills (that's assuming participants are honest communicators).

A final point I might add is that it seems to me that nature of consciousness, which I believe is fundamentally what a human being is, is to seek to know reality, whatever that turns out to be.

 

[Royce]

Reality is. It is what is. There is ultimate reality, that which is, was, and always will be. There is subjective reality, that which we perceive as reality through our senses and our experience. Sometimes it even has some relationship with and models ultimate reality though rarely. There is material or objective reality, that in which water is water, a rock is a rock despite our perception of it. All three realities have been addressed here; yet, without discerning which reality one has in mind we disagree.

There is only one ultimate reality, one ultimate truth that encompasses all other realities. We can only say that it is what is, whaterever that might mean or be. No one can know all of what reality is nor dispute someone else's difinition or perception of reality.

Ultimately the only reality that we can know is the reality that we perceive in our minds. To us it is reality reguardless of how well it may or may not model true reality. Each perception is unique and different but never the less true for each of us. Ultimately the only reality that we can ever know, on this world, in this life, is all in our heads. Reality is therefore subjective.

"I wouldn't worry about it none though.
Those dreams are all just in you head"
Bob Dillon's Dream

 

[Mr. Robin Parsons]

Personally, I find it rather interesting that, even though reality is overwhelming in it's presentation to us, as per our inability to describe it completely, we can still, rather easily, deal with it in our interactivity with it...kinda neat Eh?

 

[Les Sleeth]

Originally posted by Mr. Robin Parsons
Personally, I find it rather interesting that, even though reality is overwhelming in it's presentation to us, as per our inability to describe it completely, we can still, rather easily, deal with it in our interactivity with it...kinda neat Eh?

Good observation. Assuming I emerged out of some "base" reality, what sets me (and all life) apart from the rest of it all? Well, the material "stuff" associated with life adapts, so of course after 4.5 billion years of adaptive changes we have tools to interact reality.

Yet that doesn't explain what has caused living reality to adapt. The quantum explanation as of yet does not hold water, and the only reason it is cited as creation's first cause is because those citing are already committed to reality being purely physical. Without that bias, the question would still be open to any explanation which might answer it.

 

[Mr. Robin Parsons]

Animal, vegetable, and mineral, only two of those are living, and it's the other one we really seek to explain in science, cause the living ones have a component that we can only measure the activity of, not the presence thereof.

But I still think it's neat that the "outer world" is so overwhelming in it's presentation, and yet still so capable of being used, understood, known, and beyond, to all of us, s'o easily!

 

[Iacchus32]

Originally posted by Dissident Dan
Water is water, no matter what anybody believes. A person's beliefs do not necessarily have an effect on external reality.

It's still relative though, much in the way the reality of water to a fish is significantly different to the reality of water to a human.

Plus, everything that we do, is a matter of cause and effect, and "does" affect external reality, at least to some degree. Just by breathing, we affect the general atmosphere around us -- its external composition.

 

[RageSk8]

can anyone explain me what is reality?

Seriously, is this question even worth answering? Reality is kind of all around you...

 

[phoenixthoth]

that's what neo thought...

 

[scott_sieger]

we all share the truth
And we all see it differently
and this is also true.

Reality is both subjective and objective, our subjective state is also reality.

If one could design a more clever reality I'd like to know it.

So full of intrigue and puzzles so full of paradox and harmony. I sort of think that if you wanted to create a video game then all these ellements would be in it.

 

[Rader]

A REALITY is an occurring result of a perception of a evolutionary level of consciousness. Thats as simple as i can put it.

 

[Mumeishi]

Reality is that which IS.

There are different opinions what constitutes existence.

Some people insist that only physical, 'objective' events are real; others that only mental events are real and others that all phenomenal events are real.

I wonder if 'reality' has a meaning: if reality is that which is, then what falls outside that category? Show me something that is not.

 

[Rader]

Originally posted by Mumeishi
Reality is that which IS.

There are different opinions what constitutes existence.

Some people insist that only physical, 'objective' events are real; others that only mental events are real and others that all phenomenal events are real.

I wonder if 'reality' has a meaning: if reality is that which is, then what falls outside that category? Show me something that is not.

Show me something that is not reality

Well something that would not be reality would have to be a place absent of all perception from our five sences. It would have to be a state and place with no time or distance. All times and distances would have to be one. It would be quite the opposite of reality, just be without being. It would have to be the womb from which reality was born. It would be the vacuum from which everything was created from nothing.

 

[Mumeishi]

Show me...

Show me who you were before your parents were conceived.

Actually, a vacuum is not nothing, nor is a period of time in which there is 'nothing'. Both of these are things or states. Nothing is not a thing or state in the same way that nobody is not a person.

 

[TENYEARS]

Originally posted by Rader
Show me something that is not reality

Well something that would not be reality would have to be a place absent of all perception from our five sences. It would have to be a state and place with no time or distance. All times and distances would have to be one. It would be quite the opposite of reality, just be without being. It would have to be the womb from which reality was born. It would be the vacuum from which everything was created from nothing.

Would it not that not be reality or would it be reality? Have you ever been in reality?

 

[Rader]

Originally posted by Mumeishi
Show me...

Show me who you were before your parents were conceived.

Actually, a vacuum is not nothing, nor is a period of time in which there is 'nothing'. Both of these are things or states. Nothing is not a thing or state in the same way that nobody is not a person.

I never said a vacuum was nothing, it is nothing only until an infinity of things manifest itself though it. Nor is a period of time nothing, it is a specific period of time. No time is another thing, as is the vacuum, it is all posibilites but only when the clock moves and manifest itself throuh conscioussness.

Show me...

Show me who you were before your parents were conceived.Show me who you were before your parents were conceived.

I was nothing before my parents were concieved, i was an infinity of posiblities.

Both of these are things or states. Nothing is not a thing or state in the same way that nobody is not a person.

Actually quite the contrary, the vacuum no time and nobody is all the same thing, just a infinity of posibilities.

I hear you, read what you have said but can not find logic in what you have said. Can you explain in more detail your logic? I am interested ïn what you have to say.

 

[Rader]

Originally posted by TENYEARS
Would it not that not be reality or would it be reality? Have you ever been in reality?

Could you kind of refrase or put commas to fully understand your second to last sentence?

Anyway reality is individuality your reality and only yours, you could have similarities with other realities with other consciousness but never exactly the same. No reality or the total reality must be the sume total of all individual realities.

Have you ever been in reality?

Well I can say, that I have been, only in my reality. I have answered you from my perception of reality trying to understand yours.

I have an interesting question for you. Has there ever been documented cases of people who clam that they experienced other individual realities inside there own sentient reality, if only temprorary. You know like ghost. Forget mental cases of all kinds, I do not mean that. I mean temporary occupation of one consciousnes by another. If there was and scientific proof of it it could answer a lot of questions.

 

[TENYEARS]

Rut Ro Roge. I could tell you something here which I was saving for a book or something don't know quite what. I have a series of happenings which would qualify still as relative but a shared relativity outside physical experience. There is something I have experienced many times which is not just seeing the future. There is also something which I experienced during a vision of the future which was not of the future, but of the present. I know it to be true more than my name.

Rader, you are thinking. Watch where you step, you are on the edge of a bridge and are starting to walk across, it is a bridgeless bridge. Watch where you step you never know where you will land.

 

[phoenixthoth]

When Unity is realized it is irrevocable. You can’t gradually realize it. You can’t partially realize it. You are either in duality or in unity. There is no half-way house. There are states of profound relative unity within duality but they will still retain some sense of self, an ‘I am-ness’ even if this is very different to our normal sense of self. When Enlightenment is realized it cannot be ‘unrealised’. Unity is eternal. On its realisation it is known that unity was always and will always be there. It is only the limitations of duality based consciousness that give a sense of a passage of time - of there being a change from one state to another. All the work done prior to realising Enlightenment is like building a bridge over a bottomless chasm that you must cross. On the bridge you are very constrained by its limitations. Before it is built you can only be on one side. Once you have crossed you are free of this limitation but you can use the bridge to go back to the original side. However your relationship to the place you came from is forever altered by the fact you know what is on the other side. The journey to Enlightenment builds a ‘realisation body’ that, on realisation of Enlightenment, ‘connects’ the limited existence in duality to the infinite state that is now (but always has been and always will be) your permanent ‘home’. The realisation of this permanent state transforms the relationship to creation and to life. There is no longer any change that creation can throw at ‘you’ that can interrupt your essential state. You realize that you state was present before the birth of your body and will be present after its death.

 

[Rader]

Originally posted by TENYEARS
Rut Ro Roge. I could tell you something here which I was saving for a book or something don't know quite what. I have a series of happenings which would qualify still as relative but a shared relativity outside physical experience. There is something I have experienced many times which is not just seeing the future. There is also something which I experienced during a vision of the future which was not of the future, but of the present. I know it to be true more than my name.

Are you referring to remote viewing? If you are that is not what I mean either. I mean conscious understanding and interpretation of someone elses consciousness. I think consciousness that is individual consciousness is holistic in the live body. Its in all its cells organs and parts, some areas contribute more than others like the five sense organs and the brain but its everywhere. Which brings up a question when you replace body parts does your consciousness change. Go to the extreme, what about a brain transplant, its coming. What about your clone. If that's true will your clone experience the question I asked you. Will he have a paranoid consciouness split between what you are and what he is becoming. Or is it not possible to have or experience more than one consiousness. Up until now my only belief is that a individual consciousness is determined by two coordinates and two factors. X being the point in time and space that you were conceived. Y being the point in space and time that you were born. The intersection of X and Y is YOU. Its also curious that all these people who have out of the body experiences, always what is outside of the body is what observes the body lying there enate. How come the enate body never observes the out of the body. Is it because then the out of the body is the consciousness that when in the body is also then consciousness. Could we not say then that consiousness is life. If so then everyting is consciouss from the atom to us. Its a matter of levels and steps in the evolutionary process from nothing to everything.