What is reality?
It’s a question that has challenged philosophers for ages.
If I can touch, taste, see, hear, or smell it – then it must be real.
If it affects my emotions then clearly reality is operating.
But the same is true in dreams. My senses and emotions are triggered. It isn’t until I wake up that I realize it wasn’t real. During the dream it seemed as if all the images and experiences were truly occurring.
While everything around us seems to convince us that this is real – it isn’t.
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” This from one of the greatest thinkers in modern history, Albert Einstein.
So if “this” isn’t reality, two immediate questions come to mind:
- What is this?
- What, then, is reality?
The answer to the first question is that what we think of as reality is just like our sleeping dreams at night.
The body’s serial adventures, from the time of birth to dying are the theme of every dream the world has ever had. The “hero” of this dream will never change, nor will its purpose. Though the dream itself takes many forms, and seems to show a great variety of places and events wherein its “hero” finds itself, the dream has but one purpose, taught in many ways. This single lesson does it try to teach again, and still again, and yet once more; that it is cause and not effect. And you are its effect, and cannot be its cause.(T-27.VIII.4)
We are so convinced that the world affects us and that this is real. The idea that it’s a dream – made up by us – is too preposterous to even consider.
Or is it?
Join us in Monday’s class where we’ll explore those questions, particularly #2, “What, then, is reality?” I look forward to seeing you then.