POST 14- What is Reality???

When we talk of reality we have formed a habit to think that whatever can be percieved by our five sense is real. Most of the time we take concensus as a proof of what is real. but the material is not the only mode of thought. What is an idea? You have the idea of the home you live in when you are a thousand miles from it, even an image "in your mind." Is that material, i.e. physical. Can anyone prove you have that idea in your mind? Nobody else than you can know what thought you have in your mind at this very second. According to concensus there is no thought in your mind but is it the truth?? Also we know ideas "float around" everywhere all the time, and have great influence on us (called "memes"). Experience itself is not physical, although has physical causes (brain). Everything effects you.

We have a habit of trying to fit everything we see in the 3 Dimensions which we understand. We know about the fourth dimension but we never care much as we have taken it for granted that we won't be able to change it to have any particular effect.

But what are dimensions??

Talking in a very crude language a dimension is something according to which the changes in a system are studied. We study how much does one dimension change with respect to some other dimension. For example when we study motion of a car, we study how much distance it travels in some particular time. So dimensions are somethings according to which a system is studied but what we forget many times is that it is to simplify the study that we consider these dimensions. We decided that we'll study the car with time and distance as dimensions. That doesn't mean that there can't be any other dimensions. We could've selected anything. We could've selected the amount of the reduction of fuel as a dimension or the anytjing else. So it should be clear that the dimensions have nothing to do with what is actually happening. It is just a few variables that are chosen to make a simple study of a system.

But when we talk of the real world, we start thinking that there are only 3 Dimensions(Sometimes we consider 4th, if it answers some contradictions). But can't there be any other dimensions. There can be infinite of them. It depends on the person who is studying the system that how much deeply he wants to study the system. To study what is really happeming, he'll have to consider every dimension. Some of the dimensions can be the thought processes that are running through his mind. All depends on him, how he studies it. While trying to fit anything into the dimesions that we understand, we forget that the dimensions that you see is only the map of reality and the real thing is far much bigger(or may be far smaller). Whatever we percieve with our five senses is just a map of the reality and we start considering it as reality. We start saying to many things-- How is this possible?? These questions only arise when you try to fit things into 3 or 4 Dimensions.

I watched something on discovery that really impressed me. I don't remember the name of the program but do remember the concept he was trying to explain.

• Take a piece of paper and a pin. Consider this piece of paper as a 2 D world. Just imagine that there are people living on the paper who just understand the two dimensions and know nothing about the 3rd dimension. Now hold the pin on the top of the paper. Till the pin is a little far from the paper, the paper people know nothing about it as they can't understand the 3rd dimension. We know that the pin exists. Prick the paper with the pin. What has happened?? As the pin pricks the paper, it enters the paper people's world. Won't they see something appearing through thin air?? When you take out the pin, the paper people will think that the pin just dissappeared in thin air. For you nothing really happened but for the paper people it might have been a rendezvous with what they might consider god.

Similarly we just think that the reality has to fit in the three dimensions that we can understand with our five senses and start considering anything that we don't understand as not real.
What we forget here is that it is not the dimensions that are controlling the system but the system that effects the dimensions. And while talking of reality we try mixing many sytems just to make them fit in the dimensions that we undertstand.

Proof follows scientific methodology. Spiritual "insight" is not subject to proof,...

The only knower of reality is the subject - what can be more real than this?