How do you define real? Is there one core reality?

Im just remembering this line from The Matrix -
Mouse makes the following comment about the appearance/reality regarding tastes: - “How did the machines know what Tasty Wheat tasted like. huh? Maybe they got it wrong. Maybe what I think Tasty Wheat tasted like actually tasted like oatmeal or tuna fish. That makes you wonder about a lot of things. You take chicken for example, maybe they couldn't figure out what to make chicken taste like, which is why chicken tastes like everything.”

Should the senses we trust to distinguish reality from illusion be fully trusted? Can they be fooled?

How do we know if the world we are in really exists?

Do we all have alternating realities?

Or our friends and family are just figments of our imagination?


How do we distinguish between what is "reality" and what is "dream state of mind". What I mean is, if Im sleeping, and having what I think is a dream, how do I know if it is really a dream, and not reality? And if Im living in what I think is reality, how do I know its not a dream?

''He who dreams of drinking wine may weep when morning comes; he who dreams of weeping may in the morning go off to hunt. While he is dreaming he does not know it is a dream, and in his dream he may even try to interpret a dream. Only after he wakes does he know it was a dream. And someday there will be a great awakening when we know that this is all a great dream. Yet the stupid believe they are awake, busily and brightly assuming they understand things, calling this man ruler, that one herdsman ‑ how dense! Confucius and you are both dreaming! And when I say you are dreaming, I am dreaming, too. Words like these will be labeled the Supreme Swindle. Yet, after ten thousand generations, a great sage may appear who will know their meaning, and it will still be as though he appeared with astonishing speed''. - Zhuangzi.

Everything around us is quantized, ie, when broken down to the smallest we can measure, we find that 'stuff' appears in a minimum size chunk. You can't make it smaller 'cause that's as small as it can go.

These are basic things like energy and time and space - all have a minimum chunk size.

Like a picture made up of lots of pixels, so is our 'reality'.

If its' all made up of pixels, doesn't it look like it is digitized?

I don't think that this is reality. It is just a simulation. Chicken tastes like everything.

reply to post by CandiceZ


Imo, the only thing that is real is consciousness.

Everything else is a manifestation of it.

Right now we are somewhat sharing the illusion wich has set boundaries and parameters, wich is a core ``reality``, you could say.

There was a fantastic documentary I watched a few weeks back, done by the BBC's Horizon programme, talks about different theories including and not limited to, Holographic Principle, parallel worlds etc...
Here are the links ....

Horizon- What is Reality Part 1


Horizon- What is Reality Part 2

Horizon- What is reality Part 3

Horizon-What is Reality Part 4

Just under an hour long in its entirety, but a great watch.... Enjoy

you know you're in reality because other ppl can confirm you're in reality, if you cant understand this premise, and say "well what if everyone is a figment of my imagination?", then i wont even bother to discuss with you, because you're medically insane.

ask someone to pinch you, punch you, stab you, then shoot you, and if you're still not sure you're in reality, then there is no hope for you. i dont buy this whole consciousness thing one bit btw, and ive studied it extensively.

What may be green to one may be red to another. But because we associate that certain color through speech, we assume it looks the same to everyone else. That applies to all the senses. I recommend meditation. Also try reading ancient philosophies. The emerald tablets are great on this subject.

reply to post by solargeddon


Thanks for that I will have a look

Originally posted by vjr1113
you know you're in reality because other ppl can confirm you're in reality, if you cant understand this premise, and say "well what if everyone is a figment of my imagination?", then i wont even bother to discuss with you, because you're medically insane.

ask someone to pinch you, punch you, stab you, then shoot you, and if you're still not sure you're in reality, then there is no hope for you. i dont buy this whole consciousness thing one bit btw, and ive studied it extensively.

edit on 6-3-2011 by vjr1113 because: bear

How do you know if your insane? I mean, maybe your not insane maybe there is no such thing as insanity.
What im saying is how do you know if 'reality' is reality? Maybe its not even real..

Yes! I agree with all of the above!

everything is energy and matter is formed from it. the energy that passes from me, into the person next to me is of the same source, the only difference between us is your mind, and the memories it holds of the experiences in your life. but you are of the same source, every state you are in, dream or wake. If you have a strong memory of a dog attacking you, you might be afraid of dogs.

but the energy is the only thing that is actually real, (consciousness) it spirals around, and around and around. forever and ever. like a thought can sometimes spiral around and around and around in your head. if you have ever seen a dead body, you would see there is little energy to it, not enough to do anything amazing like a simple dream.

And everything is always changing but seems to stay the same with out change, like a river its moving so fast and it is always there, but it is never the same river; it only appears the same. and so does this reality; It is a river.

as you open all your chakras you start to understand this energy more and more, you see this world through your eyes only; but your eyes have so many limitations to what is actually around you. Around you there is so much more then the eye can see; we know this thanks to science. Thanks to science we are learning that everything that was taught to us by God and form a spiritual consciousness, seems hard to understand; but is REAL.

A bumblebee sees the world completely different then we ever could; your eyes do not see the same world that you are in. You could only imagine the intense ultraviolet colors a bee sees, and it is Real; only you cannot see it. If God opens your eyes, helps you see using your third eye and crown chakra, you will see it. but you cannot see anything if God does not make it be. Its truth soon everyone will understand like you said; when God wants us to, but only when God says "its time you are ready" otherwise reaching out thinking you can find this knowledge with out God's help will only bring about madness.

A good example of mass madness was what happened in Nazi Germany. They thought they were right, and yet they lacked the true God in them, and they couldn't be more wrong! But then, the rest of the world suffered the same madness, they went in to "save the world of the Nazi's!!" and yet they only did the same thing. This is why evil and madness runs our world today and we fear so much. Even christianity did the same thing!! the crusades was about rape and pillaging those who did not "believe in God" killing off the muslims, and yet, if these christians were of God they would have never done such a thing to another living creature. but that is mass madness, Those of God, do not fear death, and so nothing was taken from the muslims that were killed. A lack of understanding of the wake and dream state, is the same lack of understanding of the above, to think your dream is not real, only what you see with your 2 eyes is real, is madness. In the end, we choose the lesser of the 2 evils, but we still choose evil, and that will stop soon, so i dont worry too much about those who chose evil because i understand their fear.

The only truth to dreams now is that you are energy first! Traveling around, and around, you might be attached to your body, thinking of it as the only real thing.. thinking you are a human having a spiritual moment, when actually you are spirt having a human moment. If you think of this as the only true "reality" then when you die, you will lose everything you loved so much. but if you think of God and dreams and everything you cannot see as the only true reality, then when you die, you will gain everything.

I am learning as everyone else in this world how to detach myself from this material world. It is a great experience, but it is not real. as i have more and more lucid dreams, i like to think im spiraling down the right path.

I like Philip K. Dick's classic definition:

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
-(from "How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later", 1978)

It's a good rule of thumb in lots of weird situations. And when you get right down to it, that's all that can really be said of any of the best theories about such matters, anyway. Who knows, maybe this thread is the groundbreaking ontological breakthrough man has been waiting for since the dawn of time, when the ontological secret, the crown jewel of philsophical speculation, is finally discovered.

reply to post by CandiceZ


The only thing that can be known for sure is that i am having an experience. I can not know for sure that there is anything else or anybody else. It could be a figment of my imagination.
So study the only 'thing' that is real.
Rupert Spira wrote a book called 'The transparency of Things' - Contemplating the Nature of experience.
What is experience?
What are you?

reply to post by CandiceZ


i know what you mean , i have had some dreams that seem so like everyday life your just not sure sometimes, for all i know i could be dreaming write now while i am doing this. i have had dreams where i have woken up in my dream but i was still dreaming, now that is truly odd

reply to post by CandiceZ


Reality is an illusion created by our own nervous system. It is the only way we perceive the world but there may be deeper realities underlying within.

This documentary might interest you:

reply to post by Topato


Wow thanks for that, brilliant documentary, going to let my kid watch it

Great find

Reality is self-sustaining, illusions eventually disappear.

the 8th wonder of the world

indeed.

Originally posted by CandiceZ
Im just remembering this line from The Matrix -
Mouse makes the following comment about the appearance/reality regarding tastes: - “How did the machines know what Tasty Wheat tasted like. huh? Maybe they got it wrong. Maybe what I think Tasty Wheat tasted like actually tasted like oatmeal or tuna fish. That makes you wonder about a lot of things. You take chicken for example, maybe they couldn't figure out what to make chicken taste like, which is why chicken tastes like everything.”

Is that the bald guy? I can't recall the names. I liked that guy. He was the bad guy that tried to kill em and live the rest of his life in the matrix. I don't like him because of what he did, but because he seemed like the most down to earth guy in the movie - he may have lost his mind a little, though. The others seemed... too caught up in things or too self-righteous EVEN THOUGH I admired them immensely.

But this quote, I don't know. I don't know what chicken is SUPPOSED to taste like. I only know what I think it tastes like. The fact that I can ask this question or that mouse asked this question leads one to believe that he was somewhere else, so to speak. Know what I mean? He wasn't with Neo or Morpheus like they were.

Should the senses we trust to distinguish reality from illusion be fully trusted? Can they be fooled?

They can be fooled. There're numerous scientific examples all across academia. I've seen so many over the years. I cannot recall them like I'd like to, but I know I saw them and that's all that matters to me. I think one example I saw was in my physics book. Our eyes tend to want to separate some things even though they're the same. And the implication was that we may see difference where none exists at all.

How do we know if the world we are in really exists?

We can't. All we can know is that our consciousness exists. Our mind might exist in a box somewhere, who knows where. It would be fed information probably from a computer. So long as the computer could simulate everything we see as reality then the whole act could pass and no one would know. "I think therefore I am" sums it up. On the other hand, everything we see could be our imagination. So in that case our brain isolated in the box and reality is invented on the spot.

Do we all have alternating realities?

Not sure what you mean. I think we all interpret reality a little differently, but our shared DNA and common reality ensures that our different realities are similar.

Or our friends and family are just figments of our imagination?

They could be. Again, the only thing we know exists is our own consciousness.

How do we distinguish between what is "reality" and what is "dream state of mind". What I mean is, if Im sleeping, and having what I think is a dream, how do I know if it is really a dream, and not reality? And if Im living in what I think is reality, how do I know its not a dream?

I've had both lucid dreams and normal dreams. Most of the time I have normal dreams. In normal dreams I think it's real. Only when I wake up do I realize it was a dream. When I come lucid, I know it's a dream. I am not sure how I know, but I do. But I do not know whether reality is a dream or not. I will know if and when I wake up from it.

''He who dreams of drinking wine may weep when morning comes; he who dreams of weeping may in the morning go off to hunt. While he is dreaming he does not know it is a dream, and in his dream he may even try to interpret a dream. Only after he wakes does he know it was a dream. And someday there will be a great awakening when we know that this is all a great dream. Yet the stupid believe they are awake, busily and brightly assuming they understand things, calling this man ruler, that one herdsman ‑ how dense! Confucius and you are both dreaming! And when I say you are dreaming, I am dreaming, too. Words like these will be labeled the Supreme Swindle. Yet, after ten thousand generations, a great sage may appear who will know their meaning, and it will still be as though he appeared with astonishing speed''. - Zhuangzi.

If life were cheap, if there was no pain, no death, then this would be no more than a dream, true. A game. A cosmic play on life. But because there is pain and things are not cheap and we do indeed die, then I cannot accept that life is just a dream or just a game or just a cosmic joke. It feels serious so it must be. Now that does not mean that this is not a dream. It only means that it doesn't feel like one, to me.

I don't know what's real as I've taken too many bites from the apple of knowledge. Though the more I feel like I'm existing in reality in the strictest sense, the more I suffer and am taken by qualms of weariness and anger. So, I guess I could say illusions, dreams, and mysteries are fun for me because they represent something simple and child-like. It's also the reason I like to watch lots of movies. Funny how life can imitate art, art life, and dreams reality, and whatever else.

You dont see the world the way it is ,you see it the way you are.

For me, the definition of "real" would mean the absolute, ultimate, irreducible, objective, elementary truth of existence. Because we access information through perception, I do not personally believe that it is necessarily possible for us to ever directly perceive or experience the "real." For me, it would mean a complete lack of subjectivity, a total lack of a self perceiving anything. In fact, it might in theory mean a total lack of consciousness or awareness at all whatsoever for all I know.

But that's just a thought. Who really knows? I can't proclaim to know what "real" is. All I can say is that my perceptions, so far, tell me that whatever "this" is, isn't "real" in the traditional sense. And even if it is, what I experience of it can't be, because of subjectivity.