Reality

Reality in everyday usage means "everything that exists." The term "Reality," in its most liberal sense, includes everything that is, whether or not it is observable, accessible or understandable by science, philosophy, theology or any other system of analysis. Reality in this sense may include both being and nothingness, whereas "existence" is often restricted to being.

Simple reality

In the simplest sense, our reality consists of our four-dimensional world: height, width, depth and time. What happens when we lose one of these dimensions from our reality? What if we lose depth, for instance? Most people would reply that we'd then have a cinematic effect, as in a movie. When we view a motion picture, what we are watching has height, width and time, but no depth. One dimension of our reality is missing.

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What happens if we remove the fourth dimension? Here we have a photograph. A photo has height and width, but no time or depth. Lose one more dimension and we have a line. Lose another and we are left with a point. We have position but no longer have magnitude. People know these four dimensions well. For us they make up our simple reality: the space-time continuum.

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As humans travel along the space-time continuum, our scientific method works and the rules of logic apply. Everything flows nicely. Many people actually view this continuum as though it were the entire universe. It is not. What rattles our complacency is that from time to time we step outside of our four-dimensional world. One-third of our life is spent outside what we call reality. For the eight hours that we sleep every solar day, the rules of logic and time do not exist. The Ancient philosopher Chuang Tzu, around 300 B.C. stated: "Last night I dreamed I was a butterfly. I do not know whether I was a man dreaming I was a butterfly or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man." In western thought Heraclitus has provided very similar observations on The Absolute.

Related Topics:
Sleep - Heraclitus - The Absolute

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However, sleep is only a minor mystery. The real problem arises on that day when we go to sleep and do not wake up. On that day, we permanently step outside the space-time continuum. We die. This event is the mother of most religion and some philosophy.

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