theory on reality.

This is a theoretical ramble on the nature of reality, or not. It is really not meant to be taken too seriously, so if you are a scholarly type look away now. This theory is based on the general principle of: How can we actually ‘know’ anything at all for sure? That is, I repeat, how can we really’ know’ anything for sure, for sure?

Lets face it we all like to ‘think’ we know something for sure. But what is it that we really know for sure? Like for example, we all think we know for sure that all of us will someday die. But we don’t really know what that means do we? To die! What does it mean? All we know is that people seem to disappear out of their bodies in a particular way and the essence of them, as they were before that point, has now gone.

That’s just one example of not really ‘knowing’ anything at all, at all. What else do we think we know? That we live! We think we live, so we just live. “I think therefore I am”. Becomes, ‘I think therefore I know nothing at all!’ Because the way I see it, if you’re walking around thinking all the time your not really living are you, you are in a kind hypnotic trance.

Imagine if there were a way to measure consciousness or awareness, maybe there already is, then there would be a vast difference between someone who was swallowed up by his/her thinking processes and someone who was fully present and correct in terms of clear consciousness, whatever that is!

It seems to be the case that whatever we believe to be true is true within the constructs of the mind. So if I think I am an idiot then I will probably be an idiot, or more to the point, if I think I am an idiot, I will probably ‘act’ like an idiot without necessarily being one.
I’m not sure if this treatise will stand up for itself in a court of scientific law. But I think some of you will get my drift, after all I did tell you this wasn’t to be taken too seriously.

If you are not laughing by now you can leave and I wont be offended. I think what I am really trying to say is that belief isn’t reality and if you already know that ‘experientially’ then you may be bored and you have my permission to stop reading.

To try to convey the point more clearly to those of you that are still here I’ll use another idea. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that when we are born we are clear and innocent and that when we are born we have a brand new brain and nervous system.

We can compare the modern computer to the brain and nervous system as a functioning piece of hardware. The brain is, along with the nervous system, like the computer’s hardware, the hardware of the human ‘being’.

We get a new computer and we start to add the software of our choice so that the computer will perform the tasks we want it too. However when we are born we have no choice whatsoever of the software, or belief systems that will be programmed into our lovely new brain. We are victims more or less of the environment we are innocently born into. That could be called ‘karma*’.

Our brain will be programmed to see things the way they are taught to see things, and through our parents/carers input, our education, our religious or the lack of it’s input, our gender and even national identity we become someone with beliefs, ideas and habits that are literally programmed into us.

So belief is not reality. But of course we have to have something to hang our hat onto so we say things like.’ As a man thinketh in his heart, so too he shall be’, or words to that effect. And this is true in and of itself but it is not, in my opinion reality. As ‘the map’ is not the territory so too the ‘beliefs’ we hold are not reality either.

So what is reality then?