What is the relationship between one’s personal reality and "real" reality? What is reality and why does it exist? These are the questions that we Realists explore. Have you ever wondered if reality is just your own personal illusion and that you are the only person in the world that is really real? Perhaps you are really a space alien and this world is a computer generated training experience where you are put in a simulated reality to train for some higher purpose. If that is so then what you are reading here is part of the simulation. But perhaps I am the one who is real and you are all part of my illusion. After all, as the founder of the Church of Reality, if that isn't a hint that this is my illusion, I don't know what is.
One thing we do know is that we can't all be in control personally of a common objective reality. So I'm going to accept that either this is a really good personal illusion or that I'm just part of a larger objective reality. In either case the appropriate thing to do is to live life assuming that this is not a personal illusion and that we are all part of a greater reality.
Since the world can be all of our personal illusions, there must be some greater reality that we are all part of.
Objective reality exists. The universe is about 15 billion years older than I am. I didn't create reality, reality created me. I am part of reality and I have, or at least seem to have, a limited influence over a very small part of it. For the most part I am an observer. I get to see a very small part of this planet, a planet that orbits a star that is one of billions of stars in a galaxy that is but one of trillions of galaxies in the universe. And I exist for an extremely brief period of time. I am witness to a very small slice of reality as seen from my perspective. Nevertheless, it is all I have to work with so I'll do the best with what I have.
Reality is the great unknown. It is huge. It is beyond imagination. It is incomprehensible. Yet we attempt to comprehend it. Even though our minds are limited we have banded together to share knowledge and link our minds together in a great neural network to explore, store, and share vast amounts of information about ourselves and the reality we live in.
In addition to our biological bodies and brains that act as crude computers, we have built machines to aid us. Information is no longer stored in biological brains that forget and die. We have digital memory to store facts. We launch telescopes into space to peer back to the beginning of time and space itself. We can now surf the web and post our thoughts online for all to read. We can communicate across the planet with text, voice, pictures, and video. Yet we still know very little about our existence. However, we continue to learn more.
Your personal reality is your perception or experience of the greater objective reality.
Individually, we are each just one of billions of observers each with our own perspective of reality. We see reality from our point of view. We are born in a location and raised by parents and in a community. We are taught a language with which to communicate. We are exposed to ideas and we are given knowledge from the Tree of Knowledge. This becomes our reality, our personal reality, or reality from our perspective.
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Many people say, "I have my reality and you have yours, and who is to say which one is real? Maybe my reality is real to me and your reality is real to you?" Some say, "If I believe in it – it's real to me." Do we have our own individual realities that are somewhat isolated from objective reality? Does believing in something make it real?
Suppose a Christian who sincerely believes that God can make him fly and a Muslim who believes that God can make him fly both jump off the Golden Gate bridge at the same time. Who will hit the water first? Perhaps we should try it and see. Then, we can get thousands of people praying for both of them and keep repeating the experiment until we find someone who defies the law of gravity. If any of them fly then all us Realists will convert to the religion of the person who God makes fly. If neither flies, then we Realists will bury the faithful and the planet is ours.
The point here is that gravity is real and it doesn't need you to believe in it for it to be real. Gravity doesn't require your faith, it doesn't love you, and it treats everyone equally all the time. When you stop believing in gravity, it doesn't go away.
Believing in something doesn't make it real. If something is real its reality doesn't depend on belief. Therefore, if you believe in something that is real and I don't believe in it then you are right and I am wrong. My belief, even if I believe strongly with all my might doesn't make it real.
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