What is Reality?

What is reality? How does reality actually work? These are metaphysical questions. Perennial answers have taken the form of a dichotomy with change on one side and form on the other side. Our individual DNA is the one physical constant about each of us yet we are always changing. Am I still the same essential Joey Carter as the Joey Carter at ten years old, or am I “Joey Carter, version 10ⁿ”? The Mississippi River is constantly changing yet it’s still considered the same river; is it the same river or not? Do we simply call it the same for practical reasons or is there something that’s actually constant?

Modern science theorizes that time and space may have begun at the Big Bang or one of several proposed theories (such as Brane, Superstrings, Big Bounce, etc.). They all seem to agree, however, that three-dimensional, normal time-and-space with its incremental changes, is not part of the “Big Picture.” It’s only part of the current picture. Science is restricted to using the scientific method, by testing hypotheses with experimentation – we are not.

So what is the true view of reality? How does it really work? Not just the surface appearances, but really. The answers that do not seem to change with time or culture are those that seem to follow a particular line: somehow we are in a world limited to time and space, making decisions, being born, living and dying; but at the same time the real reality is without time and space; it’s complete, all at once – All-is-One, here-and-now.

This implies that the past and future exist right now but we must experience life moment-by-moment, from present-moment to present-moment, with a built-in memory-capturing capability in order to conceive of a past, and this helped us develop the conception of the persistence of time – hence, our concept of normal reality. The here-and-now seems to be a very small sampling of the true reality, which is beyond the limits of time-and-space because it is beyond our physical confines of interpretation.

We know quite a lot about the physical world via science and mathematics. In other words, we know quite a lot about the cage we find ourselves trapped in. The world outside the cage, however, is hinted at again and again by the wisest among us. Clearly, we have the ability to see the Big Picture if we open our metaphorical eyes.

These perennial ideas are presented differently in different cultures and different eras but are, at the very least, similar enough to be considered the same idea. They are difficult to express in normal terms. In the Tao Te Ching, for example, a Chinese book from several centuries B.C., the first aphorism states, “The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.” Also, “He who speaks does not know; he who knows does not speak.” These statements make clear that even 2500 years ago, people knew that the Big Ideas could not be explained in the normal manner.

The oldest and newest Big Picture ideas are remarkably similar. In the ancient East we find that some of the oldest ideas about how the world really works coincide with revelations in the West. I caution you, however, your personal beliefs may prevent you from reading the words that are actually here. Open your mind before reading the following passages or else you will only read what you already believe.

“Tao” means the way, or path, that reality goes. Reality “works” a certain way and if you follow this way, then you are doing good and right because it is good and right to follow the way (Tao). “Te” is the virtue, or righteousness, one receives from sensing and following the Tao (path), and “wu wei” is the effort one makes to follow the Tao.

Jesus said, “I am the way.” It’s odd that the word Tao means the “way” and was adopted centuries before Jesus’ unique words. Does Jesus mean to follow Him, as Christians believe, or does he mean, “What I’m preaching is the way,” the way to righteousness so if someone believes that Jesus had great wisdom and understands true reality then they are also following him and his “way”? Would this imply that Taoists are actually Christians? Confucius, apparently, also followed Taoist principles; does he believe in the same things as Jesus? We will get to this question in due time.

Obviously, a Christian is one who believes that the Jewish man called Yeshua (Jesus) is the Son of the one God, the creator of all. Moreover, a Christian believes that Jesus was actually God manifested as a flesh-and-blood human, so in a sense Jesus WAS God. Jesus sacrificed himself as atonement for the sins of mankind, meaning that man has forever been a sinner since Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s command to not eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Adam and Eve were banished from the perfect world of Eden and made to fend for themselves, with Adam having to work for sustenance and Eve having to endure childbirth. This story was described in the Jewish Torah, in the book of Genesis, which is part of the Christian Old Testament. The new covenant of Jesus began when He offered himself for mankind. This sacrificial act is believed to have opened the way for humans, all of which are thought to have eternal souls, to re-join God in Heaven. So by believing in Jesus, or by following his “way,” one can enter Heaven.

Jesus said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” and “Love thy neighbor,” both a version of the reciprocal law of timelessness. These were considered unique and even counterproductive at the time – but were these sayings really that unique? Confucius said, 500 years before Jesus, to “Don’t do to others what you don’t want yourselves,” and “Love your neighbors.” Hindus and others believe in “karma,” a kind of metaphysical reciprocity, where one’s actions are tied to one’s past and future, which is similar to the Golden Rule in Christianity and Confucianism in China.

As made clear above, another common perennial element is the idea of reciprocity – what you do today will come back to you in the future. There are many ways to interpret reciprocity, from a prosaic “Smile at others and others will smile right back” to a more metaphysical aspect. From the latter, this idea seems to be a hint about a world without time, as if implying that we are living in eternity at this moment, only our physical limitations prevent us from experiencing the past and future at once so reality appears to be reciprocal, where sooner or later the things we say and do will have consequences since they are part of our timeless reality, the reality that exists in the eternal now.

Siddhartha Gautama Buddha preached of one’s dharma (lifelong duty), otherwise known as the “eight-fold path,” where one must think, do, and believe in a righteous – good – manner. This list of suggested oughts and ought-nots are similar to the morals of Confucianism and Christianity. Buddha also explained life as suffering, as long as we are confined within the physical body, due to the limitations of the human condition.

There is no God, per se, in Buddhism, Confucianism, or Taoism (although many local deities have made their way into these philosophies). This is the main difference between the Abrahamic religions and the Eastern philosophies. I will not go into the theological differences between the East and West but suffice it to say that they are quite similar in the metaphysical aspects. Professional philosophers, Christians, Jews, and Muslims generally disagree with me here (samsara versus Judgment Day, etc.) but I stand by this claim quite strongly. My theological colleagues love to point out the differences, and there always are will be differences, but it’s the commonalities that tell us how everything in the physical world is pointing to the one Big Truth about all reality.

Even our Western roots from the Greeks, such as Plato, seem to imply a similar pattern of metaphysics. In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, he describes the limited world of the cave, where people are chained down to the rocks and are only able to experience a small range of sensations from which to build a view of reality. Outside the cave, however, an escaped slave confronts a much more beautiful and free world, from which this slave builds a broader world view. This parable conveys Plato’s “Two World” theory, which consists of one ideal and eternal world of “forms” on one side, and a second world which consists of a temporary, changing physical world. The physical world contains a varied array of imperfect copies of the perfect forms. The entire description seems an awful lot like the unchanging-DNA/changing-body description from above.

Aristotle adds to Plato’s picture through his “Four Causes” theory. One begins with the material substance, then uses a master design/blueprint, then uses effort and skill to transform the material into the final product – all the while being aware of what the ultimate purpose of the thing is.

How do these ideas fit into the sequential, tick-tock-tick, world and the All-is-One eternal now world? It’s easy to see all the differences because we live in an intelligible world of discriminating one thing from another. It’s our specialty in this three-dimensional world of change. It’s what our brain, as an evolved bundle or nerve cells, does. The thing that is difficult for us is seeing the world of sameness, the same patterns regardless of the person, place, or thing – or time or culture.

Even the 17th century mathematical genius Gottfried Leibniz thought that the best way to explain reality was in the following manner: God takes a finite set of possibilities from each moment, chooses the best possibility, then creates that moment. There are many possible worlds based on what currently exists but not all these worlds are brought into being – only one is. It’s not a perfect world but it’s the best possible world. This repeats itself moment-by-moment, so there is no actual flowing of time as we normally think of it. Rather, there is only one moment, the current moment, and we should do the best we can with each created moment. The eternally blossoming world is full of energy but also complete in itself. It appears to be changing but is born anew each moment therefore we can “start over” each moment. Interesting stuff.

There is always a dichotomy of eternal, even perfect, concepts and temporary, imperfect changing objects. In the West there is the perfect idea of Heaven; in the East, there is the perfect idea of the Void. Plato’s pagan forms are perfect and eternal yet all things sensed are temporary and changing in today’s world of scientific materialism.

Clearly, the eternal question is what is true reality? And is there a God in this true reality or is God simply a concept people mentally invented in our distant cultural past to explain occurrences that they cannot explain – and people are still using God as an explanation for things that can be readily explained by science. Science is gathering enormous knowledge and ideas about the physical world but this world is the world of change, rebirth, and decay – the imperfect world of the senses.

Is science explaining true reality or only physical reality and is mistakenly supersizing its theories in an attempt to cover all of reality? What happened to the patterns of old, the eternal ideals that seem to be embedded in all the physical examples of the physical world and give us hints of a kind of eternal world? Why have these ideas disappeared among the thinkers of today? Today’s scientists and philosophers have acquiesced to a prosaic world of physical, natural laws, and have ignored the Big Picture except for theories (Branes, Superstrings, Parallel Universes, etc.) that begin with circular logic -- self-fulfilling prophecies (assumptions of constant physical laws, etc.). Since science and Analytic Philosophy begin with assumptions that MUST lead them to conclude a materialistic paradigm, clearly today’s science will not give us the answers about true reality.

If there is an eternal reality here and now, then there must be a way to perceive it with our mind and senses operating together. If we look out into the world with an enlightened perspective then we might be able to see beyond the illusions of a prosaic world; we might see a century within a second or a millennia during a coffee break. It seems possible that we are not completely limited by our physical bodies.


Stephen Hawking, one of the greatest scientists of the twentieth century, used to believe that the concept of a God-as-creator was a real possibility. His beliefs have changed over his brief history in our time. “Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to ... set the Universe going.” (The Grand Design)

The problem with this statement is not that science cannot explain how things work on a surface, linear level – I think science does that, and does it better than any other methodology. The problem is that there is so much more going on at any moment than any mechanical system could explain – purposeful, meaningful, coincidental events. For example, by changing my attitude or outlook, the world around me seems to change.

When the probabilities for an event seem very high (or low), and then I change my attitude about that event (acquiesce, or give up, and let “God” tell me what to do), the previous probabilities disappear and I discover that the event may or may not occur – it seems to have altered the previous probabilities, logic, and science. It seems to have more to do with me lining up with the mysterious “God” insight received. It’s easy to say that we twist our view of reality to believe in a fictional mysterious God, but I’ve found the opposite is true; I’ve tried to see the predictable truth of science and found it failing time and time again, only to have the “wishes” of “God” prove to be correct in the end.

One small example: I wanted to get in shape and run in a fun run or two so I jogged nearly every day. I used to be quite fast and had won numerous first places finishes in my age group. This time, however, whenever I increased my speed to a fast jog, my left calf muscle would cramp then pull. I’d have to limp home and wait about a week then start my slow rehab jogging over again. This went on for nearly five years, with me never getting past a jogging pace. I searched through the internet for solutions, sought advice from my doctor, saw an orthopedic sports doctor, got an MRI – the works.

There were plenty of possible causes, from diet to general runner’s malady where my body had just had enough, but none of the remedies to the various syndromes worked. I was asked to resign myself to jogging or walking. I really missed running so at a low point I found myself asking above for any advice. I don’t follow any particular religion but I sure seem to sense a grand consciousness, aware of everything. I feel that I am a miniscule part of that grand picture so don’t mean much to “God” but I asked for help anyway. The impression that came in my head was that I should stop drinking beer.

This was an odd impression because I liked beer yet managed my drinking in a fairly disciplined way; I only drank one or two beers per day on a regular basis, and for parties I might occasionally drink three or four maybe twice a year. There were many runners who drank much more beer than I did so it seemed to be an odd impression. I knew drinking alcohol the night before a race could have a deleterious effect and certainly drinking a substantial amount on a regular basis would also, but only a beer or two?

I used extra discipline, in addition to asking God to give me some extra willpower, and gradually stopped drinking. The cramping and pulling in my calf muscle disappeared. I began to train at a much higher level, running times I hadn’t run in more than five years. Whenever I relaxed my discipline and enjoyed a few beers for some occasion, my running would suffer. Conclusion? There are almost certainly medical and scientific reasons for my reprieve in running but I’m convinced that rather than God being an anthropomorphic justification for some natural occurrence, that natural occurrences bend to the will of God. This running example is only one of many that have convinced me of this. It’s a Schrödinger’s Cat type of paradox, where our choices are somehow intertwined with a holistic, time-free world.

What does this all say about reality, then? Only that all existence IS right now at this moment a dynamic, multi-dimensional, concurrent living happening, beyond time and space, birth and death. The normal, prosaic stretched out time of this morning, this afternoon, or this evening is a filtered down, extremely limited view of a much larger reality. What we physically see and experience around us at this moment is beautiful in its tragedy and glory. The striving, the failures, the births, injuries, sicknesses, milestones, and deaths are powerful events that otherwise would not be possible without the limiting machines we find ourselves trapped within, our physical bodies.

Close relationships, such as belonging to a family, is the closest we can come to knowing the eternal-real-world on a day-to-day basis. A family provides one person with meanings and feelings beyond himself or herself. Death of a family member provides the worst kind of loss. Another way we feel complete is by somehow practicing eternal-like activities that focus on timeless, eternal truths. Prayer, chanting, meditation, recitation on a subject considered beyond time and space tends to help us cross boundaries into the true reality, the eternal All-that-Is existing in front of us at all times.

While in the physical world, then, we can briefly tap into the eternal, true world but we still must live in the world of matter. As long as we have the human machine converting the dynamic All into a three-dimensional existence, we must play it through, within the confines and rules of the human machine. The more we understand, the more the world makes sense yet the more fleeting the moments appear to be. We are dumb animals, you might say, but we can try to be closer to our true, eternal selves, part of the true one living reality of God. Only then can we have a small piece of contentment while living as a physical human animal.

What are the Characteristics of a Wise Person?

What does it mean to have wisdom?

The study of philosophy was first and foremost the study of “wisdom.” The word “philosophy” itself was first used by the ancient Greeks to mean the love (or pursuit) of wisdom. Wisdom means to understand knowledge about “things,” how this knowledge is related to each other, and what value it has. These things might be physical objects, abstract mental concepts, people, living creatures, or any other kind of knowledge.

A wise person, then, should understand what is really real, what is most true, what is most valuable to people and to existence, how everything all fits together, and why we are the way we are. A wise person should understand why we are here, what our purpose is in life – if any -- and how we should ideally behave. If there is a purpose to our lives, does this mean that we should actively seek that purpose or will we naturally follow our purpose if we simply “be ourselves”? A wise person, hopefully, makes decisions based on this understanding – based on this wisdom.

Generally, we would like our leaders to be wise. Whenever an election comes around, those candidates who have made some moral or legal or policy mistakes in their past tend to be quickly booted out of the field. But would they have made a good leader or not? Is a leader someone who doesn’t make mistakes? Which mistakes are simply too bad to allow? What really makes a wise leader?

Whenever we think of a “wise” person, do we mean a person who has never made a mistake, never taken a chance, never thought outside the box, or never pushed something past the limit? Do we mean someone who has never tried something, failed at it, and then acknowledged that it was a poor choice, and that other choices might have worked better?

I doubt if many of us would agree that a wise person is someone who never fails. Wisdom does not equate with following every rule, dotting every “i” or crossing every “t.” Wisdom does not equate with always being right and always winning. Clearly, one has to make mistakes, fail, and lose now and then in order to gain some wisdom. On the other hand, wisdom doesn’t mean being lazy, taking unnecessary risks, and failing at everything either.

Wisdom comes from logic and experience. It comes from winning and losing. It comes from making a connection, an inference, anticipating a result, then testing that inference. Wisdom doesn’t start by being sure about something; it comes from being not sure, testing it out and learning from the tests in order to have a better idea – an idea closer to the truth. Wisdom comes from seeing possible patterns and asking questions to check out ideas.

Learning is a key ingredient. If we continue to learn, then we eventually weed out trivial things in our lives and are left with things of value. We are left with conclusions that are closer to the truth about things. We are left with lessons and meanings and people who provide deeply satisfying experiences. We are left happier than before. We are wiser.

Wisdom is about knowing that some things are more important than other things; it’s about knowing that there are some things in life that make life worth living and other things that just taste sweet. Wise people see beyond the immediate consequences of an action; wise people see beyond the shininess of things; wise people see past peer pressure; wise people see value in all things but recognize the eternal value intrinsic in some things rather than other things. They see deeper truths, more true concepts.

A great musician is not someone who took all the right classes, has all the right degrees, and follows all the rules. He or she may have these things but his or her musicianship has very little to do with the formal recognition of such. Some (most?) of the greatest musicians of all time did not follow a standard formula. In fact, they broke many rules along the way to their understanding; they copied bits and pieces of melodies from others that evoked emotions or meaning; they experimented and discovered combinations of sounds that evoked other feelings or meanings, all within a moderately standardized framework.

A great athlete is not someone who took all the right kinesiology classes, had the best trainers, and makes certain moves. He or she may be but his or her athleticism and success has little to do with formal training. It often has more to do with their sandlot experience during their developing years, failing again and again until they learned what worked best. Knowledge, training, and potential helps but it not the most important aspect to their athleticism.

A wise person is not someone who followed a formula to wisdom. He or she usually made many mistakes along the way, arriving at a realization more profound than those who simply accepted a teacher’s pronouncement. These people usually learned the rules, then broke the rules and learned from either the consequences of their actions or from near tragedies.

Ignorant people occasionally seem wise but wise people are rarely very ignorant. Wisdom means learning therefore wise people tend to be very knowledgeable. They may have been arrested, used drugs, pre-judged others, or worse; however, they usually change their ways as their lives progress, and they find themselves doing more and more “good” acts.

Wise people tend to be good people, understanding and giving. Over time, if a person learns life’s hard lessons – again and again – that person will eventually learn that all people deserve dignity, even those who make mistakes. A wise person learns that hard work and a noble purpose will never be wasted. A wise person knows that tough decisions must be made and the people around him or her will be displeased with his or her decisions. Wise people tend to focus on eternal, big themes in their lives, not fads, fashions, or popular issues.

Wise people are wise. They focus intently on the moment and where they happen to be at that moment yet sees the eternal nature of that moment as well. They see the fleetingness of it and the whole of it.