A few people have recently brought challenges that underscore the importance of an understanding that differentiates between what is ‘Real’ and what exists only as an object of thought. Conversations and debates were stymied and sidetracked needlessly, only because we didn’t have a common understanding of the ‘Reality’ we share. The situation was further confused because everybody involved leads a rich spiritual life, in which the field of ‘Reality’ is not purely physical.
Another challenge has arisen since starting to think about this in detail. The challenge came from the work of Courtney Brown and the Farsight Institute. Their work is possibly outside that which we’ll consider Real as defined here. But it’s so close and only outside because of the current apparent lack of documentation of validation and scientific rigor.
So let’s begin with definitions to help find common ground and structure:
Real:
For this conversation, the Real is the consensus reality we find ourselves in. We’re not talking about any sort of high-minded Vedantic, philosophical or spiritual ideal, but about Reality as the physical world in which our bodies seem to exist. It’s composed of two main parts:
- The physical: atoms, molecules, and the forces and energies manifesting in atoms and molecules.
- The non-physical but universal: Aspects of experience or the non-physical that are shared by all or nearly all people, and are not a part of Thoughts or Emotions.
Direct Experience:
This differs for each of us. It’s the life experiences we have, as perceived by the 5 senses of the body. Direct Experience should be separated from thoughts and emotions to clarify the issues discussed here.
Also included here are direct experiences involving input other than the 5 physical senses, but not arising in thought or emotion. This is the domain of spiritual experiences. Differentiating between this category and thoughts should be obvious for the first-person individual, but problematic for others and difficult to generalize. Defining what gets included here and how and why is outside the scope of this piece.
Thoughts:
Thoughts are just patterns of the mind, not a direct part of anything that’s in the domain of the Real or Direct Experience. Thoughts vary for each individual, and vary for an individual from day to day or throughout their life. Thoughts are not real or direct experience, as we’re defining and using those terms in this piece.
What is your Personal Reality Composed Of?
With these broad categories above we can build a simple model of our world view, our personal reality. This is the way in which we perceive and experience and understand our life experience. I found this exercise useful recently to get to the root of an apparent disagreement in a conversation I was having with a friend. It initially seemed like there was a debate about something in the domain of the real or direct experience, as defined above. But we eventually realized our difference lay in interpretation, the differing ways in which we take the real and direct experience and form a World View, a model of the world we find ourselves in.
My world view is composed of these parts:
- My Direct Experience
- Teachings of my Guru, Advaita Vedanta, other Vedanta schools, other teachings of the Vedas. For me this gets included because it aligns so very very closely with the direct spiritual experiences I’ve had.
- Physical Sciences. The generally accepted and widely validated and confirmed conclusions of physical science. Here I would include mathematics, classical physics, chemistry, that which is reasonably settled in modern physics.
I wouldn’t include less-proven or more speculative areas of quantum physics or astronomy. For example, there’s currently a disagreement in science about the age of the universe. Multiple apparently valid and repeatable methods arrive at different ages of the universe. So for me it’s not settled, not a fixed part of my World View. Perhaps this physical universe is 14 billion years old, perhaps 16 billion, perhaps 20-something billion as apparently valid scientific methods show. Or perhaps something else, I don’t yet know.
The friend referred to earlier forms their world view of these components:
- Their Direct Experience.
- Teachings of their Guru.
- Selected Teachings from Other People. In this get included some stories and some explanations of the world that come from other people. Not every story from every person, not all stories from one particular person. We didn’t arrive at a solid definition for what gets included here.
Soon we realize that our differences arise from the differing world views according to the influences of #3 for me and #3 for my friend. I suspect almost all of us incorporate some ‘Selected Teachings’ into our own world view. Likely I have some I haven’t yet rooted out. But I don’t think this serves us well, I don’t think it leads to a clear perspective on the world we live in. I don’t think it provides a solid foundation for integrating spiritual knowledge into our view of the physical world, and integrating spiritual knowledge into our relationships with other people.
I’ve pondered for years how best to integrate the spiritual knowledge that has come with the understanding of the Real that was the basis of my reality for the first 48 years of this life experience. The above model of my world view does this, although it seems like contradictions arise. Science has no place for a soul or individual life essence, no place for a Divine which exists outside of this universe, no place for a universal non-physical union of all life. Yet these are clear parts of my reality arising from Direct Experience and the teachings of Guru and Vedanta.
This apparent contradiction is resolved by keeping the sources of knowledge within their appropriate domains. Science tells us about the physical world and energies arising in and acting upon the physical world. Spirituality tells us about human experience, and that part of human experience that is beyond the physical world.
Keeping each form of knowledge within it’s appropriate domain resolves apparent conflicts. There is no reason for disagreement between Sadhguru and Albert Einstein or James Maxwell. Their knowledge describes different aspects of existence.