Saturday 9 December 2017

What is reality?

Well first, what is Not reality?

Reality (we would agree) has nothing to do with what appears in the public domain: in the mass media, in official communications from politicians, government, educational, police, military, legal, health service, religious or any other of the major social institutions that dominate the arena.

We know that all such systems of communication are not just unreliable but fundamentally corrupted - in most cases their net (overall) intent and outcome is an inversion of their officially-proclaimed focus and motivation.

I repeat: we know this.

So where is reality?


One semi-plausible but overall-mistaken idea is that while the overall public arena is contaminated and corrupted - within-it may be found groupings of people that provide honest and properly-motivated communications.

This may be true in a specific instance - but the question is how do we, personally, know which groups can be trusted here-and-now?

(Especially considering that the corruption of truth, beauty and virtue is on-going: more-and-more groups and individuals succumb every month... So groups cannot be trusted on the basis of past reputation - not even on the basis of centuries of past reputation... after all, the ancient universities are the focus and origin of much of the worst dishonesty and inversion to be found in modernity.)

The only safe conclusion is that no groups are to be trusted except when we, personally - here-and-now, have evaluated them as trustworthy. We cannot rely on any other authority.

So where is reality?... Wrong question. The proper question is what is reality?


Reality is not any actual communication - so (assuming reality exists) it must be in a realm untouched by communication, not dependent on communication - a realm that we can know directly - each for himself.

So we acknowledge a reality that is universally and directly accessible... But at this point we need to make an assumption concerning whether this reality is something we can merely observe; or whether it is something we can affect. Do we appreciate reality - without changing it; or do we participate in reality?

My assumption is that we can participate in reality - but clearly this participation is not automatic nor is it unconstrained. There are requirements set on participation in reality - not least that our participation is compatible-with existing reality in terms of form and direction.

Thus we return to the matter of understanding what kind-of-thing reality is?


In brief: I assume that we can only know that reality we conceptualise, and conceptualising means thinking - we cannot know anything of un-thought reality, because to know is to think.

Therefore assuming God wants us to know reality, things must be set-up such that we can know reality by thinking...

This (I believe) entails that reality is itself a kind of thinking; else we could not know it.

Reality therefore seems to be God's thinking, and God's thinking is knowable creation.


At this point comes another crux: if we ourselves are to participate-in reality, we must affect the universal divine thinking - which (I believe) implies that we ourselves need to be divine.

In other words, if reality is God's thinking, and we can participate in God's thinking, we must be of the same kind as God... at least to the extent of the times and situations we are actually knowing reality and participating in divine thinking.

(We do not have to be fully divine, nor divine all the time, nor forever - but while actually knowing and participating we need to have attained divinity.)


We have come a very long way from the commonly-held idea that the way to now reality is by attending to communications; and that the way in change reality is to promote of alternative ideas in the public arena...

The situation seems to be that the real-action occurs not in group-orientated communication; but instead in the thinking of individuals.

Not much else could be so profoundly at-odds-with modern Life - with modern metaphysics and modern practice (practice being a large-scale and group-ish world of propaganda, hype, spin and rhetoric).

The conclusion seems to be paradoxical or else nonsensical, according to prior assumptions; reality is in thinking not acting, in direct-knowing not communication, on engaging the individual and not the mass, and is restricted by the mode and nature of thinking - and not by power, status or fame.

We tend, by sheer habit as well as conviction, to look-for reality in large scale communication, rather than in solo - albeit not solitary - thinking. We assume that the public arena is where serious things happen - yet serious Good may be restricted to the private realm of thinking.

The public realm of communications may indeed cause serious harm - by dishonesty and evil motivations, by misrepresentation and misdirection; but serious Good may, here and now and for you and me, be a matter of our personal thinking in the universal realm of reality.