
This thought has always frequented my mind, from childhood. I talked about this with my friend Raghu, for the first time 15years ago. It was something like this “Do you see that Red flag exactly the way I see it? I mean, does it appear exactly same to both of us??” I guess that was my first rendezvous with philosophy. It had intrigued me a lot for it was never understood by most of "askees" and Asker never got a convincing answer at that time!! Let me put it in a form that is edible to intellectual misers: Is what you see, same as what I see? Is "Reality" same to all of us? Are the mental imagery, sensation or experience same as yours when we see the "Red"? Is my redness same as your redness????. This question is a key that unlocks doors of our cognition, opening up a vista with great perspectives about Reality, Truth, Universe and Life.
Answer, is sometimes YES and sometimes NO. I think we all know that it is "NO" but we conduct life as if it is "YES". The reason for "YES" could be infinitesimally small n negligible differences in our perceptions. Hence, thumbs up for the collective compromise!! But "NO" unsettles my mind. It evokes questions like: Does it mean that are 6.5 billion "Realties" existing parallelly? Or does it mean there are 6.5 versions of "ONE" reality? I can rule out the possibility of the former because it is absurd (Richard Bach, please excuse me). And if latter is true, it implies that there is "ABSOLUTE" and "SINGLE" reality, which is perceived differently, i.e., individually. It means "Reality" is subjective experience of the "Objective" truth. This is the gamut of all noble and highest philosophies and sometimes religions, across the map. In the realm of adventures of consciousness, it is considered as realization to know that "Absolute" or "Single" or "One Reality"
It is as good as saying: my "Red" must have been "Blue" to you and absolute reality is that it is "White"!!! It sounds like an argument among color blinds, doesn’t it!!. So i do not agree with both of the views. For example, the world that we see is only a fraction of the world, i.e. our sense faculties perceive only a small segment of sound range, light range and smell range. We see the world only or IN THREE dimensions. If you and I were a BAT, entire world "appears" sorry just "sounds" as waves for a bat sees the world in terms of sound waves. World is an acoustical texture for it. It means, according to bat, colors don’t exist at all!! For dogs, 40,000 smells exist but for us only a small fragment of that, rest doesn’t exist. For, digitalized AI or robot, world is only numbers...nothing else exists. So for a woman, only shopping, gossiping and $%$&$& is reality..hehhe
So, "Reality" is individual experience of "NOTHING", through its sense faculties. Bats music is no sound for us at all. In this vast universe, there could be some Life, which "g7t&*()-ers" the world. This WORD could be some function like see-ing, smell-ing but very different whose experience cannot be grasped by us. Some other life, somewhere else, may see the world just as energy or just nothing...!!! No wonder we have Gods in human forms, so fish must have Gods is fish-form;)
Theory of Relativity, Advaita, Middle Path, Quantum consciousness shield us from attacks from
“Reality”. Options are still open: No Reality, Parallel Realities and Absolute Reality!!! But as of now, let us be happy as middle-dimensioned beings and take away the following:
- Walk in other persons shoe for a mile, benefits are lot: new perspective, a pair of shoe and some foot disease..hehe!!
- Enough of 360 degrees, think in 4Pi
- Go for people's motives, not their acts and words
- Don’t think much; Life is a beautifully journey, seek abundance through your travel, for it is real!!!
P.S: If hammer is the only tool you have, you perceive every problem as a nail!