Questioning the Nature of Reality

What is reality? This might seem like an obnoxiously vague phrase which only offers half-baked axioms in return, yet it’s a question which has proverbial significance. This might be a good time to start asking.

Science (or more correctly, scientific materialism) says that reality is exclusively explainable through physics and chemistry and often implies or overtly states that it is exclusively formed by them as well. In the modern West, religion in its Abrahamic iteration says that God made reality and we all inhabit his creation. Before the 17th and 18th century, these two ways of explaining reality often overlapped, but in living history (and from between the last one hundred to two hundred years ago), these two monolithic perspectives have frequently diverged and disagreed.

Today, these two views appear mutually exclusive and the implication that there’s a choice to be made has intensified the differences. Many people have made commitments to either a historical religious context or a scientific secular one. But for many people, neither of these two worldviews are compelling or sufficient as these currently exist.

What about these others? In my case, I have had no active religious upbringing and come from an entirely secular agnostic immediate family. To me, religion as I’ve found it is unappealing for a number of reasons including, but not exclusively, the seemingly ubiquitous sexism, degradation of sensuous physical experience and the material world, a discouragement of free thought and open-ended critical thinking and commitments to values I don’t identify with. This is not meant as a condemnation, but the religions I’ve encountered simply don’t fit me at all and thus offer little in the way of understanding what reality is.

On the other side, as much as I may sometimes appreciate science for its rigor and its many admirable participants, I’ve always felt like it was missing something important and that the obsession with reduction and precise description closes things in. I recognize that science and scientists have saved many people’s lives and that the developed world’s technical prowess and quality of life owes a great amount to science. However, I can recognize the contributions of science and regard particular scientists quite highly while still finding it a generally insufficient way of seeing the world. I also view science as a research method and not a philosophy, a boundary which often gets ignored.

I’ve found value in both philosophy and psychology as subcategories of understanding, but both lack coherence in the question of what reality is. Philosophy has far too many internal disagreements to offer something identifiable, and psychology has a specific space of understanding which does not work as, nor does it intend to be, a broader vision of what reality is. Without defending the point too intently, it seems that only science (as it’s received and frequently expressed) and various religious outlooks propose more general understandings of what reality is.

If both are unsatisfying, what should one do? This question has followed me for years since I do want to have a perspective on what reality is. It’s not something I’ve been willing to let go of to just go about my business, and I also haven’t found some compelling answer from someone or something else. I’ve been told that everything is a story, that everything is a mystery, that everything is ineffable and unavailable to human understanding, that everything is meaningless, that everything is an illusion, that we’re all connected, that everything is love… I think you get my drift. None of these proposals ever seem to be up for debate and if I disagree, I must just not get it. Don’t I realize the truth of an axiomatic unqualified statement which directly contradicts massive numbers of similar axiomatic unqualified statements? Whenever a sentence starts with “everything is…” I prepare to cringe inside and then I usually cringe inside.

The absurdity, in my view, of these many absolutist positions has meant that I now approach this topic with a very open-ended sentiment and keep myself from arriving at any finalities. However, being entirely relativist (the stereotype of the postmodern) is eventually exhausting and nearly impossible to live with on a daily basis. Being unable to believe anything with conviction is a healthy step towards self-discovery but it’s not a practical way of life. Eventually, I’ve found it imperative to have a positively defined vision of what reality is.

What qualifies is of course determined by what is expected. I view the expectation of a definitive conclusive answer and the selling of such conviction as willful ignorance and offensive hubris. I also view the declaration that it’s all unknowable as absolutist by designating impossibility as well as being evasive, vague and uncreative. Neither extreme seems tenable without one becoming an insufferable person to spend time with, and so not dealing with the question often appears the only viable option. In practice, this latter option has been my position, but it’s been frustrating to have to neglect a question in order to not be a [many pejoratives].

In trying to find a way out, and a space to really inquire in a more open and honest way, it’s not as simple as just throwing away assumptions and assuming a position of openness — this tends to lead nowhere, since there’s nothing to talk or think about except the absence of anything to talk or think about. If you don’t fancy yourself a philosopher, this tends to get very boring. And since reality is not empty and our lives aren’t either, this doesn’t seem like a very good starting point.

In the course of my wondering, I’ve found that beginning with an experience initiates a long process of aggregation which eventually leads to a network of felt ideas which culminate in some continuously changing body of beliefs, half-beliefs, conjectures, speculations, interests and memories. In order to proceed, I’ve found it useful to cast a wide net. I mean here an active seeking out of the edges and limits of assumptions about what reality is. Since I want to begin with experiences, I look for curious experiences. I think my own experience is curious, but that’s not nearly enough.

To the rescue is an almost impossibly huge volume of people’s anomalous experiences. The weirder it gets, the more it hints at something more to be explored, a reminder of how little we know about the world, and it becomes an invitation to try to incorporate it and figure at least a little bit of it out. So if we want to talk about what reality is, where do we look?

People with as much sanity and honesty as we can expect of each other have with entire sincerity, and plenty enough in the last half-century, reported such things as going to other dimensions, being abducted by UFOs, leaving their bodies and exploring other worlds, experiencing death and then returning to life, encountering dead relatives in dreams and in waking life, having prophetic dreams, having psychic abilities such as telepathy and varied forms of clairvoyance, having seen anything from real dragons to huge flying transparent manta rays… The list is gigantic. After years of curiosity about these sorts of topics, I feel like I barely know much more than when I started. But I know that these are things that people are often afraid to talk about. Freed from socially induced prejudice, an honest look at these types of stories will quickly make one realize that there are far far too many of them to simply be people making things up, and to even have this type of skeptical thought is a testament to the extent to which many people have been conditioned by both science and many religions to ignore these things that do not fit. But if you want to ask the question, as I do, of what reality is, I find exactly these unexplained experiences the most humbling and honest starting points for a true wondering.

Many people begin as skeptics. But when one of these incontrovertible experiences occur, they often report that they begin to question the nature of reality. I suggest following their lead, since I’m sick of pretending as if I don’t believe them. There is no justification for denial other than the presumption that a story is impossible, which is simply arrogant. This doesn’t make every account entirely true, but it does make it worth considering. To accept this as real is not becoming dogmatic, in fact it’s the exact opposite, it’s when dogma breaks as one is forced to ask again. I think this is a lovely place to be.

This post originally appeared on Articulate Alternative.