Meditation on the Concept of Reality

Reality is a concept I have always been interested in exploring, from the discussions of multiverse to the computer simulated world theory. I want to believe that there is something more to this life we are living, and there must be another alternative versions of what we are experiencing. I always contemplate on these concepts in trying to discover and understand the essence of reality through self-philosophical analysis and interpersonal discourse; and in my meditation, I have realized a breakthrough in my quest to understand reality...

For us to have a better understanding of reality, we must first have a full grasp of the concept of time. Just like reality, the concept of time is also mysterious and elusive.

We may have perceived time as linear, divided by past, present, and future. But this is not true. The concept of time, as most of us knew it, is just a pigment of human creativity. We created the concept of seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, etc. to make sense of the events that have happened, is happening, and what we foresee will happen. Try to imagine those human concepts as non-existent - then, now, and tomorrow - are co-equal, they are all happening at the same time.

The true nature of time is not linear. We just invented the linear concept because we cannot fathom time ́s entirety. World War II, the death of Alexander the Great, your day of birth, and the day that you will die, exist all at the same time. What has happened, is happening, and will happen, is all happening right now.

This view is so important in trying to further understand reality, as its implications greatly affect how we must perceive its true form.

What is reality? Reality is the truth in its purest form; and how we perceive it dictates how we live. To study reality means to understand life itself. It is of great importance to have a better understanding of it, as everything we believe in and all the knowledge-concepts that we know, will depend on how we view reality.

In our effort to understand reality, we have created concepts to guide us. But instead, it only led us to confusion which we later accepted as truth. Reality as perceived by the human mind is just an illusion. Quantum physics supports this concept, which states that the reality that we perceived is based on what we see and understand given our limited minds, as elaborated by quantum dynamics and others.

I would like to call how we, humans, sees reality simply as ¨perceived reality¨. Perceived reality refers to how we try to make sense of the true nature of reality. And ¨true reality¨ as the true and purest form of reality.

Because of the true nature of time, true reality must be fixed. There are no alternative realities, we cannot change our future or past. If everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen - is all happening at the same time - it means we can't do anything to change our life, our experience. Everything is programmed to happen. Every reaction, every movement is bound to happen.

Living in a reality that is fixed is may be hard to accept. It is accepting our fate, whatever we are programmed to be. We may try to deviate to change what we will become, especially if we see that our future is undesirable. But what is harder to accept is even if we deviate from our programmed path, that deviation has already happened according to the true nature of time. So even your deviation is destined to happen.

Does it mean that we should just stop living or doing what we’re doing? Should we not try to change our world, if everything is set to happen anyway?

But the truth is, whatever you do, whether you choose to stagnate or to fight to change your future or the world’s, it is set to happen, 'cause it has happened. Whatever change you try to do, the effect of that effort has already transpired. We are designed to do the things that we will do, it is our “destiny”. True reality is observing our destiny.

It’s very hard to accept the nature of true reality. Deviation from our destiny will always be an issue. And this is the same reason why we can’t see true reality. Whenever we try to understand true reality, we are sent in a paradoxical analysis of our perceived reality, out of the refusal to accept our fate.

It is said that when we die, our brain allot few seconds for a playback of our life experiences. What if the life we are experiencing right now, is that same playback? That is the closest analogy of experiencing true reality. We are all observers of our lives, whatever our actions are, they are set to cause an effect in the future. Everything has already transpired.

Accepting true reality, is not that all boring. Yes, everything is already set to happen, but what separates our timeline, is our brain and how we make sense of it. The implication of accepting true reality is the key to understanding and even manipulating time.

In accepting the true reality, we may be capable of cognitive time travel. If everything is happening all at the same time, then we can choose to experience a different timeline. We may choose to experience our future or go back in time.

But don’t get too excited. Even if we jumped to another timeline, we will not be aware of it. In fact, we may already be jumping from one timeline to another every now and then. And the clue to this is deja vu.

Maybe the reason we are experiencing deja vu, is that we have already jumped to that timeline in our true reality before. We have already experienced that scenario, but we cannot do anything about it, because again, everything has already happened, and we are just observing our true reality.

If that is so, we may be living in a perpetual true reality. When we die, our consciousness will just go back to a timeline when we are alive and experiencing life. We are sent to our “now”.

True reality is also a paradox. This only prove the concept of true reality, because we cannot see nor we will ever understand its true form. Because our mind is incapable of comprehending what is real, we are stock to our perceived reality.