What is reality? One of the biggest questions to ask.

(others being ‘what is love?’, ‘what is beauty?’, ‘what is the meaning of life?’)

In this post, I accumulate over time my thoughts and favourite sources and inspiration surrounding the question ‘what is reality’. I invite anybody to ask questions and share thoughts and stories. But it is important to note that it is not the goal to make an absolute statement and attempt to answer this question absolutely but rather to explore all the different ways that people have thought about this and figure out what makes sense to me.

My beliefs and understandings are eclectic. The following are the most influential sources that inspire me and I try to study and understand:

• All religions and philosophies, but specifically
  • Buddhism
  • Hinduism
• Donald Hoffman
• Rudolf Steiner
• Nassim Haramein

In the beginning

In the beginning. Every story has a beginning and an end but in fact, it’s always part of a bigger story and therefore there are no beginnings or endings.

Let’s have a look at how some of the stories begin.

Science

Scientifically the commonly agreed upon beginning is the Big Bang, but that doesn’t make sense because how can anything come out of nothing?

Christianity

In the Bible it says ” In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day

Now first the heavens, earth and light, but he doesn’t create the sun and the stars until the fourth day, so that also doesn’t make sense.

Islam

Islam also says something similar but in less detail and there is no chronology explained in the Qur’an: “Indeed, your Lord is Allah, who created the heavens and the earth in six days and then established Himself above the Throne. He covers the night with the day, [another night] chasing it rapidly; and [He created] the sun, the moon, and the stars, subjected by His command.” Surah Al-A’raf (7:54)

Hinduism

Hinduism doesn’t explain an origin story but rather says that time is perceived cyclically, comprising a series of vast epochs known as Yugas. The universe goes through cycles of creation, preservation, and dissolution, largely facilitated by the gods Brahma (the creator), Vishnu (the preserver), and Shiva (the destroyer).

Buddhism

Similar to Hinduism it generally does not focus on creation. The universe goes through endless cycles of formation, existence, decay, and emptiness

Sikhism

There is no time. God (Waheguru) is timeless and created the universe to understand itself.

Daoism

Dao (the Way) exists before and beyond creation, and all things originate and return to it.

The fundamentals

So there are a lot of ideas about the origin of reality. It is obvious that there is no proof and they are all theories, most based on myth, some based on what we can perceive and analysed with the scientific method.

But what do I know to be absolutely fundamental to reality?

I think therefore I am

“I think, therefore I am” is a famous philosophical statement by René Descartes which was originally written in French as “Je pense, donc je suis” and is also well-known in its Latin formulation: “Cogito, ergo sum.”

This statement is fundamental to Descartes’ philosophy, illustrating the assertion that the act of thinking about one’s existence proves there is a thinking subject – an “I” – that exists to do the thinking.

Patterns, structures and mathematics

I am by far not intelligent and knowledgeable enough to comprehend anything about what I am about to write in the following sections but I know them to be true and they are essential for trying to grasp what reality is.

Life follows structures and there are certain constants that are fundamental to these structures. The most noteworthy I find is phi (the golden ratio) and the Fibonacci sequence. It fascinates me that we find this back in so many things in nature that I can’t help but believe that it’s the nature of reality to create itself according to it.

The next thing I will write about in order to build my argument in explaining my understanding of the fabric of reality is sacred geometry.

But that is for another day.

Coming up: going deeper down the rabbit hole…

• The balloon theory (pending)
• Geometry and the fabric of reality (pending)