DOES OBJECTIVE REALITY EXIST?  :  
 
In support of the Zen-Taoist view.

      
                                                                                          
Data received from sensory organs produces the mental images (perceptions)
which make up our reality.
Whatever gives rise to this data must exist separately from our perception of it,
outside the mind.
This means there is an underlying reality which we never directly perceive.

Interpretation of air movements as sound, light frequencies as colour,
2D stereo images as 3D space and distance, etc. only happens in the mind.

Emmanuel Kant (1724 - 1804) argued that space and time are not
      characteristics of the underlying reality, but of the mind.
                                                                                                                                                                                         
        Quantum theory indicates that matter is not to be found
              in the underlying reality,             
that atoms are almost completely empty space,
that sub-atomic "particles" dissolve into fuzzy waves,
and that it is impossible to know both the location and the momentum
of a particle/wave (or a macroscopic object)
to infinite precision.
                                                                                                                                                                                       Matter and substance, space and time,
seem to be the way in which the mind makes sense
of the no-thing-ness of the underlying reality.
                                                                                                                                                                                         
This is also the view of the Taoist with his/her "Void"
from which everything arises, and to which everything returns.
                                                                                                                                                                                        
The "reality" of existence is apparently not matter, but mind.
Consciousness is primary .
                                                                                                                                                                                           Asking how the material world gives rise to consciousness,
is trying to account for consciousness in terms that are
themselves manifestations of consciousness.!

It only makes sense to ask how consciousness gives rise to the material world.
                                                    

the duality challenge
    
In 1982 physicist Alain Aspect and his team showed that subatomic particles,
       such as electrons, are able to instantaneously communicate with each other
regardless of the distance separating them.
and that a photon (a light "particle") can travel as a wave
through two places at the same time.
                                         
Their result has been repeated many times since.

It violates Einstein's idea that no signal
can travel faster than the speed of light,
because it means breaking the "time" barrier.!

Physicist David Bohm (1917-94) believed the reason these particles
remain in contact with one another regardless of the distance separating them
is because their separateness is an illusion.
He argued that  the particles are not individual entities,
but extensions of the same fundamental something,
                                                                                                                                                                                         
which implies that all things in the universe
are infinitely interconnected in a seamless web.

He therefore believed that objective reality does not exist,
that despite its apparent solidity the universe is a gigantic hologram.

      Every part of a hologram has been shown to contain
all the information possessed by the whole.

This is also a characteristic of fractals.
                                                                                                                                                                                        
In a holographic universe, time and space would be meaningless,
because the concept of "location" means nothing,
if nothing is separated.

Reality becomes a "superhologram"
in which the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously.
 
In the 1920's Karl Lashley showed that the ability of a rat to perform complex learned tasks
was not lost whatever part of its brain was removed.

In 1983 neurophysiologist Karl Pribam proposed that
the brain is a hologram,
                                     and that memories are encoded in patterns of nerve impulses                                
crisscrossing the entire brain in the same way that patterns of laser light interference
crisscross the entire area of film containing a holographic image.

Holograms possess a huge information storage capacity,
and are adept at encoding and decoding frequencies.
Pribam believes that the brain uses holographic principles to translate
the rain of frequencies received via the senses
into the world of our perceptions.
                                                                                                                                                                                      
       So if the concreteness of reality is a holographic illusion,
           it is consciousness that creates the appearance of the brain,
the body, and everything else around us
that we interpret as physical.
                                                                  And not the other way round.                                                               

Objective reality then, ceases to exist.
                                                                                                                                                                                         
It seems no coincidence that most eastern religions believe that
although we seem to be physical beings moving through a physical world,
this is an illusion.

In a holographic universe reality is what you think it is,

is subjective and infinite.
                                                                                                                                                                                     TOP
 

©2006 bob harbinson and Silver Pipe Productions S.A.
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