Truth About Our Reality

Reality is not as fixed as we think. Can we really create a life we dream of?

Photo by Justyn Warner on Unsplash

Over the last few years, there has been an explosion of talk and buzz around manifestation and how it's a way to get what you want in life.

I've pondered this myself and was curious to see how it fits in the grand scheme of things we call existence.

I'm connecting the dots between our scientific revelations and spiritual teachings to bring to you my understanding on this.

To make things easier to understand, I've split this into two blog posts. Before we understand manifestation, we have to understand our reality. This is the stage on which the process of manifestation will occur.

1. Part I: The truth about our reality

2. Part II: Is manifestation real and how it works in this reality

In this post, we cover Part I in detail. We have to understand our reality before we understand how manifestation works in it.

It's going to get interesting. Grab a coffee and let's dive in!

Reality is One Consciousness, One Energy

Let's learn more about our reality from spirituality and science.

What spirituality says

Let's first take a spiritual perspective. Many spiritual leaders and teachers say that our reality, our universe, is all one consciousness.

This means that you and I are the same and there is an illusion of separation created by your mind.

Imagine waves in an ocean. Each wave appears as an individual but belongs to the ocean.

As Sadhguru says, "The ocean is a drop and a drop is the ocean."

Another way to interpret this is to imagine our reality like a dream - where different characters seem separate but exist in one dreamer’s mind, life is said to be a play of one universal mind or consciousness.

So if you are consciousness and everything is consciousness - you reality is created by you.

That means, there is no one objective reality. Your "reality" is a projection of your inner state.

Now, let's jump gears and see what science has to say about this.

What science says

Surprisingly, there is more and more alignment between science and spirituality when it comes to how we understand our reality.

We are all made of one energy

Our bodies are 99.9999999% empty space at the atomic level. Atoms (the building blocks of matter) are predominantly empty space.

So we as physical beings are all mostly empty space being held together by energy fields. That's wild, right? I know it certainly doesn't seem this way.

In fact, Einstein's mass-energy equivalence principle, formulated as E=mc², says that energy and mass are interchangeable.

What is even more interesting, as shown by Quantum Mechanics, is that particles at the smallest scale like electrons and protons behave both like waves (aka energy) and particles (aka matter)!

This is an important point and we'll come back to it below...

If we are all energy, how do we perceive different objects, people, and experiences? It all seems very physical, right?

The Interface Theory of Perception

Donald Hoffman is a cognitive scientist and a professor at University of California, Irvine. He proposed the Interface Theory of Perception that says that our perception of reality is a projection of our minds, which is like a simplified interface to help us survive.

In other words, our minds filter and take in information from the 5 senses, make sense of them and project them back into what we actually see, hear, taste, smell, feel, and in essence our experience of reality.

Another way to visualize this is to think of your computer desktop. The files and folder icons you see on your desktop are not the actual structure of these files (which are complex sequences of binary data). Rather, they are a simplified useful way to use them.

So extending the analogy, we see the equivalent of these files and folders in our world and don't see the underlying "binary data" or energy behind all forms.

Biocentrism: we are at the center of our reality

Another theory that helps explain our reality from a radically, relatively new perspective is Dr. Robert Lanza's concept of Biocentrism. Dr. Robert Lanza is a renowned American scientist and physician.

Traditional physics and our mainstream understanding so far has been that the universe exists independently of us. It was there before us and will continue after us.

What Dr. Robert Lanza says is that the universe and reality is actually created by life. We are at the center of the source of creation.

In his book Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe, Dr. Lanza talks about the way we observe and take action in the world in essence creates the world we want.

This is wild.

Tying this back to Quantum Physics

Let's take a little detour to quantum physics. I promise it's related to all of this...

Quantum Physics has a theory called the Wave Function Collapse. What this says is that when we look at tiny things (like electrons, photons, and other things that make the universe at the smallest level), these particles exist in a cloud of possibilities or what we will call as a "wave" rather than a "particle" with definite characteristics. The nomenclature is more for mathematical purposes so don't fuss on it too much.

For instance, let's say you have a magic dice. Imagine the dice is all 6 possibilities (1 to 6) at the same time! Here, the magic dice is behaving as a wave, mathematically, rather than a particle.

However, when a conscious observer like us observes or measures the dice, it quickly takes form into 1 of the 6 possibilities. So extending the wave analogy, the dice has experienced a wave function collapse and the wave has collapsed into a definitive reality - one of the 6 numbers are shown. (In theory, the dice could land on one of its corners and those possibilities exist too – which I've left out in this explanation to keep things simple.)

Let's say you are playing a game with a friend using dice. You roll the dice and it falls off the game board and goes under the table. Before you or your friend look at it, all 6 possibilities exist, right?

Now, this supports to Dr. Lanza's point on Biocentrism because quantum physics also says that reality takes form through an observer.

PS - if you are fascinated by the cloud of possibilities that exist at the smallest levels, check out my post on infinite possibilities and whether they exist.

TLDR: So what is the truth about our reality?

So joining all these different perspectives, here is a summary of our reality that will better help us understand manifestation in the next post.

1. Reality is one consciousness: Spiritually, everything is connected; the separation we perceive is an illusion created by the mind.

2. We are all energy: Science shows that at the atomic level, everything—including us—is mostly empty space held together by energy.

3. Reality is a projection of the mind: According to cognitive science, our senses create a simplified version of reality to help us navigate the world. That means there is no fixed, objective reality that exists for everyone.

4. Consciousness shapes reality: The way we observe and interact with the world influences how reality takes form, as seen in quantum physics.

5. Reality is not fixed: Quantum mechanics shows that particles exist in multiple possibilities until they are observed, suggesting that reality is fluid and not predetermined.

6. We are the creators of our experience: Biocentrism suggests that life and consciousness are central to shaping the universe, meaning our perception actively creates our reality.

Has this surprised you in anyway? Growing up a science major, I grew up thinking that there is one objective reality for everyone that exists whether we exist or not.

And now, that has flipped.

Lets move to the next post to understand how manifestation works in this magical world that is our reality...

PS - If you found this post interesting, I've a lot more coming up for you. Subscribe below to stay in touch. I'd love to hear from you.