“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
- Albert Einstein
It’s fair to say, at least from a global news perspective, that a sense of peace and security seems to be eluding a great many of us these days. Collectively we seem genuinely bewildered at how to improve our present reality with concern to our global economy, terrorism, war, and the persistent poverty and world hunger issues continuing to face us. Surely we know by now that if we keep doing what we’re doing, we’re going to keep getting what we’re getting.
For this post then, let’s approach our present condition from a fresh perspective. A quick drop down the reality rabbit hole should do just the trick. There we can see that indeed there is something that each and every one of us can do to improve the persistent troubling images in our reality rather than sit on the sidelines waiting for someone else to magically fix things from the top down, or from the outside in.
It would appear the world has a new light in leadership, but correction of the issues presently facing us is going to require more than having a noble, well-intentioned U. S. president in office. Barack Obama represents our collective desire for change, and that’s a great start, but getting there is going to be up to us — our open-mindedness, our willingness and our choices. What we now need to learn to do is not just think outside the box, but finally see that there is no box; that the only limitations blocking our way to peace beyond all previous experience and understanding are the limits we put on ourselves.To help facilitate this we’ll take an illuminating glimpse into the true nature of the Law of Cause and Effect.
Quantum Physics – An Ultra-Condensed Review:
Newtonian physics supports the fact that everything in the world of form, our “reality,” is made up of atoms, which are made up of subatomic particles; that these particles are made up mostly of empty space. Quantum physics goes further to say that these subatomic particles are not even particles at all, being entirely formless, until they’re observed by an observer. Until they are observed, they are merely possibilities of being particles. In this pre-observed state they can be more accurately described as undifferentiated energy, having no definable form or location in either space or time1.
What makes this relevant to the topic and so incredibly fascinating is the fact that the mind of the observer has finally been scientifically demonstrated, at the most fundamental level, to be the cause of that which is observed. How? Because quantum physics demonstrates that the simple act of observing some ‘thing’ in the universe is ultimately the catalyst that forms the ‘thing’ in the observer’s reality. So if mind is causal and our perception of reality is an effect of it, we have a whole lot more influence on the world we perceive than what we previously accepted ourselves to possess.
We perceive deeply troubling images in our world, but we do not see ourselves as maker of these images. Instead we see ourselves as being at the affect of them. We accept that mind is the cause behind our nighttime ‘sleeping’ dreams - making up the characters, images, places and stories that occur in them – but we do not make the connection that mind is also very much involved with the making of our daytime reality as well. Projected from one part of the mind (unconscious) and perceived by another part of the mind (conscious) with no awareness of an open channel of communication between them, the conscious mind is completely unaware of Einstein’s “persistent illusion” as being projected by the unconscious mind, and therefore it ‘believes’ what it perceives. In a sense, it could be said that mind is being deceived by itself, and is literally playing a game of make-believe below its own radar of awareness.
“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
- Carl Jung
In Practical Terms:
To change the troubling images we see in the world then, we must learn to change our minds, our thoughts, about the world. It is ultimately from our conscious thoughts that our unconscious mind gets the ‘material’ for the world and the stories it projects in both our sleeping and our waking hours. Therefore it’s time to accept and learn to understand the causal role we each have as individual contributors in this collective experience, because there are no thoughts that do not in some way affect some segment of what we see.
As “individual contributors” we feel we feel we’re rightly exercising our free will by placing judgment on the world based on our value systems and higher principles of right and wrong. If peace – true, deep and lasting peace – is truly is what we seek, then our addiction to the judgment of people, places and things must be accepted and treated with large daily doses of humility, kindness and compassion for each other. We must learn to make conscious decisions to look upon the innocence that exists in each other beyond what our five senses would try to tell us, until it becomes natural to see this innocence effortlessly. There, beyond this ‘observed’ world of form, we are wholly joined. There, we are still as pure and innocent as God created us. Underneath all our stories and individual life dramas, that is who we are. Deep down we all share this divine spark of memory – let us now be willing to surrender the layers of darkness we’ve covered it over with and finally expose our light.
Some of our greatest spiritual and philosophical teachers and traditions throughout time have taught us that the world we perceive outside of us reflects the state of mind within. Science in the form of quantum physics has come full circle in this age of trials and tribulations to demonstrate that this is precisely the case. This period in time presents a wonderful opportunity to truly begin to “Know thyself.” There are many paths to this understanding, and many of you may see reflections of your path of choice written here. It is my prayer that this may illuminate some of us who are in the midst of choosing theirs. Ultimately, we cannot fail to find our way.
For the next article in this series, visit The Dreams Things Are Made Of.
1 The ancient Vedanta philosophy originating in India had an awareness of this formless, undifferentiated energy – they called it “prakriti.” Vedanta predates quantum physics by some 2,500 years, give or take a few centuries.
Posted by Patrick 
