Matrix | The generation of today, have been bombarded by an information overload since birth: television, games, computers, internet, smartphones, Gameboys, schooling, magazines, religions, sports, culture are among the various nets thrown upon the youth of today that has shaped and moulded everything they are. Today we are spending more time in the mind than ever before!

Due to the information overload! This makes you cold, like a robot! Makes the mind assume absolute power!

Everything you have ever done or will do could simply be the product of highly-advanced computer code. Every relationship, every sentiment, every memory could have been generated by banks of supercomputers.
This was the terrifying theory first proposed by British philosopher Nick Bostrom. Consciousness is all and everything in the virtual hologram of our experiences brought into awareness by the brain – an electrochemical machine forever viewing streaming codes for experience and interpretation. Consciousness originates from a source of light energy for the purpose of learning. The human biogenetic experiment in consciousness brought forth into the physical by the patterns of sacred geometry that repeat in cycles called Time.

Reality is about the evolution of consciousness in the alchemy of time. To become fully conscious is to remember who you are as a being of light, why you are here, and where we are going as dictated by the collective unconscious that creates the programs of realities through which your soul experiences simultaneously. Consciousness is all and everything in the virtual hologram of our experiences brought into awareness by the brain – an electrochemical machine forever viewing streaming codes for experience and interpretation. Consciousness originates from a source of light energy for the purpose of learning. The human biogenetic experiment in consciousness brought forth into the physical by the patterns of sacred geometry that repeat in cycles called Time.

Consciousness may involve thoughts, sensations, perceptions, moods, emotions, dreams, and self-awareness. It is variously seen as a type of mental state, a way of perceiving, or a relationship between self and other. It has been described as a point of view, and I, or what Thomas Nagel called the existence of “something that it is like” to be something. Many philosophers have seen consciousness as the most important thing in the universe. On the other hand, many scientists have seen the word as too nebulous in meaning to be useful.

Scientists propose a new way of understanding of how the brain processes unconscious information into our consciousness. According to the model, consciousness arises only in time intervals of up to 400 milliseconds, with gaps of unconsciousness in between. The driver ahead suddenly stops, and you find yourself stomping on your breaks before you even realize what is going on. We would call this a reflex, but the underlying reality is much more complex, forming a debate that goes back centuries: Is consciousness a constant, uninterrupted stream or a series of discrete bits – like the 24 frames-per-second of a movie reel?

Quantum physics has proven contradictory to classical, Newtonian physics, setting scientists on the search for a Theory of Everything to bridge the chasm threatening to swallow any confidence we have in our scientific understanding of the world. For Dr Lanza, whose breakthrough stem-cell research has earned him much acclaim, biology will prove more important than physics in this quest. He gives more clout to understanding human beings than to following abstract strings to unseen dimensions. Whether it’s quantum physics or Newtonian physics, it is a system created by our consciousness to organize elements of the world around us, he points out.

We create the stories, we give names to things. ‘There is no clear line dividing science fiction and reality. If we can think it, we can create it, and so the world becomes a stranger and more interesting place by the day. This applies both to our individual universes within, and with the outer world at large.

• We really have no idea at all what it means to be a human.
• We don’t know where we come from or how we got to this shining gem of a planet.
• We don’t know why the earth is covered with the mysteries of antiquity and the monolithic footprints of giants.
• We certainly have little understanding of our fate, nor much of the heavy forces at play against us.
• But we do have the brilliant spark of consciousness as well as free will to help mould our 3-D experience during the wink of time that passes from birth to what we fear is death.
• We are in a sense programmable life forms, and so the question is, what is being programmed with and by whom?’

What is reality? How can we define it – fit it into a box – so that whatever experiments we throw at it, our definition always holds true?

I consciously observe the lucid dream world. It is real to me because the firing of neurons in my brain stem is interpreted as real sensory data by my brain. I could argue that lucid dreams constitute part of my reality. But what if no-one else can perceive my dream reality? Just how many realities are there anyway – yours, mine, his, hers?

As Einstein suggested, is every form of reality merely an illusion? Is nothing real?

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
~ Albert Einstein

The current understanding – that all probabilities all exist at once, in the same reality, until you measure or observe them – is mind-blowing. And yet the math is there to prove it. The human brain operates in two halves: the right brain and the left brain. They have completely separate roles and agendas. Some would even say they have separate personalities. However, in order to function, the two halves of the human brain must communicate as one via the corpus callosum. Interestingly, scans show that male brains excel at thinking within one hemisphere at a time, while female brains excel at thinking across both hemispheres.

The right brain is all about the present moment; right here, right now. It thinks in pictures and learns through the kinesthetic movement of your body. It absorbs energy from the world around you and translates that into information for your sensory systems. It doesn’t know the difference between your individual consciousness and the world around you.

The left brain is a very different place. It thinks linearly and methodically. It picks out countless details from the events in the past and makes calculated predictions about the future. The left hemisphere thinks in language, which creates your internal voice. Crucially, it makes you aware of your existence as a separate being from the mass-energy field perceived by the right brain.

Types of Reality

This has led to multiple theories of reality by various philosophers and scientists:

• Phenomenological reality is based on subjective experience.
  Whatever you observe is instantly real to you. This theory of reality means that unreality is non-existent.
  Therefore lucid dreams, hallucinations, spiritual experiences, and astral travel are all forms of one subjective reality.
• Consensus reality is based on the opinions and observations made by a group of people.
  A few individuals may decide on an interpretation of an event, which spreads across entire societies and becomes a consensual truth.
  Religion is a good example of a socially constructed reality.
• Non-reality simply means that there is no such thing as objective reality.
  Every possible observation or interpretation is tainted by subjectivity and therefore does not constitute truth. Nothing is real.

Is reality mental – mind; or is it physical– matter and energy? If mind, is there a deeper consciousness underlying appearances that unites us all and is the source of our conscious thoughts?
If matter, can we understand how the play of material objects and forces can give rise to conscious life? If reality is mental, we might best connect with it by skilful introspection; by a pure, deep, and penetrating way of thought, that would see past appearances and show reality directly to the mind. Alternatively, we might passively receive, by a process of revelation, a mental image of reality. In revelation, the cosmic mind could speak directly to us, in apparitions or visions.

In discussing the nature of reality, we must distinguish between physical reality and immaterial (non-physical) reality. Physical reality is that which is constrained by physics or physical laws. Perhaps the best person to relegate this part of the discussion to would be a physicist, since a physicist is probably more qualified in discussing physical reality then an armchair philosopher such as myself.
Immaterial reality then pertains to what is not constrained by physical laws, eg concepts such as ‘character’ and the ‘mind’, Plato’s Forms, the realm of God and spirits. If physical reality is all that is ‘real’, then what is the relationship of immaterial concepts, such as ‘character’, the ‘Good’, and ‘morals’, to this physical reality? Are concepts such as these just the content of our brains and products of our reasoning and emotions? If so, then it is probable these concepts are just subjective and thus non-absolute, since the contents of our beliefs is contingent and always changing. Conversely, if there is a separate and distinct (non-subjective) immaterial reality, and the aforementioned concepts of character, the Good, and morals etc exist as aspects of this reality, then the existence of objective, absolute concepts is possible (maybe even necessary), since the nature of reality is not contingent, dependent on subjective opinion.
On the other hand, some questions now arise: if immaterial reality does exist as separate and distinct from physical reality, how would these two realities interact? Is there a distinct location for an immaterial concept (or a form, or spirit) in somewhere such as heaven, Plato’s perfect realm, or perhaps a more local area in the universe? And is there a distinct nature for logic and mathematics, or for the connections that exists between these realities. These are questions for the philosopher and physicist to ponder, and perhaps answer, together.
Joe Moore, Woodland Hills, CA.

The universe may turn out to have more dimensions than we know about, where fundamental forces behave very differently than how we perceive them. For example, gravity is the weakest of the four fundamental forces, but in other dimensions, it could be just as strong. “Things would be very different in this hidden reality,” Freeman says. [6 Weird Facts About Gravity] The universe could even be a kind of hologram. The amount of information that can be stored in a region of space is proportional to the region’s surface area, rather than its volume – a property known as the holographic principle. One possible implication is that reality is actually two-dimensional, and the three-dimensional world is merely an illusion, which would explain some of the wackiness of quantum mechanics.

All of these views of the world — those that we perceive in our minds, and those that physicists discover in the universe — are flavours of reality. What humans perceive as reality may be no more than an illusion. But in the end, maybe that doesn’t matter.

Reality is a simulation. In a very real way we live in a reality like that portrayed by the Matrix. I can prove it to you, right now.
Take the sensors you call your eyes. They transform light energy into an electrical, essentially digital, signal, which is sent to your brain. The same with all your other senses. All the sensory information you have about the world, according to our best scientific understanding, comes to you as electrical pulses. Your brain uses this information to produce a highly elaborate simulation. It produces a 3D coloured representation of something that’s almost certainly not coloured in itself, and may not even be 3D. It bears some relationship to reality, sure.
This may seem a bit worrying. All these science fiction ideas about being a brain in a vat are essentially true. We are just that. The vat your brain is in is your head. Worse, we are a consciousness, in a brain, in a vat. However a simulation is not necessarily less real than an unsimulated world, just a different type of reality. To paraphrase Kant, there is reality and reality, and we need to be sure which we are talking about.
Take a fighter pilot as an example. If she looks out the window at 700mph, all she may see is a mist of darkness-obscured blur whizzing past her window. If she looks down at her instruments however, she is provided with a much more useful reality simulation. A radar screen tells her where she is in the world and what is coming up far beyond her ‘real’ vision. A topographical display and night-vision goggles help her see the ground she is flying over. Our ‘normal’ simulation of reality aids us in the same way. Colour tells us information about the surfaces of objects we would otherwise not have (and how else could this information be displayed?). Three dimensionality helps us make our way in a world of solid objects. Psychologists can tell you how much this all relies on brain processes.
We live in a simulation, yes; but it is not a lesser reality, it is an enhanced reality. Problems only come about if we, as the pilot, start to think the radar screen or the night-vision goggles are the only true way to see the world, and confuse our representation of reality with reality itself.
Justin Holme, Surrey

The best we can do for now is understand that the human race must operate from a place of peace, a place of co-operation and understanding. We must realize that we are all interconnected, that we can solve our problems here easily, given the fact that we have a number of solutions. The only way we will be able to implement and utilize these solutions is through a shift in consciousness. The world is indeed waking up. Ultimately our reality is what our minds perceive it to be. Many may have difficulty grasping the concept, being that it goes against common sense, but the world resides within us rather than us residing in the world.

References:

1. http://humansarefree.com
2. http://www.express.co.uk
3. http://www.crystalinks.com
4. http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com
5. http://www.livescience.com