I Fell from the Moon

Have a look at the place you're in. Do you see a computer or device in front of you? Are you sitting in a chair, on a bench, in a sofa or even walking? Can you feel the device you're using to read this? Reality is very much solid. We can see, smell, hear and feel it.

But what if we're wrong? What if what we can see, touch, feel, smell and hear is just an illusion? What if what we sense is just one way of looking at reality? What if reality as we see it is an illusion? Join me on a mental journey to uncover the nature of reality, with some highly hypothetical ideas that attempt to unify us with reality.

So how do we percieve reality? We do so with a curious device. Our brain. It has to be curious for something so intangible as conciousness to be one of its properties. With our current understanding of science, we're unable to create real conciousness. We're able to create artificial intelligence, a set of rules that tell a machine to react differently upon different inputs, even change how it reacts over time. But this is not conciousness. So why is conciousness such an intangible thing?

Maybe it's because conciousness isn't what we think it is. There are major disagreements about how conciousness arises. I'm going to try to explain it, but don't take my word for it. An experiment was done on a rat, where scientist Karl Lashley would expose the rat to a problem the rat had to solve to get a food reward. Later on he removed parts of the rat brain. The rat would still be able to solve the problem.

This lead many scientists to believe that conciousness isn't confined to one place in the brain but exists across it as a whole in the very configuration of the electrical impulses that travel across the brain. This behaviour is compareable to a hologram. A hologram will show a 3D image from a different angle depending on where you look at it from. If you chop up a perfect hologram, the information from the image could still be in the contained in all parts.

So what does this have to do with our perception of reality? I'm going to keep you guessing for a while more.

Now things start becoming strange. At the scale where the rules of conventional physics stop being sufficient to describe what happens, when we try to explain what happens inside an atom, another science steps in, quantum mechanics. Conventional physics are cause and effect oriented. A planet will orbit around the sun because its velocity is high enough to counter the gravity of the sun. A skateboarder will clear a gap if he or she apply enough force. But at the subatomic scale, these events start being uncertain. The best we can do is to guess.

The speed of light need not have a meaning at this scale. Subatomic particles are able to contain information about other particles simulanteously, even if they're lightyears away. Particles are able to escape the three dimensions that we percieve. A particle might even be in two places simulanteously.

So maybe a particle isn't a particle. Maybe it's just information confined to a point, as a vibrating string in string theory. Particles can be closed strings that end in themselves, or open ended strings that go through or end in other dimensions. Maybe they even could be connected to other particles in the three dimensions we percieve.

The oddities of string theory might be proof that the universe is indeed a hologram, where information from the whole might be contained in smaller parts. So why does this have anything to do with our brain being a hologram?

Particles at the subatomic scale act acording to a set of expectations a observer might have. The boundraries of space are not defined, but become larger as we aquire more information. This could mean that the processes of electrical impulses in our brain are related to the information processes of our universe. This way the universe is defined as we go by our conciousness. This could be because our minds are part of a larger, universal conciousness.

This is where science, philosophy and religion start to blur and become harder to make out from one another. This is also where quantum mechanics, physics, psychology, the paranormal and sociology start to blur as well. This is because reality might not be what we really percieve. Our brains might not be the place where conciousness arises. It might be that our brains are more than just instruments but also the container for a piece of conciousness cut from a larger conciousness. We might be because we all think. And this universal conciousness exists omnipresently across our physical relm and the non-physical relm.

Quantum mechanics might or might not one day be able to explain this. Physics might act this way because of conciousness. Our universe might be defined by what we think and do. And paranormal events might be the result of conciousness manifesting in the physical relm. Our very society is shaped by our conciousness. If the world isn't material, but a product of a universal conciousness, we're not defined by posessions, but by what we do.

Religions have attempted to unify the material world with the abstract. Different religions have had different views on this. Abrahamic religions say that god is omnipresent, like this conciousness I'm talking about. Buddhism search for enlightenment and a final truth. Hinduism teach the moral law of cause and effect, Karma. Science have tried to uncover the workings of reality. Science is starting to explain reality in a way only religion have tried before. But if our conciousness define reality, we need to rethink our world, learn to respect eachother, keep an open mind towards others and live for others, not just ourselves. Or else our universe could become a place you wouldn't want to live.

If the conciousness of our brain is part of a larger conciousness. And our universe is defined by this conciousness. This means what we think and do will eventually change the universe. We need to stop looking at the material world or our universe as all there is. This way our actions and thoughts will live on forever, so we need to change ourselves to change our reality. What we do and think matters, not what we have.

Remember to keep the same ignostic eye on this article as I do. It's just one possible way of viewing reality. And if reality is defined by our conciousness, I pray to you that we'll start living for eachother to for the sake of the universe.