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Allow me to clarify what I mean when I speak of reality. I shall name three
types of reality that I am currently concerned with.
OBJECTIVE REALITY is the theoretical “real world” that is generally assumed
to exist, and that is persistent and different from our subjective realities, and
would exist if we did not. It seems impossible to ever actually experience this
level of reality, as we perceive the world in a secondhand fashion; our senses
pick up stimuli and send it to our brain through our nervous system, and our
conscious mind perceives what our brain shows us after it has had it's way
with the raw sensory data.
SUBJECTIVE REALITY is the reality that we perceive; it is not direct
perception of our supposed environment. Our physical senses send the
information to our brains first, which then “process” the data before it is cast it
into our consciousness. Thus we experience reality at the whim of our organs,
brain chemistry and software, the qualities of the links between them all, etc.
This has strong connotations, and can be realized well by taking good drugs
and/or watching sleight of hand magic and paying attention to how the things
that your sensors tell you are quite different than what is really happening. An
interesting note is that unless you catch the magician, the only way to know
that he was doing tricks and not miracles is to assume that miracles cannot
happen, at least not the ones that you witnessed, because everyone knows
stage magicians don't do miracles. This is a gamble, playing by the odds. You
don't actually KNOW that he didn't saw the woman in half or spontaneously
generate a rabbit in his top hat. This is a simple reminder that the reality your
carnal mind perceives is not necessarily true in an objective sense.
Interestingly, some phenomena seem to be existent ONLY in the subjective
reality of our minds, such as pain, fear, and pleasure. In an objective sense I
hypothesize that these phenomenon can merely be perceived as chemical,
electrical, behavioral, etc. There are, however, cases of emotions seemingly
being transmitted from one person to another, like in the case of certain drugs
which are taken orally yet possess a contact high; I suspect this is due to
signals of some nature (including what many would call spiritual) sent from the
first person that trigger a response in other people, and that the actual feeling
itself is not somehow transmitted.
CONSENSUS REALITY can be thought of as a communal subjective reality,
the reality that is based, in some way, off of the true objective reality, the
persistent world we perceive and that others can verify and that seems to
operate for the most part in predictable manners When we see or touch
something for example, and other people can verify it then it exists within our
consensus reality. This is the reality that most people take for granted as
being based solidly on an objective reality. We assume for the sake of “sanity”
that it is based off of a persistent and real objective reality, and that things
which we do not know about can still help or harm us, that our perception of
the world is not everything. If I hide my eyes you can still see me.
