What is Reality?

We are capable of experiencing multiple realities in a human body—but always through the filter of our sensory apparatus, our minds, and our emotions. There is no objectively transparent apprehension of any of these multiple realities.

Everyday reality, defined by the shaman/anthropologist Michael Harner as “ordinary reality,” is highly filtered because our sensory apparatus, minds, and emotions are subject to cultural conditioning and personal stories. Indeed, Harner calls ordinary reality, “communal sense reality” or “common sense reality,” because it is reality based on an agreed-upon contract, even before we bring our personal stories to it. If we are to navigate in the world, at the very least we must accept the perceptions and names of individual forms that have been given to us by our society of birth. If a first impression or sensation is not clearly perceived or named, it usually falls under the radar in ordinary or everyday reality. 

The 18^th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that we can never know the “ding an sich”—the thing in in itself— because in ordinary reality an object can be no more than an interpretation, predicated on the aforementioned factors. This continues to be a problem for scientists who believe that ordinary reality is a world of objects or facts existing independently of the observer and their attendant cultural conditioning and personal stories. Even in the physics that follows Einstein’s theories—where objects ultimately break down into quanta of energy and then vibrating nothingness— there are still scientists who are obsessed with the search for a fundamental material particle operating within “the laws of nature” that can be neutrally observed in empirical experiments. To be sure, there are spectrums of ordinary reality that are resistant to interpretations. There are facts, and there are material particles constituting a material world. We ignore this concrete, substantial world at our own peril, contrary to the opinion of New Agers and Post-Modernists. As Philip Dick once argued, “Reality is, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” Like cancer.

It has been my experience, however, that even bone marrow depredations caused by cancer— a very hard reality indeed—can be mitigated by attitudinal shifts of acceptance and surrender realized through meditation techniques and shamanic practices such as the Chod. At the same time, I enthusiastically applaud the use of scientific knowledge and processes that have brought about effective cancer tests and new material configurations of drugs on a molecular level that are now helping to keep me in remission. 

A good case for modulations of hard reality through adjusting reactions is my second bone marrow biopsy a few weeks ago. This procedure is not exactly a walk in the park and is almost uniformly dreaded by multiple myeloma patients: A doctor inserts a very long needle into the hip bone of a patient to extract marrow cells for testing without general anesthesia or sedation. Usually, only a local anesthetic is employed. How to make this bearable?

Needless to say, I felt a lot of anxiety in the doctor’s waiting room anticipating this event, but I managed to drop out of this emotion along with my conceptual mind as I reached the awareness of awareness, the non-judgmental panorama of sensations. On the operating table, I was calm, and this was validated by a blood pressure reading of 122/59.  While Dr. Rajeesh Behl was preparing the needle, we had had a discussion about where to find the best Indian food in the East Bay.  Silence. The insertion of the local anesthetic by needle. Some pain. Then the big needle. Extreme pain. But the realization that this would last only a short while made it tolerable.  This was my interpretation.  After 60 seconds, he carefully twisted out the needle.  End of story, except for a little soreness thereafter. Then, lunch at a great Indian restaurant!

What could science have offered in this situation? I could have been given a general anesthetic and would have been numbed out for hours, missing out on Indian food. The point here is that even the intensity of the most seemingly intractable realities can be attenuated and lessened if you expand into a wider reality. Then other possibilities open.

Usually, events in subtle body realities are more insubstantial than events in ordinary realities, and we can modulate them more easily through conscious interventions such as breathing, dissolving, and dialoguing. Subtle body events are found in the chakras and their connections; during shamanic journeys and healings when channeling spirits and ancestors; when encountering entities in Chod practices; in dream contents and past life regressions; in Bardo states between death and rebirth; and in heaven and hell realms in all religions. Indeed, subtle body realities are a vast topic, so I will only focus on two of these here.

Notwithstanding its material insubstantiality, dream reality is sometimes more real than ordinary reality if you are in a nightmare! Although there are techniques to reduce the intensity of nightmares within the dream by means of lucid dreaming— like becoming aware of dreaming and shifting out of the experience without waking up (see Patricia Garfield, Creative Dreaming)—the best solution is often just to wake up into ordinary reality. Of course, waking up can also be accomplished in ordinary reality by becoming mindful of the possibility of shifting out of the present reality through quick and powerful meditation practices. I have found that Trekcho—the “cutting through” techniques of Dzogchen—are particularly effective here, as well as Rudi’s double-breathing method. Nevertheless, it a bit easier to wake up from a dream, than from cancer or owing taxes in ordinary reality. 

Dreams are also repositories of useful information that can have a positive effect on ordinary reality, especially when archetypal or other transpersonal contents are uncovered. There is a universally shared content in dreams that we access subjectively, but it has an objective validity. This was C.G Jung’s great discovery. Shamans have used the objective content in dreams, archetypal and otherwise, for healing themselves and others. This is good magic!

They have also used the objective content in shamanic journeys— a similar kind of dream journey— for the same purposes. Shamanic journeys, like nighttime dreams, are not imaginary. I know that I am not making up the revelations from a shamanic journey, when the revelations are involuntary (as they are in a nighttime dream) and I am getting surprising information. The key here is to let the journey happen to you rather than to make it happen. Meditation before the journey helps to limit both the imagination and personal projections. 

Meditative states overlap with altered trance states in dreams and shamanic journeys, yet they calm the mind rather than offering information as in trance states. On the whole, meditative states are much closer to experiencing what is really real, as they are less filtered and more objective than ordinary reality or subtle body realities. Indeed, their very purpose is to transit beyond cultural conditioning and personal stories to the big impersonal Self or the Void body. 

In Dzogchen or Kundalini meditation, the goal is not to know reality (which is impossible given the limitations postulated by Kant) but to align yourself with the real on both the most primordial and exalted levels. At first, this means experiencing sensations rather than interpreting sensations. Here, you want sensations to flicker on and off without paying them the attention that makes them into an object, as I have already described in other blogs. This parallels the appearance/disappearance of sub-atomic particles in the fundamental reality of particle physics, but they are still made into quasi-objects by the scientific observations that fix them.  If science is to progress beyond its current limitations, someday scientists will have to bring themselves to the conclusion that awareness is the ultimate reality, not some form of matter or non-matter.  The deepest reality is actually the softest and most expansive.

In the later stages of meditation, we reach a nearly pure awareness that has neither a subject nor object. This awareness is conjoined with the dance of energy. It is accomplished by the connection between one’s physical body, which grounds the process, the subtle body which activates it, and the Void body.  As you well know, when we drop out of ordinary reality, these meditative states can be quite blissful— but to be fully alive in a human body, to reach full human potential, means not getting stuck in any one reality. We want to experience as many realities, with as much presence, as possible. It is even possible to experience more than one reality at the same time: Physical, Subtle and Void body realities together, either in formal meditation or in daily activities. How vibrant can you be?!