Perceptional Reality

In any discussion on the topic of Reality, inevitably will arise the concept of Perceptional Reality. The debate between the two is long-lived and far from resolved. What is Reality? Is what we Perceive the only Reality? Does the action of our perceiving make a non-Reality real? We can ask circular questions, open-ended questions, all sorts of questions in regards to this topic… until our brains are left dizzy from spinning out of control.

In popular culture the movie The Matrix has this issue as its core dilemma. To paraphrase the movie “our everyday world is real, the things we experience, taste, touch, dream are real. The reality is that everything is a hoax, machines control our every thought, our minds are imprisoned in bodies that float in gelatinous bubbles.” Morpheus asks of Neo, “What ‘is’ real? The mind sets limits on what it knows to be true. Do you think that’s air you’re breathing?” His questions are valid ones, ones that deserve more in-depth exploration. We can set aside the fiction of the machines, set aside the movie itself. What we are left with is this: What is Real.

Is reality that which we experience, or is it something beyond our experience, something which we must escape the prison of our belief to find? Or is it, in a complex way, a combination of the two? Do our perceptions shape our reality?

"The Eye altering alters all." -William Blake

Let us say for the sake of argument that reality is that which we perceive to be true. In which case, as we walk along the sidewalk, we agree that trees grow away from the ground, the sky appears blue, the sun rises in the east. The concrete ‘things’ which we interact with using the 5 senses (sight, taste, touch, hearing, speech) are things we can generally agree on. When we reach the abstract we run into difficulties. How can one “prove” or “disprove” ideas or philosophies or morals? How can I or anyone else say that “God” is real, or that a “spirit” is real, or that Zen is valid? I can, but there are others who will say “nonsense, girl, that is a bunch of hogwash.” So we see that abstracts are problematic in the area of reality. Most of us would agree it is difficult at best to agree on which ones are real or not. Let us examine the concretes a little more closely, shall we? As you walk along the sidewalk, you see in the distance a 16 story building. From where you are, it appears to be the size of an average one-story house. If you ask the small child playing nearby which house is bigger, the one across the street or the one “way down there”, she is likely to say they are the same size. This is not, in my opinion, due to children’s depth perception not being fully developed. It is because they haven’t learned that what is perceived to be real, isn’t always so.

You have continued walking (quite some distance now) and have reached the 16-story building. You rest on a bench in its shade, the walls towering above you. You lean your head backwards and stare up at the sky. The building arcs out to touch the sky. The skyscraper across the streets arcs towards the building you’re sitting beneath. You see this, therefore it must be real. Yet when one applies some science to the mix, or withdraws a distance, you can see that the buildings do not curve in upon each other, not to the extent which it appeared from your vantage point on the bench, rather they extend fairly perpendicular upwards.

We now have the same building from three perspectives. Its very nature has changed each time, yet it has stayed the same. Which view of the building is real? How do you determine the criteria used to determine its reality?

"What is actual is actual only for one time And only for one place." -T. S. Eliot

Perceptional reality is a key point to thoroughly understand. It is imperative that we realize that things change when viewed from different perspectives. It is vital to know that believing something to be real, doesn’t “always” make it so; and that believing something to be unreal likewise doesn’t make it not exist. Our perceptions can deceive us, and learning to differentiate between the perception that is truth and the one that is falsehood is a skill that can be learned if one does not already possess it. In some instances, this skill involves “unlearning” much of what has been taught us by society, by parents, by culture throughout our lives.

I leave you with this quote, from Ursula K. LeGuin’s book A Wizard of Earthsea:

"Only in silence, the word,
Only in dark the light,
Only in dying life:
Bright the hawk’s flight
On the empty sky.
-The Creation of Ea"