There is an ancient Chinese story that may give you a glimpse of what reality is or is not.

“An emperor had only one son. That son was on his death-bed. The physicians had given up, saying we cannot do anything to save him. He will not survive. It is not possible to save him. There was no cure for the disease. It was a matter of just one or two days, he will die any moment. The father stayed awake all night sitting at his bedside. It was time to say goodbye. Tears were flowing from his eyes.

Sitting and sitting, at about three in the morning the father began to doze. While he slept, he saw a dream of a great empire that he was lord over. He had twelve sons - all very handsome, young, talented, intelligent, great fighters, warriors. There was no one comparable in the whole world. He had a vast horde of wealth. Unlimited. He was a world ruler - his rule extending over the whole earth.

He was seeing his dream when the son breathed his last breath. His wife screamed and started crying. He opened his eyes. He was completely shocked. He sat dumbfounded. Because, just a moment before, there was another kingdom, twelve sons, great wealth- it was all gone. And here this son has died. He remained completely lost. His wife worried whether his mind was damaged, because he had had great affection for his son, and not a single tear was coming to his eyes. When the son was living he had cried over him, now the son has died and the father is not crying? His wife shook him and said:” Has something happened to you? Why don’t you cry?”

He said: “Why should I cry for? There were twelve son, they died. There was a great empire, it has gone. Should I cry for them or should I cry for this one? I am thinking who should I cry for? Just as twelve are gone, thirteen are gone. Everything is finished. That was a dream and this too is a dream. When I was seeing that dream, I had completely forgotten this son. This kingdom…everything was forgotten. When that dream broke, I remembered you. Tonight I will sleep and again I will forget you. So it comes and goes, now it is, now it is not: and now both dreams are gone. Now I have awakened from dreaming. Now I won’t be roaming about in dreams. It is enough, the time has come. The fruit has ripened, it is time for it to fall.”

Much love:)

*pursuing engeenering*

Relatives:-

She's doing engeenering, the same damn career like everyone else. I knew she hasn't any special abilities. And also she's a a girl, engeenering is good for her.

*pursuing writing*

Same relatives:-

She's doing what??? What is writing?? Is this a career??? What about engeenering??? Ohh she's not tha good in maths and all!!!!!!!

*Criticizing smoking/drinking*

Some close Friends:-

Smoking is injurious to health. Ewww look she's smoking, such a bad girl she is. Her parents raised her wrong.

*During smoking/drinking*

Same close friends:-

Akanksha try it, try this flavored cigarette. This is so good… blah blah blah.

*During relationship*

Boyfriend/Girlfriend:-

You're my whole world

*After breakup*

Boyfriend/Girlfriend:-

Duniya ******* hai. ( my world is m*******er)

The thing is no matter what you do, what you are, what you become, there will be always some people who'll criticize you, blame you, push you to the wrong path, backstabb you, leave you, abuse you. But there will be very few, just you who can do better to yourself.

You are the only glorious mess for yourself, every else is just illusion.

Sensation of pleasure fades away with time. Friendship ends, boyfriend/girlfriend leave, parents leave us, everyone leaves but you, yourself stays with you forever.

Respect you, you're precious!!

-Akanksha

Thank you ❤

Reality is - everyone is going to leave us one day, even own self.

Today when my grand mother got a sudden panic attack and she is in ICU. My uncle said to my mom, don't feel sad as life is unpredictable after we cross 50s.

If we have crossed 50s ,we are already lucky. So now we are living bonus life. Death can come anytime anyways.

After these conversation, I realise that most of us are suffering for big houses, big cars, luxury life. And we know that we will leave behind everything then why so much tension in life?

The moments we fix our suffering of desiring more that is the only moment we can focus on living today, exploring today and winning today.

It's human nature that will demand more and create forever. So important lesson I learn today was-

1. Explore because you have limited life span.
2. Live because there is no tomorrow.
3. Work because every moments you spend in work can turns into future revolution.
4. Eat ,laugh,walk to make your physical body sustain till this life span and can enter into bonus period.
5. Read ,pray , do commitment so that your next life span would be more beautiful.
6. Failure , success in this life is just a way to become better not arrogant. Because its all temporary.
7. Peace, patience, mindfulness is great assets any human being can hold.
8. Love, affection, care is the feeling that make every non living human a living human.

This is me who live today irrespective of what next.

Signing off!

Have a great day!

I once wrote a light-hearted answer on “Whether astrology works or not.”

The story in brief that I wrote :

An astrologer made the prediction about the girl when she was born, that should traverse her way from a mere analyst to vice-president of the company in a matter of years and would unceasingly venture her way to the paradigm of excellence.

But when she grew up, she failed in eleventh std. twice and eloped with her lover who was more studious than her. Though he had failed thrice but in twelfth std.

It was a tongue-in-cheek writing, so as to not offend anyone even in the slightest. But it surely did hurt a lot of people who believed in astrology by all their heart and answer ended up collapsed.

Some respectful comments were like :

• Downvoting this answer since it makes fun of astrology and I myself have seen that it's real.
• Get a life, man. Blocking you, read something on google and you'll know that astrology is a science.

My replies were like :

• I really don't want to hurt anyone’s sentiments. You believe, may be you're right. I don't believe, may be I'm right.
• It's just a humourous take. I'm not making fun of astrology anywhere.

What is reality?

My replies are certainly not. I mean there're people who downvote answers because it's making fun of astrology. Now, I can't express reality in my reply as I don't want to risk crossing that threshold of “reports” that's sufficient to get your account banned. Otherwise the reality would be my reply :

Abe hatt.

Translation : Get lost.

PS : Please don't comment that it's not the right translation. It's important to translate for me that's why I translated, otherwise people won't simply move on after not understanding “Abe hatt”. They would report this answer for not being in English. As If I wrote this answer in Solar language.

Evolution has programmed our intuition with a model of reality. The double slit experiment and other quantum processes violate that intuitive model of reality. Special and general relativity also violate our intuitive model of reality.

What science is about is creating better and better models of reality even if these models violate our intuitive model of reality. Science has no ability to determine the "true" nature of reality so it cannot tell us what reality "IS". I personally don't believe philosophy or religion or any other human activity can tell us what reality is. So all we can do is strive to find better and better models of reality and that is what science is all about.

There is general agreement among scientist on the models of reality that have been well tested and well proven by scientific experiments.On the current frontiers of science there will not be general agreement since they will be active areas of research, both experimentally and theoretically.

For example in physics the well established models of reality are the standard model of particle physics and general relativity. It is known that there must be a new theory beyond the standard model of particle physics since there are phenomena such as dark matter that is not explained by the standard model. But the "beyond the standard model" theories are actively being researched so there is certainly no general agreement among physicists for this next model of reality for particles.

Also there must be a new theory or model of reality that combines general relativity with particle physics. String theory is a leading contender for that theory but there is certainly no consensus among physicists on string theory as a well established model of reality.

--Edit--

In the book, "The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World", physicist David Deutsch argues that reality IS whatever our best explanation says it is. (I strongly recommend this book!) He argues that knowledge is "explanations" and that "Scientific theories are explanations: assertions about what is out there and how it behaves." He argues (persuasively) that there is no limit to the explanations that we can eventually develop - that is one of the many meanings he is talking about when he says that we are at the "Beginning of Infinity".

Just as there is a "Universal Turing" machine that can compute anything that any other computer can compute in a finite time, he argues that humans have become "Universal Explainers" and "Universal Constructors". So we can eventually explain everything that can be explained and construct everything that can be constructed. Please read the book, it will really be worth your time.

So, stay tuned, we are at the beginning of infinity as we discover more and more about the nature of reality as we get better and better explanations (scientific theories)!

There are a lot of different ways to define “real”, depending on your purposes. But I’ll try to aim at an everyday, commonsense use of the concept. “Real” and “true” cover a lot of the same territory. You can set your standards pretty low (like Brentano and Meinong did, I think) and, for you, imaginary objects or even objects with impossible combinations of properties can count as real. You can set your standards very high and wind up saying that, strictly speaking, nothing is real (Beatles “Strawberry Fields,” and many sceptics). But what is it that these different thinkers are attributing or withholding? Something so basic that it cannot be explained or defined in other terms. Being, itself.

This pic says it all

A bit offensive for many of you but people will judge you no matter what !

What would you do with those billions?

Reality is the subjective experience of becoming aware of information, interpreting what that information means, and then responding to our own interpretations in that moment. Our interpretations are our perception of that thing. The very moment you become aware of anything, the deed is done. That information has been processed. That is how lightning fast the mind works.

The world is a canvas for the creative depth and power of our own souls. We perceive a thing as beautiful or fearsome. We perceive happiness and sadness INTO the world by how we define each. We are creators and how we perceive is how we create our individual realities.

You look into the world, you see the answer you have given to every question information provides.

Reality is the continual conversation you are having with life and all that exists for you. It is not something life imposes upon us, but something that we impose upon life.

What I see is the door I walk through.

Description differs from the experience, so yes, I can tell you exactly what your reality consist of; however, the reality I or someone else is to experience will only fit to the individual said description. There is a universal awareness that we each experience as we bring our said realities into unison. If this is what you mean by “we” in describing reality, then you will also find that it encompasses that which is unreal. Thus the reality we share is best seen as an illusion, for although reality is a shared concept, it is in the individuality that makes our every experience unique. As each is here to learn, what we see to describe in many cases can be completely different. Our reality is like that. Common yet unique, so depending on where you are at in your journey will determine the description given.

No, for at least four reasons. Even if we limit ourselves to material reality, this would mean an exact description of the state, position, and velocity, of every particle in the universe, all recorded at exactly the same time.

1. Let’s imagine that a supernatural being does have all this information. It is more information than could be recorded and presented using the entire universe as a computer!
2. Per General Relativity, “exactly the same time” over distance, as time measured at any location is relative to velocity and acceleration.
3. Per the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the more accurately we know the position of a particle, the less accurately we know its velocity, and vice-versa. So the data cannot be gathered.
4. Per Goedel’s Incompleteness Theorem, any description that is complete will also be utterly self-contradictory. Any statement that can be proven true in such a system can also be proven false.

So, in all sorts of ways, complete description of reality is beyond human capacity.

This is the reality behind the best scenes in the movies with the help of Lord VFX.

Probably these are some of the best photos from my collections for the real face of reality..

Thank you!

“Reality is that which lies beyond all models and explanations” (but this needs elaboration)

Our conceptual way of dealing with the world is to make models. Consciousness is an automatic model of the world created in the brain. Red for instance only exists within consciousness, and your eyes flicking about don’t make you sea sick.

Quantum physics and general relativity are mathematical models with predictive and explanatory power, but like the other models, only describe behavior of “that”, not what “that” is. So, we are reality, but to some extent “outside looking in” from within our models and experience within consciousness. Reality is what is beyond the definitions and models.

The general model of the way people view reality seems to be wrong by the way. This might help explain why Pete Bahba's answer to What does the quote “God doesn’t play dice with the universe” by Albert Einstein mean?

fractal tree - Bridges 2008 Exhibit - Robert Fathauer

In philosophy, reality is objective: existing independently of ideas concerning it. I call this “objective reality” or “physical reality”. To the rest of us, reality is the world we subjectively experience through sensory perception. I call this “subjective reality” or “human reality”. It’s the only reality we know. Although we can define objective reality, we have no way of knowing what it actually is because we have no direct access to it. Everything we perceive and experience is filtered through our abjectly limited senses and interpreted by our pattern-seeking, shortcut-loving, error-prone, brains.

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

Objective Reality:
Existence is the quantum (fundamental unit) of reality. Whatever it is, either it exists or it doesn’t. Reality, in turn, is everything that exists. Truth is bound to objective reality: it expresses only that which is real.

Subjective Reality:
Facts are a subset of truths: truths that have been verified or confirmed. Facts are units of ‘objective’ knowledge. All other truths are units of subjective belief (until they’re verified as facts). But, because we have no direct access to objective reality, our verification of facts is provisional: valid only until contradicted. Within subjective reality, human objectivity (i.e., knowledge and science) is provisional and subject to updating or revision.

The reality we normally think of is subjective reality. Unfortunately, it’s not as solid as objective reality. It’s an unavoidable limitation of biological entities like us.

Reality is where what we believe and what we are capable of witnessing meet.

How I define reality is by being open to possibility and observing what is, listening to what is.

Reality defines itself, it also descibes potentials for 'more preferable existences' than Reality.

Reality is thus also the realm or dimension to which such ideas can be abstracted or discovered. It is a representation of a process to where its own purpose seems both to entirely transcend into a new, different dimension (which has been considered an Omniverse) and at the same time to entirely engage in its beingness.

By this I define Reality by how I choose to exist within such.

Very complex question haha.

For my point of view, my reality is my context: I know where I live, where I study, the people I’m surrounded by, what’s going on recently in the world (e.g.: recently there was an hurricane in country “X”; “Y” was confirmed to be president of “Z” next year, etc), that kind of stuff.

What I don't see as necessarily reality is the way I perceive my reality. It's very difficult to see exactly how people that surround me think, why they did such action. I can't possible be sure that what I interpret is what it is in fact.

I know “Y” will be president, but I can't know why for sure, I can only come up with possible reasons for that.

I know I have people in my life (that's reality for me) but I can't know for sure if my view on them is what they really are.

I hope my answer wasn't too confusing.

A good question Emmanuela, A simple answer might be to say it is what IS, but that doesn’t tell us much, it’s a bit like the old “I am what I am” (now where have I heard that before?). However, to add more than that we must use our intellect to describe it. Is not the intellect part of reality? If so, then reality is describing itself, which brings us back to it is what it IS. Or whatever we describe it to be.

I once saw this on a dunny wall “Reality is for those who can’t handle their drugs.” It makes you wonder though, just how many realities there are. I think at least one for every human, every lifeform even, on the planet, and on any other planet.

Have you ever stepped into another’s reality? If you know any crazy people, spend some time in their world. You may find jewels of wisdom in this wonderland of seemingly random reasoning. Enter the forests of the mind and see how much reality depends upon perception. As we used to say back in sixties “That’s unreal, man” when something exceptionally good would manifest. Enjoy your reality Emmanuela - make it an “unreal” one.

Counter Q:

• when will you stop wasting time in fantasy land?

Original Q: How do you define "reality"? What are the parameters or terms of reference that you use to determine whether something exists in reality or not?

The reality is bhraman self …

How to define ! … Ah! Yes , mind always ask to know , but mind can not know …. When you drop the mind , you become bhraman , the reality. And after that , you see nothing except reality without minding the mind.

But if you ask for a definition Atman , …. The far I can say ….

The thing (also no-thing) , which is lost if you try to define is the reality.

Definition is the boundary …. While there is not any….. definition is the illusion , while there is not any.

There is no illusion even , that is why it is called illusion…… hence , there is only reality.

LOL …. Your mind will be tired , bewildered , clueless ….. because it is not a thing to “know”

It is a thing to “be”!

But , we need to learn things to know things to unlearn.

After unlearning all , you will come to reality …. There is only “nothing” to learn….. because what you learn , what ever you could learn is illusion.

Bows Atman

Fake, horrible, and disturbing. Each day is torture to see what has happened to your family and society and nobody stops it. Just continues on in hate and contempt. My entire family has been destroyed. I have no one, nobody cares. Yet they claim to be good Christians. What is a good Christian? A nice person who points, blames, and shamed? How does everyone ignore and continue on without any true love or caring for older residents. I feel like my entire life was a waste of emotion and raising kids who only see and care about themselves without seeing their family legacies pissed on and buried because nobody is special here unless they perform perfectly. Cell phones steering each into darkness deeper and deeper. I have great memories with empty nothingness promised for my future I no longer want or desire. No wonder God removed himself from this sad existence. You pray for help but do not accept it. You travel on continuing a broken path you can not fix. I want to lay down and die. At peace yet too disgusted to want to spend another moment with an ignorant human being. Americans allow fake media to lure them to put on a cute show each day. Nobody seems to truly get it. Sad. No matter how happy and at peace I am I feel like Wally and Eva. The only thing left and I just can not bring myself to care to continue on another day. Hey let’s murder each other over money drugs and sex and watch everyone die off. Thanks for helping preserve my civil rights and those of my dead descendants killed off to look all normal like. There’s still blood everywhere and I get to see it each step I take. Shame on our founding fathers for their crimes against women and children. Shame on you all who continue on in a righteous manner. A puppet master is in control of you and your money. You fatten up without seeing the truth while I starve away. I should have never signed up for the military. I should have ran away when I was 10 and lived in the jungle. You people are mean. Just awful. Sugar coat everything and act like nothing is wrong. A world of human ignorance. Completely fake.

When it comes to definitions, words mean different things in different contexts. I can think of three different contexts for the usage of the word “reality”. There is the reality outside of our minds, there is the internal model of reality which the brain generates from the sensory impressions it receives, and there is the subjective reality of a person’s interpretation of that internal model. The external reality just means it exists, it is real, physically. Internal models of reality are quite different; they too really exist, but not physically. Yes, the inner picturings of external reality require the physicality of an intact brain / body, electrical impulses conducted by chemicals in and between brain cells. However, our experience of our internal models leads us to believe those models are real when they are only replicas, simulations of that which is physically real. Our interpretations depend on how we subjectively value those internal models and those values reflect our subjective preferences.

• It is not something we can fully know. For what purpose would we have if we were to know reality and existence completely? There is only examining and interpreting, and gathering available information while sustaining curiosity of the cosmos.

I am but an ant aimlessly crawling, adrift in a vast ocean that is unaware of my existence, and I too am unaware of what’s beyond me.

• Existence is absolute; reality is relative to the observer.

There is but one absolute Truth that can, potentially, be realized by the human creature. But what he considers Truth is relative to him.

• Everything that exists is essential and cannot be any other way until it has fulfilled its use and makes way for the next thing(s). (Ashes to ashes; dust to dust.)

Nature is cyclical: the star is born, and then it dies. The planet is formed from stellar material, and it too will one day perish. We live, we die, and we make room for the next generation. So too the universe. So too the next universe.

• Fundamentally, there is only “being”, but this being is simultaneously a process of “becoming”. In order for something to be, something must first become. But for something to become, something must also first be.

What will I discover when I deeply examine myself? I am a thing of itself, but it is a thing that changed over time, but the essence of this thing has always seemed the same since the beginning.

• All things, living or not, are an expression of the universe, consciously observing/experiencing itself.

I am a rock. I usually don’t move very far but that’s okay, because my duty is to be a rock. I am a tiger. I hunt my prey and sleep a lot but that’s okay, because my duty is to be a tiger. I am a tree. I don’t do much… except, you know, keep almost everything else alive and provide shelter and food for other creatures, but that’s okay, because my duty is to be a tree. I am a human. I can do many things, but the most profound thing I can do is think about my own existence which means, I think… therefore… therefore… well, whatever it is, it’s okay, because my duty is to be a human. I am the universe. I do all these things at once but that’s okay, because my duty is to be the universe; I can only be alive with all these tiny things.

Oh good grief no. Of course not.

Right then. Anybody reading this is sitting somewhere on a rock doing curves round a big ’n’ yellow overhead fusion reactor placed on an arm of a swirling mass of other fusion reactors round which other rocks spin constantly and it all looks, regardless of what astronomers say, like an enormous game of Ker-Plunk (so don’t get pulling any sticks out, will you).

Which in itself is all a tad ridiculous when you think about it. Now, the enormous Ker-Plunk came into being in one of two commonly accepted ways. The first is that in the beginning there was this enormously dense lump that was nowhere (because there wasn’t anywhere for it to be) that exploded. The other is that God did it.

If you are an aficionado of the first, you can use all sorts of complicated maths to trace the universe back to the instant just after the Big Bang. But not the Big Bang itself nor what was there before, which leads to a sneaking suspicion in physicists. They say that the question “what was before the Big Bang?” is a meaningless one because when you get to the end of the trail, mathematically it’s actually more likely that God did it and they feel a bit embarrassed about owning up to it.

You think I’m making that up, don’t you, but I’m not (although I might be hyperbolising a bit). I know loads of people with degrees in Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, who are at the older end and who swear that the more they look into things the greater they suspect some divine intervention somewhere especially when something that ought to work doesn’t.

Hey-ho. Either it’s some natural scientific process that we don’t and never will understand or it’s the ineffable plan of God, and either way if you’re looking for sense in reality you’re going to be disappointed quite often since if it’s the former it’s a load of random happenings and if it’s the latter it’s all part of a plan you know bugger all about and even if you did you’re not omnipotent enough to comprehend it, because in fact you are talking fauna.

No, really. People are just talking fauna. There’s bears, and deer, and frogs, and wasps (and if wasps are not enough to make you realise that something ineffable is going on I don’t know what will) and monkeys.

The latter is important of course because all the fauna people are is in fact monkeys. Monkeys that can talk. Which is why I suspect that the Vatican has a prologue to Genesis that they aren’t telling us about, which goes like this:

And the Lord looked down upon the earth, and thought “what this place needeth is more monkeys. Lots and lots of monkeys” for the Lord did liketh monkeys greatly.

And lo it came to pass that the Lord made many monkeys, each of different kinds, and upon a day he made a sort of short-armed monkey with less hair than usual, and in the lab assisting that day was the Archangel Dave, who, not to put too fineth a point on it, was a bit thick, and the Lord spake thus:

“Right Dave, I have madeth this monkey, so passeth me ye monkey brain, let us getteth it in and then we can get this new monkey installed upon the earth, make it a mate, and have a cuppa”. And the Archangel Dave did passeth the brains over, and the new monkey did sit upon the earth, and from the rib of the new monkey did spring a mate, that they might be fruitful and multiply. And God and Dave did have a cuppa.

The Lord looked over his cuppa at the new monkeys and to Dave did say: “is it me or art those monkeys talking to each other?”

And Dave looked and saw that it was so. And the Lord looked upon Dave and said “whence got thou those brains we put in?” in a note of deep suspicion.

And Dave did reply “top shelf, Lord” and pointed.

“Thou Moose!” exclaimed the Lord. “That’s where we keepeth the spare cherub brains!”

And the Lord looked upon the monkeys, who by now were having their first argument, and spake thusly:

“Angel brains in a monkey body. Right. Well, this is going to get bizarre. Better maketh a plan for this.”

And millenia later here you are expecting things to make sense. If I were you, I’d just blame it on the EU. Ursula von der Mindswrong.

Although “reality” is basically things as they are, the term can still be nuanced.

Our subjective reality is based upon observation and experience of things, and so is not the same as the objective reality: things as they would be in the absence of conscious observation and interpretation. For instance, the way that we intuit a rainbow (coloured bands suspended in an arc, or full circle) is not how it really is: light from the sun (which must be behind you) being split into colours by moisture droplets in the air.

The fact that each droplet splits lights and sends the colours back at different angles means that a rainbow is not a “thing” — it is a phenomenon — and there is a spread of light in all directions. For instance, two observers are not seeing the same light, and do not even see the phenomenon at the same apparent location in the sky.

But we also have a social level to our reality. We deem such things as mortgages, appointments, money, emotions, etc., to exist, but these have no basis outside of our own lives.

The first things we learn about as children are related to the physical world colored with emotions with no exposure to the spiritual realm. Of course, we are new to this physical world and it’s easy to place most of our focus on understanding it. We temper our emotions and emphasize reality as to what our physical senses tell us. As we mature, our spiritual nature resurfaces to a degree, and we balance our awareness to handle the physical, psychological, and spiritual aspects of life, without ignoring any. We all know folks who put too much emphasis on one over another—too much emotion or not enough acceptance of spirit. Our minds are wonderfully able to grasp all three concepts in harmony if we only try. Psychiatrists don’t want this known, or it can put them out of business. Psychological problems are generally an imbalance of understanding, including too much emotion or not enough spirit. The human psyche is sensitive and complex, but not impossible! Getting past the miracle of life and consciousness is a test for anyone. Church is a great way to discover balance and truth. Reality covers all three realms and science has a ways to grow to accept. Enjoy the discovery!