The Illusion Of Matter

On the Illusion of Matter
May 2015

The point of this essay is to look at the way physical experiences are manifest. I have tried to base my descriptions on evidence that many of us see every day. I have chosen to talk about the “what” as opposed to the “how” of the matter, as I think the “how” is probably beyond our ability to know. It is certainly beyond my ability to infer based on the evidence I have collected to date.

As you can infer from the title, this paper covers the topic of whether matter exists in a physical form. I believe it is possible that it does not. The implications of this are wide ranging and impactful. However I would like to also state that even if it is true, it does not mean that the study and use of more conventional physics is valueless. This is because although I contend that matter doesn't exist in a what one would conventionally call “physical” form, its illusion is quite real, and since most of our lives take place in a physical (albeit illusionary) construct, how we seem to interact within the physical characteristics of our existence is of great consequence to us.

Although it is quite possible that actual physical particles (or even for that matter waves) don't exist in a physical sense, their illusion does follow quite strict rules, and these rules are reasonably well understood by the reductionist scientific world. Further, the wide range of scientific discoveries that have been made over the centuries have had tangible impact on billions of us that is impossible to ignore. That is: the study and manipulation of our world using materialist science has tremendously impacted our life experiences. So from some perspectives, we might say that whether matter is illusionary or not has little bearing on our lives. I would agree that this is true from SOME perspectives. However from other perspectives the difference is huge.

So, to begin-
the mind is perfectly capable of creating a 3D immersive (lifelike) experience: it is called a dream.
________

In a lucid dream I was riding on a train. Sitting in a widow seat, I looked out at the passing scenery while fully knowing I was tucked in my bed 10 miles from Boston, at about 4:30 AM. As we passed a large grove of trees I noticed the fine details, the rough bark, the infinite variety of shapes and sizes of each tree. I looked at individual branches and could find nothing that hinted at the fact that there was no physical matter comprising it all. I knew as I was looking at it, that this was all a creation, an illusion, of some sort.

I then looked at the perspective of the scene: the relative motion of the closest tress as they moved in perfect perspective against those further away, and those which moved relatively against those even further away. What could create this? What kind of power would be required for a computer to conceive, design in the most minute detail, and render all this in real time? Could the physical brain contain such power?

Then I took my experience to a new level. I decided to fly out of the train, within and above the quickly passing forest. I effortlessly moved up through the roof of the train and I literally flew through some of the trees. I felt a slight sensation as I passed through the material of each one. I glanced back over at the train powering down the tracks, a long line of passenger cars behind the diesel engine, followed by a caboose. I glanced in the other direction and again saw the fully realistic view of near and far trees passing in perfect perspective, even as I swooped up and over the forest.

Still, I could not find anything out of place. I could find nothing to give me a hint that what I was watching wasn't “real”. Perhaps this was because it WAS real: as real as any experience. Perhaps it was the same as any experience in our objective reality. Perhaps this dreaming/non-physical world is just as real as the waking one because it is being created in the same way as any real waking-world experience. How would that work? How COULD that work?

For purposes of this discussion, we can categorize two types of immersive personal experiences: physical and non-physical. We are all quite familiar with the physical, and we assume it is “powered” by sensing the existence of a separate “solid” material world, one comprised of matter. The non-physical is no less familiar but is quite different. Examples are- dreams, OBE, NDE, shared death experiences, etc.

Starting with the physical: Let's take a closer look particularly at our vision sense.

It has been pointed out many times that there is no intrinsic color to anything. Vision relies on photons (which carry color information only as a function of vibratory frequency) striking the retina in the eye, which  excites various rods and cones in particular ratios, which send electro-chemical information to the brain, and then something somehow interprets this information and through a process which no one understands, we perceive color. Oddly, nowhere along this trail of processes is there a sense, even a hint, of color.

Consider how a picture is transmitted to your TV. The quality of color doesn't exist in the transmitted data stream. Of course the information contains data that is used by the TV electronics to indicate color, but that is not the same as the actual qualitative experience of red being included in the data set. The TV must use its electronics to sort out the codes and turn on the proper colored dots for the quality of color to take form.  In a similar way, your eyes don't directly project colors on the visual screen of your awareness. Rather the mind, like the TV, sorts and interprets and converts the information sent from the eyes and creates a visual scene of the physical world, which is then projected on the screen of our “theater of the mind”. Many will argue that the brain, like the TV, converts the incoming sense data and biologically creates the sensation of color. OK I accept that this is a reasonable position. But lets hold that thought for a bit and look at this from a different perspective.

Let's turn to a different type of experience, a non-physical based one, that we can all imagine: a dream. We have all had completely realistic dreams, ones which occasionally, for all intents and purposes, can be indistinguishable from “real life”. Sights, sounds, touch, and even emotions appear as they would in our waking experience .

So again focusing on vision; we can easily see that while sleeping, our eyes are closed, consequently there is no visual sense data being presented to our brain. So it appears it is not necessary for us to actually be receiving sense input to have an immersive 3D (“real life”) visual experience. We can see that it is possible, somehow, for one to fabricate a totally convincing lifelike experience of a non-physical world: we all do it every night when we sleep.

Some would say, yes but those experiences are just comprised of memories. That somehow “sense data” is being provided to the brain's visual cortex from a memory. I would respond in two ways:
1- I have had many many dreams where I have experienced whole new, or vastly different environments from those that I have experienced in the past. I reject the notion that dreams are comprised of memories only: there is way too much evidence to the contrary.
2- Even if this were the case (that dreams are comprised only of memories) this doesn't change the fact that we are creating an immersive realistic experience with no physical sensory input. We are creating the experience from something else, something not containing nor as the result of, matter at all.

In one famous quote, a gentleman demonstrated the reason for his faith in the reality of physical matter by kicking a stone and submitting this is as obvious and convincing evidence of the supremacy of matter as the fundamental bedrock of our experience: but let's look closer.

Imagine you are in a dream, and talking to a person about this very subject, and the person kicks a dream stone and says, “see isn't it obvious that matter is real?”. He might show you the scuff on his shoe. He might even pick up the rock and hit you on the head. How would you respond? Well, you might respond as you would in waking consciousness and either agree with the obviousness of the demonstration, or you might argue the point: but in the end the other person would probably not be convinced. Why would they? It's just your opinion against theirs and lacking solid proof, yours is of no higher standing than theirs. We have a stand-off.

Now, let's say that you were to become lucid in this dream of yours, as I have many times. You would realize then, from your larger perspective, that this whole scene is playing out in a dream while you are lying in bed. You would know with absolute certainty that in this dream reality there IS no “solid matter” to comprise the rock. You would KNOW that this other person was being fooled. You yourself, while earlier in this dream non-lucidly, might have also been similarly fooled, but from your new (lucid) perspective, it is obvious that physical matter plays no role in this place. Here, in this physical-looking dream, just like in “real life”: shoes scuff, eggs fall and break, cars crash, and a punch in the nose will hurt and make your eyes water. All these things happen in the world of matter, and so too here in the non-physical dream space. Of course in the dream world it is possible for the rules to occasionally be different: sometimes you can fly, sometimes you can fall great distances and bounce etc, but most of the time the environment behaves pretty much the same as in the waking ("physical") world. In any case, amazingly, a realistic experiential environment is being fabricated that is similar to (perhaps even indistinguishable from) real life. And it isn't just a fuzzy “dream-like” state of mind that is giving us this impression, as we will discover during lucid dreaming.

So what we are left with is this: on a nightly basis, we find ourselves in quite realistic worlds, which apparently we create. Ones that can present as totally physical in behavior, but who's physical-looking objects lack any material basis. Perhaps the dream world that we experience comes from our memories, perhaps our imagination, perhaps it exists in some form in a larger consciousness. These are points that we might examine more closely, but we know that the experience is not formulated based on sense data from our eyes and ears. We know in some way, something is constructing our dream environment from something non-physical in nature. Although we don't know the nature of this world, and whether it exists apart from ourselves, let's just think of this environmental information which is at the root of this non-physical experience, as a dataset. Literally a set of data which describes our dream world.

Having looked more closely at our dreams we can see that the “projector” which illuminates our screen of experience need not be comprised of photons bouncing of “solid” material surfaces, but rather can also be a construction of our minds. Perhaps this is a fundamental attribute of consciousness. Perhaps consciousness is primary. Perhaps further, this mechanism of experience-construction is the thing behind that which we experience as our “real life” 3D world as well.

What we can now see is, in the case of the physical world and the non-physical, our mind is involved with producing the content which is projected on our experiential screen. Remember, even in the physical process of sight, the mind/brain must convert the electro-chemical nerve impulses to display color. Both types of experiences may involve similar processes: but more on that in a bit.

A powerful way to look closer at these phenomenon can be through exploration while in “mixed consciousness”. This can make it possible for us to use our clear, lucid, awake, analytical thought process to experience and test the limits of this non-physical environment, as we are experiencing it. We can do this via lucid dreaming.

Recently I awoke (became lucid) in a dream where I was standing on the beach watching a beautiful multi-colored sunset. I could feel the sand between my toes and the warm sun on my face. I watched the rippling water and heard the small waves lapping on the wet sand. I stood there in amazement as I marveled at my mind's ability to create this scene, one which I had never seen before. It was indistinguishable from waking reality, and was playing out in 3D full motion video, with sight, smell, feeling, and sound before me.

While standing there alone on the beach, I spoke out loud to myself. I spoke to the incredible fact that while I knew I was lying in bed asleep, dreaming, I was also somehow bringing this totally new and sparkling world into existence.

While some part of me was asleep in my bed, another part was fully conscious of this fact and observing and narrating the scene, and apparently another part was creating the wind and the water and the Sun. Was some aspect of my mind planning each ripple in the ocean? Was some aspect of my mind choosing to move the clouds in unison through the sky? Were there unseen fish in that ocean swimming beneath the surface of the water? Were there people on that distant sailboat talking about their plans to start a family or buy a new home?

Dreaming is not the only case where we can see this non-physical reality creation process play out. We can also point to phenomena such as: Out of Body experiences, Near Death Experiences, Shared Death Experiences, shamanic journeying, and Remote Viewing. So there is a process in play here that may take many forms in many situations.

So now let's imagine the mind creating both the physical AND non-physical experience.

This is a big deal: in the case of the physical I am asking you to imagine that there IS NO physical aspect to anything. I'm suggesting that perhaps matter doesn't exist in a physical form at all. I am NOT just saying, as many currently do, that most of any physical object is comprised of empty space, and that even the small amount of space that IS occupied only contains vibrating electromagnetic strings,, so really isn't “physical”. No: what I am saying is perhaps what we experience as physical is actually a totally non-physical construction that contains neither particles or waves, but is rather only an idea: data. It is created by consciousness itself, just as in a dream. I am further saying that it is personal. It applies to you only. It has all of the attributes of the physical, but lacks that which we call matter. It lacks even the Planck-level underpinnings of matter. A lot to ask, but lets run with this thought.

Now that we have seen while dreaming we regularly experience an apparently physical world without the aid of any physical matter, we must consider the possibility that our “real” world has the same non-physical basis. After-all, isn't it reasonable to suppose that the same amazingly powerful creative process which forms the experience of our non-physical world may also be at the root of our “real world” experiences? Why should we presume that there are two utterly different ways which our world comes to expression? Parsimony would suggest there is but ONE underlying mechanism of experiential expression.

Imagine that right here, right now, although you are having a “physical” experience, it is being created by mind, or consciousness, and is not comprised by separate actual objects. I'm not suggesting that those physical objects don't exist in your experience, just that their source, their very nature, may not be what you think. Perhaps we don't exist in a physical world at all. Perhaps we exist as consciousness and we construct/manifest the experience of physical world in which we exist.

This is NOT to say that we manifest actual material reality, it is to say that we manifest the experience of physical reality. There is a non-trivial and unmistakable difference.

In one case, there are actual mechanical objects which stand alone from each other and us, and with which we interact through a process of billiard-ball mechanics. Alternatively, a manifested experience of reality contains no material objects whatsoever, and consequently no mechanical interactions. This method of expression only contains an experience where supposed objects appear as if they are acted upon by other supposed objects.

How would one even know the difference between actual physical reality and the manifested experience of physical reality? Perhaps you might ask: does it really even matter? Fair questions. We'll get to that part later. For now let's just poke around this a little more completely.

Now might be a good time to more clearly nail down the difference between “real life” or objective reality vs your more subjective, more personal, non-physical reality.

First- we need to look at the relative unchanging nature of “real life”. Not only is the world the same when you wake up as when you went to sleep, it is generally unchangeable while you are awake unless you interact with it physically. OTOH the non-physical is a much more malleable environment that more readily responds to your wishes. If you want a door to appear, it can. If you want to fly, go ahead. You can even pass through walls if you wish it to be so.

Second- another major difference is that real life is the same for everyone; it is “objective”. It is objectively consistent for all. Whereas the non-physical seems to be particular to the person “creating” it and is generally not a sharable experience. There are many documented exceptions lets think of it this way, for the time being.

I said earlier that I am suggesting that your experience of the real world is a creation of your consciousness and so that it is personal to you. So how can the physical experience be personal to you, but also objectively consistent for all?  Seems like a contradiction.

Also does this mean I am suggesting that you are the only being in existence and that you bring the entire universe into existence (solipsism)?

No. Am I suggesting that each of us exists, but brings a different and unique version of our reality into existence? No: but you are getting warmer. Read on.

So how does this model of reality hold up with our proposition of the supremacy of consciousness?

If we were to allow for two different classes of reality's experiential “data”: (objective and subjective) it holds up quite well.

The objective data set is that which is accessible to all entities who are participating in the particular reality: i.e it reflects the state of this apparently physical/material universe. Whether a dog or cat or human, or a cave dwelling bat, all will have the same shared basis of physical reality. All will individually experience whatever  is appropriate for their senses. A backyard with 10 green oak trees in it will look that way to a human. A bat will experience those trees differently, especially at night, when vision is not possible. It would experience 10 large objects with its sound location apparatus. All creatures will have a shared sense of the same reality because all will be based on the same objective data set.

On the other hand, when we consider a subjective data set we find it is particular to each observer and is dependent and changeable based on the observer's beliefs and desires. Although the way we create our experience is the same as with objective reality, this non-physical experience can be deeper and richer than the objective because it is not limited to that which is fed by the traditional human senses. Nor are we limited by traditional physics. For example we might be able to see with 360 degree vision, or be able to fly without physical assistance. Finally this data set will often be lost when the observer's attention is interrupted e.g. when one wakes up.

So if we allow for the possibility of two different sets of data to supply the input to the mind's world-creation process, we can see how this may result in a convincing physical or non-physical experience.

We can take this one step further and see that it is entirely possible for one's experience to include aspects of both data sets simultaneously. We have all experienced such a cases as: a real dog barking bleeding into a dream where a dream dog is barking. Or when your actual body needs to go the bathroom, one dreams about going to the bathroom.

There are many more interesting examples of mixed data experiences that might explain the otherwise unexplainable. What about the untold thousands of cases of awake people reporting visitations by the departed? Take for example, my father's oft-told story about a beloved grandfather physically appearing in his bedroom, at the foot of his bed, offering words of comfort on the night of his death in a car crash (the crash was not otherwise known to my father). Or of people reporting seeing angles or demons, or religious figures? What about the burning bush of Moses?: all cases where one perhaps is seeing a mix of the objective and subjective worlds simultaneously. How about all the cases where people swear they saw something incredible in the “real world”, and where usually only that person experiences that amazing thing, while others see only objective reality? What about UFOs? Or ghost sightings?

Further- there are documented cases of shared dreams and OBE experiences where two or more people were able to have an experience, document the details, and then compare notes with others to confirm a the shared non-physical event sequence. Or take for example “Shared Death” experiences, where a living loved one moves along with a deceased loved one part way through the process of the post-death transition. These sorts of experiences appear to be where we are able to share someone else's subjective (“non-physical”) reality. So it looks like we are able to access not only the usual objective data and our own subjective data, but in rare cases, someone else's subjective data as well.

One aspect of what we might consider our subjective data set is our memories. These memories span our waking life time and our non-physical experiences as well. By non-physical I refer to not just dreams but other experiences while in other states such as OBE and NDE. I would guess that our subjective data set includes memories of all those dreams that we've had and forgotten. And also those worlds, landscapes and people we've dreamed of, and have never thought of again. Memories of any environment seem to be available from any other as long as we are lucid enough to notice.

We have all come to understand that only a portion of what we experience when we are awake, seem to be available to us as memories. Only those things that are somehow notable seem to be available to us. It was during an interesting dream where I found that this is actually not the case.

I had a dream where I was sitting in my third grade classroom. I was speaking to my friends, most of which I had forgotten long ago. I suddenly realized that I remembered the names of each child in the class. This is information that was completely lost to me several decades ago.

The real kicker was, as I was talking to a particular friend and we discussed going to his house after school one day, he said that he would ask his mother, and that I should give him a call later so we could make plans. At that moment I realized knew his phone number just as if I was once again 8 years old and dialing it every day. This is definitely information that had been totally lost to me. And when I awoke that number was still clear a crystal in my thoughts.

I have since once again, forgotten the names of most of my forgotten friends, but I now realize the memories of all of that stuff, the faces, the names, the addresses and even the phone numbers, are still very alive and real and fresh, somewhere. Although it may not be accessible to my conscious physical-experience awareness, I have no doubt that it exists, intact, in some aspect of “mind”.

And if such a minuscule, unimportant day in my life is there, available, unperturbed, I now see that in all likelihood, every moment of every day of my life, perhaps every fragment of thought and every dream experience I've ever had, is available to be remembered. And if our actual physical experience is really a process driven by a “data-set”, all of this is available to be actually relived if I wish.

And finally, since we are actually able to share (to “live”) other people's subjective data, then we could actually experience what it is like to live other people's lives as well. And interestingly, this is exactly what many have reported during NDE, past live recall and other metaphysical events:
- the process of re-living even the most mundane, forgotten aspect of their lives, and
- the process of experiencing many aspects of their life through the perspective of those who with whom we've interacted, even to the point of allowing us to feel the emotions of the other person during the recalled event.

These ideas have been around for thousands of years, as family stories, as legend, as myth, as teachings, so I guess it should be of no surprise that these pieces fit together so well.

Earlier I mentioned that perhaps in some ways this view of how our world is comprised is not so important. After-all, whether matter has a physical composition or not, may be immaterial as long as it behaves in certain predictable ways when it is observed. Right?

Well yes this is true, however recognizing the real truth, that the physical world is an illusionary construct of our mind, plays a huge role in understanding and perhaps explaining the currently explainable. I refer to things like remote viewing, spiritual healing, the placebo effect, mediumship, end of life visions, end of life lucidity, out of body experiences, and on and on. These are all explainable if we use a mixed consciousness model that includes the objective and subjective.


Other aspects to study and consider-

Perhaps we could participate in a different shared reality
Perhaps we could create a new shared reality
How does time figure in?
Multi lives?
Akashic records?
One set of objective data contains all experiences, all lives from all contributors?
Other realities? Other dimensions?