reality.
a.k.a. truth, dharma, word...
Life is beautiful, but not fair. All things are interconnected. Every effect has a cause and every cause an effect. The more in tune with natural law our lives are, the more inner peace we will achieve.
"It is better to see God in everything than to try and figure it out."-- Neem Karoli Baba
You do not and cannot understand God. One or more facets of your life are very different from what you had originally intended or desired, and you will experience pain over it. You are going to physically degenerate, become weak, and finally die. Not everyone whom you love returns, or ever will return, that love. Have you accepted these things?
When I observe into what inconsistent absurdities those persons run who make speculative, metaphysical religion a matter of importance, I am fully determined never to puzzle myself in the mazes of religious discussion, [and] to content myself with practicing the dictates of God and reason so far as I can judge for myself.-- John Quincy Adams
God is trans-theological.
"The truth waits for eyes unclouded by longing."-- the Tao Te Ching
The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. (Legal Oath)
"Truth is no theory, no speculative system of philosophy, no intellectual insight. Truth is exact correspondence with reality. For man, truth is the unshakable knowledge of his real nature, Self."-- Paramhansa Yoganda Baba
The endeavor, in all branches of knowledge, is to see the object as in itself it really is. (Matthew Arnold)
reality links.
- Some Thoughts on Reality and Fantasy -- "An excellent book regarding Reality and Fantasy is: A Physicist's Guide to Skepticism by Milton A. Rothman ISBN 0-87975-440-0. Many of the comments under 'Reality as presented by Science' below, are explained much more completely and thoroughly in this book. It is a 'must have book' if you are interested in the question "What is Reality?"...Some Self-evident Claims...Claim: Some descriptions of reality are truer than others. Example: the scientific description is much more reliable, and therefore truer than a religious or a New Age description... Claim: Some cultural environments are better settings for finding Truth than others. Some are more open to the critical investigation of all aspects of 'what is'. Example: Secular, Democratic societies, as the westernized countries, are better environments for finding Truth than are theocracies such as traditionally Christian Societies, and especially better than traditional Muslim Societies."
- Seeking Truth, Seeking Unity -- "If one looks through the scriptures of the world, it becomes clear that the Founders of the world's major religions encouraged their followers to seek their own answers. This principle is not new and unique to the Bahai Faith, but one of the eternal truths reconfirmed by each Manifestation. However, this kind of free inquiry very often proves troublesome and threatening to religious authorities, and so it gets lost or forgotten. To take just one example: Compare Jesus' words "Seek and ye shall find" with the 2nd century theologian Tertullian who declared that "Questions are what make heretics." The questions that some 2nd-century Christians were asking were seen as very dangerous to the unity and authority of the Church. What Baha'is have now, in our own 2nd century, is the attempt of modern-day Tertullians to maintain as authoritative a particular interpretive viewpoint. But as in the example found in Christian history, the definition of orthodoxy and the persecution of heresy does not create unity; it creates division."
- Reality through the looking glass: science and awareness in the postmodern world -- "What,' it will be questioned, `when the sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like a guinea?' `O no, no, I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying, ``Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty"' (William Blake, [4])
I have ... drawn up my chairs to my two tables. ... One of them has been familiar to me from earliest years ... it is coloured; above all it is substantial. ... Table No. 2 is my scientific table.... My scientific table is mostly emptiness. Sparsely scattered in that emptiness are numerous electric charges rushing about with great speed;... (Arthur Eddington, [15])
This is a book about reality.
Most of us think we have a reasonable grasp on reality. We have sorted out that Father Christmas / Santa Claus is unreal, along with unicorns and fairies. We suspect that those who think they are being manipulated by death-rays beamed from Mars have lost their sense of reality, and we assume that it is the business of science to find out, and tell us, what reality consists of. We assume that when we are awake, sober and healthy then we are fully in touch with reality; but with dreams, drunkenness, drugs or delirium we enter unreality.
This view is regarded as modern. Those who think this way regard older ideas as superstition. They contrast modern thinking with thinking in earlier times, when people were confused about such matters, believing that dreams could tell one about reality, or that myths were as reliable as science. It is often said that the transition between superstition and modern thought took place in the eighteenth century, in a process often called the enlightenment, when society woke up and saw the truth about reality, sweeping away the darkness that went before. We moderns now live with a sure idea of the way things are, which is the only foundation for building the future."
