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1.2.4 Underlying RealityVersion 1.0 September 2016 (Previous Version) In this section we consider what the underlying reality ‘out there’ might be. People all over the world have speculated about this issue for the last few thousand years. ● Some religions and philosophers tell us there is some permanent, all-encompassing thing behind the ever-changing appearances, called e.g. Brahma (in Hinduism), God (in many religions) or perhaps the noumenon (from ancient Greek, used by Kant). ● Others assume there is nothing permanent, only ever changing events, despite our perception of relatively stable things such as tables and chairs and the earth itself. ● The Upanishads describe the universe and life as an interplay of Purusha (the eternal, unchanging principles, or consciousness) and Prakṛti (the temporary, changing material world, or nature). Many people believe in a transcendent God, one that is outside the Whole Universe. Others suggest that such things as life, values and meaning cannot be attributes or components of the material world. We discuss these issues in Chapter 1.3 (Theology) and Chapter 1.5 (Ethics). Many people think that there is a supernatural world that contains disembodied spirits (minds without bodies) or souls and perhaps God(s). We discuss this further in Chapter 1.4 (Mind). We may never know the nature of reality, because our understanding is based on our physical and mental perceptions and our evolutionary driven, survival oriented mental processing. What we see is limited by our physiology: we only see a minute part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and only see things of midrange size (we need telescopes and microscopes for very large and very small things). We look the underlying reality of the universe under the following topic headings:
We suggest the following is a reasonable summary of the conclusions we can reasonably come to on these issues: 1.2.4 We define the Whole Universe to be everything that exists, everything that is real. When scientists talk of the multiverse or other universes these are in our definition part of the Whole Universe. Entities such as immanent Gods and perhaps other spirits could conceivably be part of this Whole Universe. We don't know the ultimate nature of the Whole Universe, whether it is ultimately one or many, static or dynamic, continuous or discrete, but at present it is incomprehensible and unknowable. We cannot make conclusions about how to behave on the basis of the presently unknown fundamental nature of the Whole Universe. There is no benefit in believing in supernatural worlds. more We break down this complex conclusion into its main components to consider in more detail.
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