{"id":108,"date":"2014-10-04T02:46:57","date_gmt":"2014-10-04T02:46:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.infinitewaytruth.com\/WP\/?p=108"},"modified":"2014-10-04T02:46:57","modified_gmt":"2014-10-04T02:46:57","slug":"objective-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.infinitewaytruth.com\/WP\/john\/objective-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"Objective Reality"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is hard in our fast paced contemporary world to stop and contemplate the nature of reality.\u00a0 We all take for granted what is real, or what appears to be real.\u00a0\u00a0 To the mystic reality is the product of a state of consciousness.\u00a0 I recently read that there is a war of ideas taking place in the scientific community.\u00a0 On the one side are the materialists who believe the world exists independently of our awareness of it.\u00a0 On the other side are the idealists who believe our awareness creates reality.\u00a0 This war is not necessarily an either-or situation.\u00a0 In most mystical traditions there is a middle path, a living between these apparent worlds in a consciousness of oneness.<\/span><\/p>\n

Webster defines mysticism as \u201cthe experience of mystical union or direct communion with ultimate reality reported by mystics; it is a theory of mystical knowledge, a doctrine or belief that direct knowledge of God, of spiritual truth, of ultimate reality or comparable matters is attainable through immediate intuition, insight or illumination, and in a way different from ordinary sense perception.\u201d\u00a0 The key words in this definition, as pointed out by the great twentieth century mystic Joel S. Goldsmith, are experience<\/i> and union<\/i>.\u00a0 If we accept that ultimate reality is spiritual, then our experience of it gives us insight into the nature of creation itself.\u00a0 Reasoning from that high point, we discover that creation must be one \u2013 how can there be an ultimate reality and something else \u2013 another reality?\u00a0 We discover that creation must be spiritual, since matter is not one.\u00a0 And, our experience of mystical union makes us one with all spiritual idea, form and activity.\u00a0 This consciousness of oneness is an illumined state.<\/p>\n

In his book, A Parenthesis In Eternity<\/span>, Mr. Goldsmith says, \u201cthe unillumined and the illumined are the same person living two different lives.\u00a0 In the absence of illumination, we are individuals with many, many problems and with unhappy, unfulfilled, incomplete and unfinished lives. (Or, we may be happy and content in a materialistic way.\u00a0 But in material consciousness, where our well being is part of the belief in dualism, the belief in good and evil, there is always the fear that our happiness and joy can be taken away.)\u00a0 With our first glimpse of the spiritual life, even though we seem to remain the same person — wear the same size clothes, the same size hats and shoes, and probably even look the same in the mirror — we are not the same.\u00a0 We are living from a different standpoint, a different experience, and under different conditions.\u201d\u00a0 We all possess an illumined consciousness, but usually it is buried under mounds of human conditioning, conditioning that makes it easier for us to accept objective reality at face value, not question beyond what our senses tell us, and live lives dominated by the pull of material cause and effect.\u00a0 There is another way to live.<\/p>\n

A basic tenet of mysticism is that creation is spiritual.\u00a0 The great question for the mystical student is how do I reconcile objective reality to spiritual creation?\u00a0 Here is where we examine the debate between the materialists and the idealists.\u00a0 The materialists \u2013 who include Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Paine, and Albert Einstein in their camp \u2013 believe that the ultimate nature of reality can be discovered by measuring the material world, even into the world of subatomic particles.\u00a0 The idealists, who include Plato, Bishop Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, and a number of quantum physicist like Amit Goswami and Fred Allan Wolf, hold to the view that our observation alters the nature of perceived reality, or to the extreme that nothing exists out side of our awareness and that our awareness makes it tangible.<\/p>\n

The middle path bridges these views in the following manner.\u00a0 From a spiritual point of view, creation is complete.\u00a0 All that exists, or will ever exist is here and now as ultimate reality.\u00a0\u00a0 The unillumined individual does not perceive this.\u00a0 The illumined individual, even if his or her illumination is but a glimpse of spiritual reality, realizes the nature of this reality and stops trying to change the appearance world.\u00a0 This understanding allows the illumined person to shift into a spiritual perspective that nullifies material effect, brings the experience of spiritual oneness into consciousness, and conforms their lives to spiritual principles.\u00a0 Science defines the nature of material reality through observation and measurement.\u00a0 A mystic knows spiritual oneness through experience.\u00a0 When an individual consciously recognizes the spiritual elements of life, those elements \u2013 love, peace, abundance and fulfillment \u2013 begin manifesting in his or her life. The nature of spiritual reality is activated through that recognition and with that comes the realization of spiritual omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence.\u00a0 These principles replace the belief in material cause and effect, of a world made up of forces of good and forces of evil.\u00a0 That a spiritual reality exists, and the fact that many have experienced that reality, baffles the materialists because spiritual reality cannot be measured, it can only be experienced through spiritual consciousness.<\/p>\n

Spiritual reality is not experienced through physical sense.\u00a0 There is a spiritual element within each of us and we experience the spiritual dimension through that element, traditionally called our Soul, but also referred to as our higher Self.\u00a0\u00a0 To commune with our Soul requires a quiet mind.\u00a0 In most mystical traditions a quiet mind is attained through meditation.\u00a0 Fundamentally, what we accept in our mind \u2013 our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and ideas form our perception of the world.\u00a0 The result is a life lived through the attitudes we have of good and evil.\u00a0 For example, if we love good and hate evil, our lives are going to more black and white; swinging between the highs of love and the lows of hate.\u00a0 On the other hand, if we look at life with compassion and understanding, we are less easily influenced by social and religious trends and live a more balanced life.\u00a0 However we view the world around us, our higher Self is not touched by these perceptions; It is linked in oneness to the infinite expressions of spiritual creation.\u00a0 This higher Self, which Goldsmith calls Consciousness, stands behind the mind and our physical senses waiting to be expressed.\u00a0 The thought processes \u2013 concepts, hopes and dreams, that come into our mind are really universal in nature and come to everyone.\u00a0 When we go beyond that human, mental activity we find a place of peace within us.\u00a0 Our method of meditation is to find the spaces between the thoughts, because those spaces are free of any material concept.\u00a0 Without words going through our mind, or thoughts coming to us, we are in a state of spiritual receptivity.\u00a0 In that atmosphere we find ourselves free of judgment, free of fear and desire, and as we consciously acknowledge this state of peace as spiritual, we align ourselves with universal, spiritual consciousness and open ourselves to experience spiritual reality here on earth.<\/p>\n

The middle path is the great paradox of mysticism.\u00a0 According to the principle of oneness, this one creation, ultimate reality is inseparable from its source, and in all esoteric teaching that Source is good.\u00a0 It is the Light.\u00a0 It is universal good, and the purpose of creation is to express that good as unconditioned love.\u00a0 So, in a nutshell, the definition of ultimate reality from a mystical point of view is infinite, universal good manifesting itself uniquely and individually for the purpose of expressing love.\u00a0 All of this is one; the creator and expression are one, one substance, one life, and one good.\u00a0 Nowhere in this dimension of reality is there evil, or an opposite, and this seems to create a dilemma in human consciousness where the perception of the world is based on the forces of good and evil, with evil sometimes seeming the more powerful.<\/p>\n

All mystical schools teach their students how to deal with the appearance world.\u00a0 The Master, Christ Jesus taught that \u201cMy\u201d kingdom is not of this world.\u00a0 He was not referring to a heaven in the sky, but to a state of consciousness that is not affected by the good or evil of \u201cthis world.\u201d\u00a0 He taught that the way to be free from the forces of this world was by not judging after appearances.\u00a0 The Buddha gained his illumination by not resisting the appearances of evil coming at him under the Bodhi tree.\u00a0 His passive observation, and non-reaction to destructive material forces gave him the insight to not react to material good either, realizing it came from the same force, from the same material god as did the appearance of evil, and with this recognition he gained his illumination and freedom from material bondage.\u00a0 The Christ said, \u201cWhy call me good?\u00a0 There is only one good\u2026\u201d and that good has nothing to do with the material world.\u00a0 These men knew the oneness of ultimate reality and found the way to experience it by withdrawing power from the world of effect and turning within to the source of all good.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that this world isn\u2019t real; it\u2019s our perception of it that is false much of the time.\u00a0 From the materialist\u2019s point of view, that which doesn\u2019t make sense isn\u2019t worth examining.\u00a0 It\u2019s just the way of the world.\u00a0 William B. Lindley in his article \u201cReality and Quantum Mysticism\u201d in the journal Truth Seeker<\/span> quotes R. P. Feynman, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist when commenting about the unexplainable in quantum physics; “Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, ‘But how can it be like that?’ because you will go ‘down the drain’ into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.”\u00a0 The bad comes with the good, or visa versa, and man can do nothing about it; that\u2019s the epitome of the materialist\u2019s point of view.\u00a0 Yet the idealists who believe man\u2019s awareness (or God\u2019s awareness) creates objective reality are equally off the mark from the mystical perspective.\u00a0 Where is the power in man to create the universe?\u00a0 Where is it in human consciousness to change one white hair black or increase one\u2019s height?\u00a0 How could omnipotent good create evil? The only thing a person has control over it his or her perceptions, and as one becomes aware of the underlying spiritual reality, here and now, those perceptions of material reality change.\u00a0 As you see the spiritual reality underlying the material appearances, your experience \u2013 your life and your world, begin to conform to the perfection of ultimate reality.\u00a0 In this sense our awareness creates our world, but it is a world already in existence coming into focus.<\/p>\n

It says in the book of John that the word is made flesh.\u00a0 This is the middle path.\u00a0 What is the word he is talking about?\u00a0 It is the sacred word, that which cannot be spoken or revealed.\u00a0 It is the name of God, revealed to Moses and given only to those who have the discernment not to personalize it.\u00a0 It was before Abraham, and It exists until the end of time.\u00a0 It is the alpha and omega.\u00a0 This spiritual nature of life is manifested in the flesh, yet the flesh knows it not.\u00a0 Within each of us is the flame of spirit.\u00a0 It is impersonal, universal love revealing the nature of ultimate reality, but being spiritual It only speaks to Itself.\u00a0 That Self is our spiritual identity.\u00a0 It is the word within that appears as individual being.\u00a0 But that individual being is spiritual.\u00a0 To become aware of our spiritual nature is to make the word flesh.<\/p>\n

Spiritual creation is one.\u00a0 In that oneness are infinite expressions, each expression being the same substance and having the same elements as creation Itself.\u00a0 If we substitute the word God for creation, we have God being all in all, from the farthest reaches of the universe to the sub-atomic world of quantum mechanics.\u00a0 Our realization of this universal Presence within shifts our perception from the material to the spiritual.\u00a0 Acknowledging the spiritual dimension within brings it into realization, and a realized consciousness of Truth manifests in one\u2019s life as peace, harmony, freedom and love.\u00a0 A realized consciousness lives not as a physical being, but as God in manifestation \u2013 the word made flesh.<\/p>\n

The path to illumination takes the courage to follow that inner impulse even if it defies conventional wisdom.\u00a0 Once an individual takes that step, that illumined consciousness within begins revealing the truth.\u00a0 That revelation may be in an instant, or it may take lifetimes.\u00a0 As the individual learns to see beyond the objective reality and perceive the greater truth, his or her life gains the freedom of the mystic and becomes an instrument of love and forgiveness to the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is hard in our fast paced contemporary world to stop and contemplate the nature of reality.\u00a0 We all take for granted what is real, or what appears to be real.\u00a0\u00a0 To the mystic reality is the product of a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-john"],"yoast_head":"\nObjective Reality - Infinite Way Truth<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Spiritual reality or material concept\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.infinitewaytruth.com\/WP\/john\/objective-reality\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"John\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"11 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.infinitewaytruth.com\/WP\/john\/objective-reality\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.infinitewaytruth.com\/WP\/john\/objective-reality\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"John\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.infinitewaytruth.com\/WP\/#\/schema\/person\/0a83933390d860e8832d640a4d31ffff\"},\"headline\":\"Objective Reality\",\"datePublished\":\"2014-10-04T02:46:57+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.infinitewaytruth.com\/WP\/john\/objective-reality\/\"},\"wordCount\":2133,\"commentCount\":3,\"articleSection\":[\"John\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.infinitewaytruth.com\/WP\/john\/objective-reality\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.infinitewaytruth.com\/WP\/john\/objective-reality\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.infinitewaytruth.com\/WP\/john\/objective-reality\/\",\"name\":\"Objective Reality - 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