The Nature of Reality

The Nature of Reality by Harry Palmer

There is a certain spectrum of perception which we are accustomed to calling reality. Perceptions falling outside of this spectrum are sometimes thought of as delusional or hallucinatory by those who do not perceive them. By such reasoning, the moth which perceives in a light frequency not perceptible to the human eye, sees only a delusional world. Likewise a dog hears delusional sounds, and smells delusional smells. Plainly as long as we insist upon determining reality by consensus vote we are, by the action of our own consideration, going to limit our perception.

In an equally disastrous effort to define reality, someone else constructed the idea of an inside and an outside and hung everyone with a mind. Thereafter, what was imagined as outside the mind was real and what was perceived inside the mind was imaginary! A pretty neat trick, this mind thing, except it tended to stick one with this vestigial record of reality that strangely influenced perception by appending its interpretations. One no longer perceived a 'Chair', but now perceived mother's favorite chair which she loved to sit in on Sundays and visit with Aunt Agnes who lost her husband in the war,...Salerno beach in the invasion of Sicily, but it was really the Germans, because the Italians were...

And thus was born the wonderful admonition of the would-be-instant-healer. "It's only in your mind!"

The next wave of "reality definers", quite possibly the offspring of the "It's-only-in-your-mind" crowd, decided it was all in their mind. There is only an inside, no outside! Now they could define reality by asking each other what they imagined they perceived and agreeing on majority viewpoint. "I see a chair there. Do you see a chair there? You do? Good, that chair is real!"

With the development at the Avatar materials, and the event of several people achieving bona fide Avatar status, the nature of reality began to simplify. First to go were the ideas of "inside" and "outside". This effectively relieved the obligation some people felt to stuff a personal copy of everything into their heads.

To the Avatar, anything which can be sensed or in any way imagined, is reality.

Anything which can be perceived, directly or indirectly, via any sense channel, via the imagination, via intuition, via faith, falls into the broad category of reality and may be said to exist. This perception of reality may be much broader than what one has been accustomed to. In this new definition, reality does not depend upon critical proofs or any criteria other than, is it in any way perceived. One need not ask "Is it real?", for by our whatever the "it" is, it is in some way perceived and is therefore real. It is not possible to perceive something that does not exist! We are defining reality as everything and anything perceivable in any manner.

The only thing that falls outside our definition of reality is the perceiver, the Avatar! And it is only an illusion treated by our language that we appear to have an inside and outside--more accurately, if somewhat enigmatic, the Avatar is everywhere non-existant.

Dividing the broad category of reality into more specific categories of reality, or levels of reality, can be easily done. We can define and categorize reality by the method or methods by which it is perceived. Worlds are thus created by the limits we place on our perception. One can conceive of the world of smells, the world of sounds, the world of sight, the world of imagination, the worlds with which we agree or disagree, or even the private world of our inner self. The number of possible worlds, taking into account all the possible division and combinations of perception are infinite.

Certain creations and considerations act like tuned filters, passing only a fraction of possible reality which we then shape into our various worlds. The human body possesses a complex combination of tuned filters which pass certain realities, which we label the physical world. The eyes attract a quality of perception contained in certain frequencies of light, the ears are tuned to certain thresholds of vibration, certain densities register as solid by our touch, certain quantities of chemicals register as odor and taste, and even though we can create wonderful instruments capable of sensing realities beyond our limited perception, they operate only by translating what the body doesn't perceive into the narrow range of perception which the body can perceive. Any realities not so translatable are lost to anyone who limits his perception to the range of the human body.

Any world, whether individual or shared, is delineated and contained by the limits of creation and consideration placed on perception. Just beyond the frontier of every world is the unknown, the unperceived. This no-man's-land of unreality is what separates worlds; and it provides challenges for the explorer; and it provides excitement for the adventurer; and it provides livelihood for the priest and magician.

When the unknown is revealed, the worlds held separate combine. The word universe refers to the combining of every possible existing world,...it is the reality of the Avatar!

The expanding universe is a by-product of the perceptual growth of universal consciousness. A decline in universal consciousness would cause the perception of a contracting universe. Individual worlds expand and contract in direct measure to the consciousness they contain. (Consciousness here being defined as the sum total of what is perceived at any moment...Pure consciousness would then be defined as the perception of nothing.)

Harry Palmer

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© 2001 Avatar Overdrive. All rights reserved. Avatar®, Star’s Edge International®, ReSurfacing®, are all registered service marks licensed to Star's Edge, Inc. © 2001 by Harry Palmer, Star's Edge Inc. All rights reserved.