WHAT YOU SEE IS LESS THAN WHAT YOU GET

We often assume that what we cannot perceive does not exist. However, nature demonstrates the fallacy of this assumption. Numerous animals possess perceptual abilities far surpassing our own. Consider these examples:

  • Insects like bees and butterflies perceive ultraviolet light, revealing floral patterns invisible to human eyes, aiding their nectar foraging.
  • Snakes such as rattlesnakes and pythons utilize heat-sensing pits to detect infrared radiation, enabling them to locate warm-blooded prey in darkness.
  • Many birds and some fish possess tetrachromatic vision, with four color-sensing cones, granting them a wider color spectrum than our trichromatic vision.
  • Sharks and rays detect electrical fields in water through ampullae of Lorenzini, facilitating prey location.
  • Various animals, including birds, sea turtles, and certain insects, sense Earth’s magnetic field for navigational purposes during migrations.
  • Bats employ echolocation, emitting high-frequency sounds and interpreting echoes, allowing them to navigate in darkness.

These examples illustrate that our sensory limitations do not define the boundaries of reality. Therefore, it should not be doubted that personalities and spiritual realities, including God, exist beyond our perception. Reports of near-death experiences and spiritual masters’ accounts of divine encounters further support this notion.

Thus, we should approach our spiritual exploration with open minds, acknowledging the limitations of our current understanding. As Shakespeare’s Hamlet wisely observed, ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’

The Nature of Reality

WHERE DO THOSE IDEAS COME FROM?

The origin of creative ideas remains a profound mystery. While science identifies the brain as the generator, the specific processes involved are not fully understood.

Plato, the renowned Greek philosopher, offered a different perspective, suggesting that a higher “ideal reality” serves as the wellspring of true knowledge and creative thought. His allegory of the cave vividly portrays this idea. In it, prisoners confined to a cave mistake flickering shadows for reality, oblivious to the figures and fire behind them. This allegory reflects Plato’s theory of Forms, positing that our sensory world is a mere shadow of a more real and perfect realm. These Forms are abstract, immutable essences, such as beauty, justice, and geometric ideals. Plato theorized that our souls, before physical embodiment, possessed knowledge of these Forms, thus “learning” is essentially recollection.

Notably, the notion of our physical world as a “shadow” aligns with accounts from near-death experiences, where individuals describe a heightened sense of reality in a non-physical dimension.

We are so much more than our human body, and as spiritual beings we are always connected to the higher spiritual realms. When that connection is strongly felt we may experience not only creative ideas but joy, wonder, inward fulfillment or other peak experiences as described by the psychologist Abraham Maslow.

So when you have inspiration, do not take credit for what you bring forward. It already existed and you were blessed to be the vessel for what has come forward.

The Nature of Reality

FRAMING OUR REALITY

We think of the world that we live in as an objective reality, but actually we live in a world of our own making, because our experience is based on how we frame what is presented to our senses–good or bad, right or wrong, favorable or unfavorable, fortunate or unfortunate, etc.

Moreover how we frame our experience has a profound effect on whether we experience happiness or sadness. This is why we are encouraged to keep a gratitude journal, and effects of doing so have been proven to be of  immense value, both for our physical and mental health.

One yogic discipline is to see God or the Divine in everyone and everything, and to see the hand of God in all of our experience, thereby learning to surrender to Divine will. Doing so will cause an amazing transformation of your personality and awaken your inner joy.

Spiritual Practice, The Nature of Reality

WHAT CAN AN NDE TELL US ABOUT OURSELVES?

When we think of ourselves as a body, it is very difficult to understand that consciousness survives the death of the body. However, today we have irrefutable proof in the form of near-death experiences that consciousness exists even in the absence of brain functioning.

What is a near-death experience (NDE)? NDEs are reported experiences that occur when the person’s body is considered clinically dead because of the absence of brain, heart and respiratory activity, and yet is returned to normal functioning.

Such experiences are more common today because medical science is increasingly capable of resuscitating patients and this has resulted in an explosion of NDE cases. In the U.S., an estimated nine million people had reported an NDE according to a 2011 study in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, and surely today the number is significantly more.

While reports of experiences of heavenly realms and beings are incapable of being verified, there are many instances in which the experiencer reports earth-realm experiences that are independently verified and could not have otherwise been perceived by the experiencer because of the absence of brain functioning.

Dr. Bruce Greyson, professor emeritus of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences at the University of Virginia, tells the story of a female patient who had become comatose because of a drug overdose. On the next day when she returned to normal consciousness, she was able to recite to Dr. Greyson the details of a conversation that he had with her roommate in another room while she was still comatose. She was even able to point out that she had observed the red stain from spilled tomato sauce on the tie that Dr. Greyson had been wearing!

Dr. Greyson has done extensive research on NDEs and is a tremendous resource on the subject. Popular books include: “Life After Life” by Raymond Moody, “Dying to Be Me” by Anita Moorjani and “Proof of Heaven” by Eben Alexander. While the Moorjani and Alexander books report the experiences of the author, “Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences” by Jeffrey Long and Paul Perry documents the results of the authors’ research on NDEs.

The “International Association for Near-Death Studies” and the peer-reviewed scholarly “Journal of Near-Death Studies” are each tremendous resources for those who desire to conduct their own studies on the subject.

Finally, there are a multitude of NDEs that have been reported in video form on YouTube. One such noteworthy video is the following, in which Dr. Mary Helen Hensley reports on her own NDE and her conclusions:

[Part of the text of this posting was taken from my “Pure One” book, which goes into this subject and the nature of consciousness in more detail]

Our True Nature, The Nature of Reality

THE GARDEN OF EDEN

We were created in wholeness and perfection, and existed in Oneness with All That Is (the Garden of Eden). However, though perfect and in a state of bliss, we wanted to experience duality (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil).

Duality allowed us to experience ourselves as a separate being and to interact with others on that level. However, duality necessarily means suffering (banishment from the Garden of Eden), because it allows for all kinds of experience, with both joy and sorrow.

This Genesis parable is the story of mankind’s “descent” into the earthly experience. Though our experience on earth is a mixture of many experiences and emotions, our essential nature is never altered in one iota. We are always whole and perfect. We have simply forgotten who we are and allowed ourselves to be entangled by the earthly experience because of our desires and fears.

It is possible to live in a human body and remain fully conscious of our true nature. It is through spiritual practice that we can learn to enjoy duality and yet never lose sight of the essential Oneness and bliss of existence.

The Nature of Reality, Unity
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