We, The Conditioned

A Bear Hug From God

Look At The Blue Sky And Know We Are One

A long time ago, the Gods asked humans to build a three-pronged pedestal upon which to place their grandest intellectual pursuit — the pursuit of knowledge about the existence, universe, and the nature of our reality.

Humans picked Science as the first prong — for science, with its empirical rigor, deciphers the mechanics of the physical world.

Secondly, they picked Philosophy for its ability to venture beyond the empirical, probing the very foundations of knowledge, existence, and consciousness.

Thirdly, they chose Spirituality, as it transcends the material realm, seeking to fathom the profound dimensions of our inner selves and our connection to the world.

Finally, humans sought Idealism as the golden vein to unify these three prongs into a cohesive framework for understanding reality and achieving their grand pursuit.

Or so I daydream when I have to stare at blank walls while waiting at the dentist.

Our Everyday Experiences Prove That The World Happens In The Mind And Not Out There

The school of thought called Idealism — a concept supported by philosophy, spirituality, and quantum physics — asserts that the external world has no independent existence outside of our perception or consciousness.

In other words, things only exist insofar as they are perceived by the mind.

“Nobody has ever experienced or could experience anything outside awareness, so the idea of an independently existing substance, namely matter, that exists outside awareness is simply a belief to which the vast majority of humanity subscribes.”

— Rupert Spira

This is not a simplification of some lofty philosophical observation or a nod to sci-fi brain plots, but rather a straightforward leveling of what is within everyone’s experience.

A world that exists separately by itself, that has nothing to do with an observer, cannot be known by anyone because to verify such a world’s existence we would still need to ‘know’ it.

There cannot be a blue sky out there by itself without the element of my knowing attached to its existence.

This is not to say that there is no blue sky in reality, but what it means is that there is no way for us to prove if an independent blue sky exists outside of our awareness.

The Falling Of The Proverbial Tree — Did It Make A Sound?

So, if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Science settled this thought experiment by stating that the falling motion of the tree will certainly kick up vibrations in the air.

But for those vibrations to be considered to have made a sound, they need to be sensed by the tympanic membrane in the ears and perceived as ‘sound’ in the brain; or they must be picked up by the diaphragm of a microphone and registered as an electrical signal, which again, will need to be interpreted by an observer.

Sensory experiences like sound, sight, taste, smell, or touch are physical concepts that exist in the mind.

The vibrations released in the air by the kinetic energy of the falling tree are real but assuming it will make a sound even in the absence of an “experiencer” is not real.

It is also what is at the heart of the Double-Slit Experiment of quantum physics which states that things in the universe exist as a wave of possibilities until we observe at which point it collapses into a singular reality.

We may observe the quantum particle with a measuring device like our eyes or a recorder that has a set of attributes but those attributes are not going to explain the particle in its entirety.

We assume that what we see is what there is, but in truth, what we see only proves that we can ‘see’ and how we process it and nothing about the ‘it’ in its entirety.

The key takeaway is —

• what I see of this world is only a small part of what humans can sense and perceive with their limited faculties, and
• whatever I see of this limited world, is being seen only as a thought in my mind and not as matter ‘out there’, hence
• the world does exist in my mind.

Does The World Cease To Exist If I Close My Eyes?

But what happens when I am not looking at the blue sky and someone else looks at it and sees the same reality?

Isn’t that evidence of the blue sky’s existence independent of my perception?

When I slip into a deep sleep and everyone else still sees the world as one reality, doesn’t it prove that the world is quite real and that it must still exist independent of an observer?

I could take comfort in the fact that Albert Einstein too shared the same discomfort, albeit in a different context, when he wondered, “Do you really believe that the moon exists only when you look at it?”

It is a million-dollar question but the answer lies in the direction we are not looking.

We’ve Been Asking The Wrong Question

One cannot know another’s perception.

I cannot explain to my kid what broccoli exactly tastes like or describe to a perfumer the specific fragrance I have on my mind.

Each is privy to his/her own sensations and thoughts and what we experience is only for us to know.

So when we perceive a world that is confirmed and corroborated to be the same by every one of us, we naturally think that the world should exist independently, untouched by our perceptions.

But we also know that what we see of this world is only a limited fabrication of the real world, due to our limited perspective and not the wholesome world out there in existence.

Then the true million-dollar question is how is it possible for all eight billion of us to perceive the same fabrication despite our separate minds?

If there is one world out there and each of us has an individual, unrelated mind, then shouldn’t we all be seeing eight billion different worlds, based on our distinct, individual perspectives?

Yet when we see only one world, then the real question has to not be about the object of our experience — the world — but the subject of our experience — we, our minds.

We See One World Because We Share One Consciousness

We think we all are separate individuals with separate minds.

Yet we all see the same sliver of the real world.

The rainbow is actually a full circle, but due to our vantage from Earth, we only see it as a semi-circle.

The rainbow doesn’t present itself as a semi-circle. It’s our common vantage point that makes us see it as such.

Similarly, the world doesn’t limit itself to how we see it, but it appears as ‘the world’ because we, all eight billion of us, see it from the same vantage called consciousness.

We look outward at our experience and think there is one world. But we should really be looking inward at our experience where we will find one consciousness holding us together.

This consciousness doesn’t care about our completely imagined and unnecessarily exaggerated petty differences, hatred, prejudices, and discrimination.

It simply holds us together, in one forgiving embrace, like a bear hug from God.

I humbly believe that understanding this would be an ideal first step toward a peaceful future on earth.

“The reason we all seem to share the same world is not that there is one world ‘out there’ known by innumerable separate minds, but rather that each of our minds is precipitated within, informed by and a modulation of the same infinite consciousness. It is the same world because all finite minds are refractions of the same consciousness.”

— Rupert Spira

We, the conditioned, is an ongoing exploration of the self from the bedrock up. It involves taking a telescopic view of the world — politics, people, et al., along with a microscopic view of the self — mind, thoughts, and perception. It’s about hacking away the fluff around spirituality, seeing reality for what it really is through the lens of philosophy, and learning what we really are beneath all that we think we are.