An Encounter with Reality!

Dedicated to my Mom!

--This is a pure work of fiction and all the thoughts stated here are my own perceptions--

It was on one of the travels back from the US that I met this person, who changed my view of the reality forever and ever …

Life had been hectic for me as a software engineer, and by nature, myself being a long familiar homesick, often used to honker on when I can take a vacation. It was on one of such visits from the US, that I came across this person. He was flying to take part in a convention in India.

He was in his mid 50s, was a big figure with a long beard, resembling the wizard in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. He was reading a magazine quietly, but often ejecting a derisive smile. I was sitting near the window, and often tried to peep into what he was reading so that I could make sense of what he was laughing at. On one of my tries to look into his article he caught me, and introduced himself as a professor of philosophy at a renowned university in California. Wow! I was excited, since it was the best university I had in mind, if I ever chose to do higher studies in my favorite field. I had a strong handshake with him and then the dinner arrived. I just shot a natural joke saying, “Ok, now I can think of the dining philosopher’s problem” and he smirked at it.

After dinner, we started talking on various subjects, but soon got into the concept of defining reality. I asked him of his thoughts on reality, and found him to be overwhelmed at that query. He said smiling, “You have asked the right question”. He started his explanation in overtones, most of which went over head. He said, “Actually… there is nothing called a reality. Everything is just a perception or imagination. You see things defined by your senses and you believe that they exist. But actually there is nothing in this world that exists… the world itself does not exist”. “What”!! I disagreed perplexed. I ‘ve heard philosophers are crazy people, but looks like they are mad, but then how can a mad person be employed for a great university? I don’t know… may be he was correct. I asked for an explanation about his logic.

He continued. “Whatever you see in this world is something which is defined by your mind, and mind is modeled over your senses. If you had the ability to see through sound and hear through your eyes, then the reality you feel would have been different. Hence reality is something different”. I interrupted him saying, “But then, there must be an ultimate reality, which controls the whole world, or who created these perceptions”?. I was trying to associate what he was up to with concepts I had gathered from the movie “The Matrix”. But, it looked like his thoughts were above the philosophies of a computer-generated world in the matrix. I continued, “There must be a controlling force so that things should fall in place”. He disagreed. “There is nothing like a supernatural thing, because for anything to exist, there must be something which could have created it. And if you follow that path of finding the parent, then there is no end to it. You may argue that, the reason for the first event does not have any valid cause that would satisfy human intelligence, but there must be something. But try thinking this way: There had been nothing before the universe began. There is actually nothing now as well. It was empty before, and it is empty now. Whatever you feel like existing does not exist. It is just a thought. A thought, which does not have any physical existence, but just an illusion, that got evolved into a big framework where we all think we live and which we try to define by our senses to be “perceptible” and believe in that. We believe in the three dimensional space and think it is real. But, actually there is nothing like a space or time and what is present is just vacuum”.

I interrupted him again: ”Sir, then who created these senses?”. “Senses are a matter of evolution. If you can just vision, you can call that primary thought to be something called a “mind”. Mind defined a space around it called a body and believed that it exists. But apparently it itself was just a thought. Mind could not yet formulate a way of sustaining the thoughts for long. This supreme thought formulated a framework to experiment its own existence, which it called the “universe”. This evolution led to everything, even life. Life is interesting because it was a kind of transmissible thought. That is, a thought trying to think and define its existence, which is a property, it inherited from the supreme. Life, like any other supreme thought was in accordance with the limits of time. I mean, time, which is just a perception, is something, which tries to limit the experimentation of a primary thought item. Time, defined the life of a thought. And we as humans try to invent or discover items in the universe, trying to get clues about the supreme or the ultimate cause, which actually is an attempt which the supreme itself might be trying…” The professor continued.

“Interesting…”, I said, suppressing a big yawn. The professor gave a disgusting look at that. We had completed our dinner and it was getting time for me to sleep. Professor read my mind and said, “Yes, I know that whatever I said might look preposterous at first. But if you think deep into it, you ‘ll feel that whatever I said make sense”. Saying that, he went back reading his magazine. I slowly smuggled into my blanket. But the thought of “thoughts” just brooded in my subconscious for long and long…