LEVELS OF REALITY

Life is a mystery.

Atoms are 99.99999999999% empty space.

Fields of energy give us the appearance of matter.

Richard Feynman and other leading physicists have declared that energy is a complete mystery.

An increasing number of physicists "are considering that consciousness may be the basic reality and source of all." (3 Levels of Reality)

Which of the following 4 statements might you agree with?

1. The world contains both 'the desirable' and 'the undesirable', both 'pleasure' and 'pain', both 'justice' and 'injustice'.

2. All is well, because eventually we all reach some kind of heaven or nirvana.

3. Our life in this world is just like a dream, "nothing is really happening," and really there is only the one sublime, formless 'spirit'. (The Unmanifest Absolute)

4. All of the above statements are true.

For the Buddhist, if you have a 'finite' world, you inevitably have opposites, such as 'pleasure' and 'pain'.

But, for the Buddhist, suffering can strengthen virtue.

And suffering can be avoided by not grasping for things.

Buddha, perhaps wisely, taught that 'Ultimate Reality' cannot be understood by our finite minds.

Hindus have more 'definite' views on God or Ultimate Reality, as Timothy Conway explains below.

Timothy Conway has spoken about 3 Levels of Reality

Conway refers to "the old, largely forgotten Christian idea of apokatastasis, or universal salvation taught by Origen and Clement of Alexandria and Gregory of Nyssa: God's love is so powerful that no creature can exile itself from this Love forever."

This idea of salvation for all is supported by Sufis, Hasidic Jews, Hindus and Buddhists

Hindus believe that "All beings will eventually become Brahman, or divine reality, because there is only Brahman."

According to some Hindus, suffering is used "to produce sublime awakening to Spirit."

In the 19th century, Sri Ramakrishna, when asked why people suffer, replied: "To add zest to the play."

Conway refers to "the deepest mystical truth, namely: Nothing is happening. The world is a dream. There's only God here. It's always only been God...

"What appears to be happening ... is a dream of Consciousness."

Hindu scriptures relate: "The cosmos is like two sons born to a barren woman who did not really exist, and one day they went out and got on their horses that had never been born and traveled along a nonexistent path to an uncreated land to a town that existed only in the imagination."

Conway relates: "Wondrous and poignant adventures are happening. God plays all the parts...

"Nothing is happening, and everything is happening...

"The completion of the journey Home is realizing one's identity as both formlessness and form, nothing and everything, nobody and everybody...

"When you know that there's only God here, you're motivated to do whatever it takes ... to alleviate suffering and remedy injustice."

All very mysterious.