"There is no way you can use the word "reality" without quotation marks around it."

— Joseph Campbell

"Mind imposes reality on the data of the senses."

— Immanuel Kant

"The world is an illusion."

— Mata Hari (as well as numerous other Buddhists)

"Reality . . . what a concept!"

— Robin Williams

Everybody’s world-view is different, and the disparity of world-views between widely divergent cultures is clearly evident. Let us look at a few examples, using theology in order to make things glaringly obvious:

1.) Fundamentalist Christians ("Fundies") believe that "God" is a wrathful bearded gent in flowing white robes who spends Eternity slouched upon his golden throne, from which he watches each and every one of us, and tallies up demerits every time we "sin." On "Judgement Day," everyone deemed "worthy" to enter the "Kingdom of Heaven" shall rise up into the skies during an event known as the "Rapture."

2.) Various extremist Islamic sects believe that "Allah" wants them to wipe the "infidels"off the face of the earth through engaging in a holy "jihad," which will guarantee them a place in a "Paradise" resplendent with a dozen servile virgins for each faithful soldier.

3.) Atheists believe that there is no divine spark anywhere in the living world — even within themselves. They think that every aspect of the universe can be adequately explained through the "Scientific Method," given enough time. Things which are invisible simply do not exist, people who claim to have had paranormal experiences are obviously either "whackos" or frauds, and after death the only thing that happens is decomposition.

Fundies, militant Muslim extremists, and godless atheists all believe that their version of reality is true — but they obviously cannot all be true, since they are contradictory. People like this walk through life "with blinders on," relying only on blind faith and disregarding as "false" anything which seems to conflict with their belief system. Your average mainstream Christians, moderate Muslims, and sincere agnostics are on a completely different level than their extremist counterparts, but they too hold different world-views.

When there are vast differences between cultures, the differences of world-view are most obvious. When the differences are less extreme, the disparity of world-view will be less noticeable. And when two individuals from the same culture are in disagreement over the specifics of a certain aspect of their shared world-view, even though they might well be violently antagonistic towards one another over a certain important point (thus giving them different world-views), to an outside observer their belief systems would appear to be virtually identical.

Not only do people from divergent cultures look at the world from many different perspectives, but scientists have disagreements as well. It is difficult to agree on the nature of something which you do not fully comprehend. Instead of clearing everything up, technological advances like the various "atom smasher" devices, electron microscopes, the Hubble telescope, and deep space probes seem to have only deepened the mystery. Microbiologists, astronomers, and theoretical physicists all seem to agree that the world as we know it doesn’t seem to exist. Everything is made of nothingness, and that which is invisible seems to be far more substantial than our illusory material/temporal plane of existence. The amount of semi-material "atoms" in any given object is far smaller than the amount of empty space (in the form of ionic and magnetic "bonds" and other invisible forces) in between. The spectrum of colors which we can discern with the unaided eye is only a small fraction of the imperceptible wavelengths beyond the ultraviolet and the infrared. There are sounds, odors, flavors, and even textures which cannot be registered by our senses. We live in a universe where things have a tendency to exist, and "Physical Laws" are being contradicted with great regularity. The only thing scientists can say about the universe, with any degree of certainty, is Socrates’ statement that, "I only know that I know nothing."

Everyone views the world a bit differently, and while a few world-views are obviously wrong (due to the fact that their basic premises are easily disproved if conflicting arguments are permitted to be heard), they are most certainly not all wrong (except, of course, for the "one true version of reality"). In my version of "reality," the world is populated with invisible Intelligences which seek to influence events in the physical world by influencing the minds of individual men and women. Furthermore, I believe that intense willpower (properly focused) can result in the creation of short-lived invisible "thought-forms" which can also influence people and events. Also, I believe that the Dreamworld most of us enter during sleep contains a number of "portals" which can be passed through (consciously or not) in order to gain access to various parts of the astral plane. Are these beliefs ludicrous? I’m sure that many people would think so (which is a major reason why most occult societies are closed to outsiders), but I didn’t just pull these ideas out of my ass — they are shared by literally millions of others who have chosen to explore the Mysteries. These people cannot all be dismissed as misguided flakes and imbeciles either, as their number includes many prominent scientists and scholars, as well as Heads of State. You don’t believe me? Check out their biographies and memoirs (you can start with George Washington and Winston Churchill, if you like, then progress to Einstein, Tesla, and da Vinci, just to name a few you’ll surely recognize).

Now that we’ve established that everyone views the world differently, that divergent world-views do not necessarily "cancel each other out," and that belief systems different from your own are not automatically "wrong," we can proceed. Here are a few more interesting quotes on the nature of "reality". . .

"Language helps form the limits of our reality."

— Dale Spender, from Man Made Language

"Behavior considered abnormal or pathological in one culture may be quite congruent with the norms of another. Belief in witchcraft might be indicative of paranoid delusion in one culture but might represent a prevailing view in another."

— Terence McKenna, from The Invisible Landscape (p. 19)

"The people who say you are not facing reality actually mean that you are not facing their idea of reality. Reality is above all else a variable, and nobody is qualified to say that he or she knows exactly what it is. As a matter of fact, with a firm enough commitment, you can sometimes create a reality which did not exist before."

— Margaret Halsey, from No Laughing Matter

"People never doubt the reality of what they think and feel; for them, it is the absolute truth. When you try to explain your own point of view they hesitate: ‘I don’t know, I’ll have to think about that — I must study the question,’ but when it is a question of what they think and feel there is no need to study anything; it is obviously the only reality."

— Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov, from Looking into the Invisible (p. 15)

"The entire universe is nothing but a great metaphor."

— Simone Weil, from First and Last Notebooks

"What we call reality is an agreement that people have arrived at to make life more livable."

— Louise Nevelson, from Dawn + Dusks

". . . let us remember: We never deal with reality per se, but rather with images of reality — that is, with interpretations. While the number of potentially possible interpretations is very large, our world image permits us to see only one — and this one therefore appears to be the only possible, reasonable, and permitted view."

— Paul Watzlawick, from The Language of Change (p. 119)

"In the province of the mind, what is believed true is true or becomes true, within limits to be found experimentally and experientially. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind there are no limits."

— Dr. John Lilly, from Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer

"A tree is a tree — although its meaning to the man who views it (‘the truth’) depends upon his relationship to it. Does it give him fruit or shade, or is it an obstacle in his path?"

— Horner & Buhler, from Surveying Kierkrgaard)

"The ancient intuition that all matter, all ‘reality,’ is energy, that all phenomena, including time and space, are mere crystallizations of mind, is an idea with which few physicists have quarreled since the theory of relativity first called into question the separate identities of energy and matter. Today most scientists would agree with the ancient Hindus that nothing exists or is destroyed, things merely change shape or form; that matter is insubstantial in origin, a temporary aggregate of the pervasive energy that animates the electron."

— Peter Matthiessen

"In reality there is nothing but atoms and space."

— Democritus (500 B.C.)

"Matter is knots in energy."

— Albert Einstein

"Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real."

— Neils Bohr

"The Universe is a living thing."

— Iarchas

"There is no time which flows equally for all observers. Now, sooner, later, and simultaneous are relative to the frame of reference of the observer."

— Albert Einstein

"It’s all the same day, man!"

— Janis Joplin

". . . we do not respond to, or operate on the world (reality) itself, but rather we operate or respond to the world based on our internal sets of belief systems. To the same ‘real’ world situation, there can be, and often is, a multitude of responses and beliefs."

— from Monsters and Magical Sticks, by Heller & Steele (p. 26)

"The human brain evidently operates on some variation of the famous principle enunciated in The Hunting of the Snark: ‘What I tell you three times is true.’"

— Norbert Weiner, from Cybernetics

"The idea that the senses do nothing more than ‘take in’ is an illusion, is false. The senses also create. They are far from being passive. Each sense creates, projects and focuses its ‘idea’ onto the physical world. Each sense, in its own way, is a channel which creates physical reality."

— Stoker Hunt, from Ouija (p. 43)

"A study of optics indicates that rays of light (as they were thought of in the 19^th century) bounces off objects around us and stimulate our eyes to form an upside-down image of the object. That word ‘image’ is important, for it is our first hint that we do not perceive reality directly. What we actually perceive is a semblance of reality created by the interaction of light rays, our eyes, the object itself, and our brain, which turns the image the right way up."

— J. H. Brennan, from Magical Use of Thought-Forms (p. 28)

"Our normal waking consciousness is but one special type of consciousness, while all about it parted by the filmiest of screens there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different."

— William James, from The Varieties of Religious Experience

"After the odyssey through the Magic Theater, the hero in Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf laughs out loud as he realizes that reality is nothing but the free choice of one of many doors that are open at all times."

— Paul Watzlawick, from The Language of Change

"(1) since the one sure thing we can say about fundamental matter is that it is vibrating and, (2) since all vibrations are theoretically sound, then (3) it is not unreasonable to suggest that the universe is music and should be perceived as such."

— Joachim Ernst-Berendt

"There is a world beyond the present three-dimensional world defined by physics, and this three-dimensional world is merely a shadow of a fourth-dimensional, nonmaterial world. I believe that this fourth-dimensional world controls the three-dimensional material world."

— Dr. Hashimoto (paraphrased)

"When we pay attention, whatever we are doing — whether it be cooking, cleaning or making love — is transformed and becomes part of our spiritual path. We begin to notice details and textures that we never noticed before; everyday life becomes clearer, sharper, and at the same time more spacious."

— Rick Fields

"Remember your universe depends upon your sensations and how you classify them. The former is a matter of your physical equipment; the latter, of your cognitive organization. Change either one and you move to a different universe."

— Isaac Bonewits, from Real Magic (p. 12)

"Matter is energy; in the Universe there are many energy fields which we cannot normally perceive. Some energies have a spiritual source which act upon a person’s soul. However, this soul does not exist ab initio, as orthodox Christianity teaches; it has to be brought into existence by a process of guided self-observation. However, this is rarely achieved owing to man’s unique ability to be distracted from spiritual matters by everyday trivia."

— Monty Python, from The Meaning of Life

". . . ideas-about-reality are mistakenly labeled ‘reality’ and unenlightened people are forever perplexed by the fact that other people, especially other cultures, see ‘reality’ differently. It is only the ideas-about-reality which differ. Real (capital-T True) reality is a level deeper than is the level of concept. We look at the world through windows on which have been drawn grids (concepts). Different philosophies use different grids. A culture is a group of people with rather similar grids. . . . Western philosophy is traditionally concerned with contrasting one grid with another grid, and amending grids in hopes of finding a perfect one that will account for all reality and will, hence, (say unenlightened westerners) be True. This is illusory . . ."

— from Principia Discordia (pp. 00049-50)

"Briefly, the main thing that I learned in my experiments is that ‘reality’ is always plural and mutable. . . .In both mysticism and physics, there is general agreement that ‘things’ are constructed by our nervous systems and that ‘realities’ (plural) are better described as systems or bundles of energy-functions. . . . It became clear that whatever ‘reality’ means philosophically, our everyday experience (the common-sense definition of ‘reality’) is almost entirely self-programmed. This cinematic editing occurs so rapidly that we are normally not aware of doing it; thus we add many things that aren’t there at all (Freud’s projection) and leave out millions of things that are there (Freud’s censorship). Confusing the finished product with an accurate reflection of externality is exactly what Buddha meant when he said normal consciousness is delusion (maya).

— Robert Anton Wilson, from Cosmic Trigger (pp. iii, 51-52)

"The truth about the world is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent . . . The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man’s mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others."

— Cormac McCarthy, from Blood Meridian (p. 245)

"One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike — and yet it is the most precious thing we have."

— Albert Einstein

"Except for our higher order of minds we are like the little moles under the earth carrying out blindly the work of digging, thinking our own dark passageways constitute all there is to the world."

— Bess Streeter Aldrich, from Spring Came on Forever

". . . it’s not that Normals are unintelligent, it’s that they’re HALF-THERE. The problem is not a lack of intelligence, but non-use of it. It’s like they’re in a dream, "CHARACTERS" in someone else’s CARTOON WORLD. Things that we recognize as mere convenient mental CONSTRUCTS are TOTALLY REAL to the poor humans. We see the bars of a cage they don’t even know they’re in, but to them we look crazy because our responses to that cage — including what we’re saying now — CANNOT MAKE SENSE TO THEM and NEVER WILL."

— from Revelation X, by The SubGenius Foundation (p. 47)

"This reality is a living thing-within-a-thing, made of other things. When we are born, the mind — our beginning mentation, begins tearing its own hole in the bigger reality, piercing the envelope of existence with itself. Our lives — the mental and ‘astral’ parts of our lives — are wounds on the surface of reality."

— Plilo Drummond, from Revelation X (p. 158)

"I suspect that many persons have been put away, as insane, simply because they were gifted with uncommon insights, or had been through uncommon experiences. It may be that, hidden under this cloakery, are the subject-matters of astonishing, new inquiries. There may be stories that have been told by alleged lunatics that some day will be listened to, and investigated, leading to extraordinary disclosures . . ."

— Charles Fort

"And now, think about this for a moment: if you can experience a dream as though it were reality, couldn’t you also experience reality as though it were a dream? This is what the wise do. Whatever happens to them, they say, ‘I’m only dreaming; one day I’ll wake up.’"

— Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov, from Looking into the Invisible (p. 149)

Life is but a dream!"

— from "Row, Row, Row Your Boat," (origin unknown)

Cannot bear very much reality."

— T. S. Eliot