I sometimes wonder just how malleable reality really is.
It is easily argued that on an individual level, our own personal ‘realities’ are heavily subjective. We filter out anything that does not conform to our inner world.
Our focus is very narrow and is driven magnetically by our particular proclivities.
The rest of the world is ‘magically’ filled in and smoothed over by ‘some imaginary process’ in accordance with our prejudice and expectation, creating the illusion of an all encompassing vision and seamless experience.
Our outer world conforms to our inner world; How could it be otherwise?
We cannot possibly perceive anything that we have no corresponding inner register from which to identify.
“I sent my soul through the invisible, Some letter of that after life to spell: And by and by my soul return’d to me, And answer’d: I myself am Heaven and Hell.” Austin Osman Spare
“The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul…..” Hermes Trismegistus
But might the reality at large also be similarly flexible? I occasionally get a feeling that ‘reality’ itself may not be constant; It may have been different at other times and in places ‘gone by’.
Could the beliefs and expectations of vast swathes of people actually have dictated what was possible, what was predictable and the ‘natural laws’ that held sway?
Of course, this is nonsensical from our modern point of view; with our belief that those of the past were superstitious and unenlightened and that we are ‘only now’ beginning to grasp some of the truths of ‘immutable reality’; A reality that has been set in stone since the dawn of time.
Fluctuations in the ‘bedrock’ of reality, due to the changing focus of the population en-masse as they process the world’s signals, reminds me of Castaneda’s ‘Tonal of the times’; An island of collective reason held powerfully in place by the sheer number of fixated observers.
If we can admit that our material reality has a little of the ‘dream like’ quality about it, which does seem to become more apparent in a meditational/ mindful state, then such notions begin to become a bit more tenable.
I can only wonder at the effect of our current ‘technological appendage’, the world wide web, with its instantaneous communication, connecting practically everyone on the planet.
‘Reality’ will no doubt start to feel much weirder as the en-masse focus of the world, picks up speed, lurching and flickering like a murmuration of starlings.
