Is it real?

When I was a child, I believed in a god I imagined to look like an old man with a white beard, in Santa Claus, the Easter bunny and the stork that brings the babies, because I was taught so. In school I was introduced to the sciences - physics, chemistry, biology, economics, political science, psychology and philosophy. Those intellectual concepts were largely presented to me as given facts I had to accept in order to get good grades. The philosophy of science itself was never explained and rarely was there time to question the contents. Only philosophy turned out to be different, which we greatly owed to our teacher. At last someone asked for our opinions and invited us to discuss on an equal level. For the first time I felt that I was learning something really important for my life and observing the diverse and often contradicting standpoints clearly demonstrated one thing we all have in common and that distingushes us at the same time: Subjectivity.

"How so many absurd rules of conduct, as well as so many absurd religious beliefs, have originated, we do not know; nor how it is that they have become, in all quarters of the world, so deeply impressed on the minds of men; but it is worthy of remark that a belief constantly inculcated during the early years of life, while the brain is impressionable, appears to acquire almost the nature of an instinct; and the very essence of an instinct is that it is followed independently of reason."
Charles Darwin
 
When I finished school, I perceived human beings and animals as biological machines, rejected spiritual views, considered death a state of nonexistence and therefore impossible to imagine at all and expected people to act according to their psychological needs and animalistic drives. I was a rationalist, or so I thought. This view is representative for the western civilisation of the 20th century and though there may be several variations, the primary focus rests on the material world. Without doubt, a large part of the western population is solely engaged in striving for material fulfillment and having material problems. The idea of the spirit was rather abstract to me and altered states I considered to be hallucinative. Today, the concept of the material world seems abstract to me. Why am I telling all this? Because it demonstrates what reality is made of.

Imagine you wake up early in the morning. It's a working day and you get up, to the bathroom to wash yourself, dressed and out of the house to drive to your workplace. You hurry, because you're already late. As you reach the company building, park your car and get out, you notice that you have forgotten to put on shoes. What an embarrassing situation. You wake up to the alarm of your clock. Time to go to work.
 
"Sometimes I'm confused by what I think is really obvious. But what I think is really obvious obviously isn't obvious..."
Michael Stipe
 
What exactly makes so many people believe that the waking state is more real or less illusive than other states of existence, for example the dream state? Is it, because of sensual perceptions? Yet lucid dreams show that dream senses perform at least as convincingly. Or is it, because it appears more consistent? But does it really? Is there actually some kind of causality connecting events, that is not based on subjective interpretation? Rationally observed, the stone one throws is not identical to the stone that falls to the ground, because its properties (location, orientation etc.) are different - a connection is merely supposed. Furthermore, we could wake up each single day in another life and there would be no way to tell. It comes down to the basic question: Is there an objective world?

"There are no facts, only interpretations."
Friedrich Nietzsche
 
Let's assume the existence of an external objective world. Our senses capture a very limited range of it, that is converted into a signal and transmitted to the brain. There it is again filtered and interpreted on basis of a vast spectrum of individual criteria - our experiences, our beliefs, our emotional state, our affections and aversions to name just a few, to create the inner world we are aware of. From the commonly adopted contemporary perspective, each of us lives in a completely individual reality. Finally, what we believe to know about sensual organs and the brain is also part of our subjective perception, not of the assumed objective world. That's where we lose the last link and objectivity moves beyond our grasp.

It is no longer rational to argue that the waking state is objectively real, nor that the dream or out-of-body state is not. I think the reason why dreams are often regarded as irrelevant simply is, that many people cannot recall their dreams well.

If you can consciously enter alternative realities, each possessing its own distinctive traits and qualities, it inevitably relativizes the impact of the waking reality. Means for planar travels - as I like to call it - do exist and everybody can use them, but our capitalistic societies do not support such aspirations. In fact some means are strictly prohibited, for example N,N-DMT is one of the most illegal substances in the world (Schedule I), though it is endogenous, physically harmless, non-addictive and has been applied in shamanic rituals for centuries. That is understandable, because our social systems depend on materialistic pressure and desires. Living a multiplanar life, which most likely leads one to appraise material matters less significantly, does not comply with the monetary interests of others. Besides, you can't just buy the key to another plane, you have to earn it and some dimensions can be very frightening. That's not exactly what a top seller sounds like. I assume that is one reason, lucid dreaming and deliberately induced out-of-body experiences are ignored by the mainstream media, though the popularity seems to be steadily increasing, as the World Wide Web indicates.
 
"Dreams are real as long as they last. Can we say more of life?"
Havelock Ellis
 
My conclusion is plain and unspectacular: It is utterly insignificant if something is real or not. It doesn't make any difference. What you perceive, subjectively exists as long as it lasts and what more could be possibly expected. If it exists, it can be experienced and interacted with and when the moment has passed, it becomes an illusion, irrespective of the level it was perceived on. Is what you still recall of the summer you spent at the sea real or just a beautiful illusion? Either way, it's a part of you now.
 
"Reality" we call what we believe in and "illusion" what we don't. Both words describe the same phenomenon.