The nature of reality is the worldview that shapes the world around you and makes your reality. It is through your worldview that you interpret and make meaning of your world, your space-time. In other words, it is the lens through which you view the world. Throughout the ages, this lens has changed several times to define the state of consciousness of a particular space-time, also known as an era. Thus, the history of the development of consciousness is manifested via a collective worldview.
What is Worldview?
Worldview is a philosophy of life that shapes your world. Two aspects make up an individual’s worldview, i.e., personal experiences and collective understanding of the world. In this article, we will explore the collective aspect and understand its evolution leading to the formation of our present worldview of reality.
Your worldview shapes your beliefs which forms the foundation of your values and ultimately your nature of reality. Values in turn influence the choices you make, consequently resulting in the actions you take. According to Elisabet Sahtouris – evolutionary biologist and futurist, worldview is like a garden that you need to cultivate and your beliefs are its plants. Oftentimes you must pluck out the outdated and depreciating beliefs like you would pluck the weeds in your garden.
Analysis of the evolution of consciousness reveals two major worldviews through which you perceive your reality. These are the disconnected and the connected worldview.
The Disconnected Worldview
The disconnected worldview is the modern scientific worldview which is based on the founding principles that:
- The universe is random, disorganized and entirely entropic.
- No higher-order organizing frameworks are governing the universe.
- It functions like a machine, made up of discrete parts and so are living beings that are functionally constructed as a machine.
- The nature of reality is studied in isolated closed systems.
With the end of the renaissance period during the late 17th century, began the scientific revolution marking the emergence of modern science. It challenged the existing religious worldview at the time and successfully emerged as the dominant worldview. What made it dominant is that it proposed a new way of perceiving the world based on observation and experimentation. It viewed nature as a machine rather than an organism. Like most new theories, the scientific theory too was not short of oppositions.
Despite the tremendous progress science made in technology, medicine, physics and biology it has a major downside. In simple words, science was leaving too much out. No other culture except western science shared the mechanistic, non-living universe worldview. The major problem with this worldview is that the basis of it was presumed which is contrary to the principles of science. Furthermore, theories were built on this presumption and everything else like time, evolution, consciousness, etc were fit in place. It follows a bottom-up approach in contradiction with the model of a conscious universe.
The disconnected worldview only observes the system in parts and its relationship within its apparent system. Most modern physics is developed on the premise of an isolated system. However, in nature, no isolated system has been observed so far. It fails to acknowledge the relationship of all parts that generate what Buckminister Fuller likes to call the synergistic effect. It means that the behavior of the whole system is greater than and unpredictable from the sum of its parts.
The Connected Worldview
The connected worldview is also based on a scientific premise that says:
- The complexity of the universe does not support a mechanistic, random and disorganized nature of reality.
- It has a fundamentally organized framework that is fractally and holographically present in the fabric of the universe. It has corresponding patterns and geometries connecting the microcosm with the macrocosm.
- There is a balance between entropy and negentropy. It results in an organizing movement of energy towards the center in contrast to the disorganizing radiative movement of entropy.
- The universe is filled with self-organizing syntropic systems.
- There are no closed systems in isolation from the rest of the universe.
- Space-time has an underlying structure that has a feedback/feedforward loop through which information is continuously exchanged holographically with the whole.
This worldview considers the universe as a living system where the function of each part is analogous to the organs in a human. Similar to the specialized functionality of organs, the different systems of the universe have their unique functions. However, the behavior of the parts taken separately does not predict the behavior of the whole system.
Buckminister Fuller has worked extensively in understanding the whole. He put forth the concept of synergy and said, “The words synergy (syn-ergy) and energy (en-ergy) are companions. Energy studies are familiar. Energy relates to differentiating out subfunctions of nature, studying objects isolated out of the whole complex of the Universe—for instance, studying soil minerals without consideration of hydraulics or of plant genetics. But synergy represents the integrated behaviors instead of all the differentiated behaviors of nature’s galaxy systems and galaxy of galaxies.”
There is an unprecedented idea that information is exchanged across different parts of the whole holographically. This suggests that everything in the universe is talking to everything else. Thus, at the quantum level, this reciprocal relationship creates a feedback/feedforward loop of consciousness and awareness. You can understand its implications with Fred Hoyle’s calculation of probabilities of a blind person solving a Rubik’s cube i.e., in the order of 1:1 to 1: 5×10^18 at a rate of one move per sec. He/she will achieve the solution in 126 billion years that exceeds the lifetime of earth. However, just by providing simple feedback of yes/no for each more, he/she can solve it in no more than 2 mins. Thus, in the presence of a feedback/feedforward loop, an organizing framework, complex systems could evolve the way it did since the Big Bang.
Evolution of the Nature of Reality
Most believe that science evolved in opposition to religion. But this is not entirely true. Most philosophers, at the time when modern science was evolving from the 16th to 18th century, were religious. Their work developed in accordance with the ideologies of the church especially the Vatican. It opposed the science of Hermeticism, Rosicrucianism and other occult religions of the time.
On the other hand, there were secret societies like the Giordanisti whose motto was to reform the church as a Christain Hermetic Institution. Thus, to maintain their control, the Vatican opposed views like heliocentrism mostly for political reasons.
The nature of reality as per religion, promoted disconnectivity since time immemorial. In essence, humans were believed to be lowly creatures, submissive to God who must be feared. Therefore, a part of modern science that developed from this religious perspective had disconnectivity as its fundamental premise. The other part that developed independently as mentioned above, already presumed that the universe is non-living and mechanical.
A more definite split of science from religion happened during the age of enlightenment – the late 17th-18th centuries. This shift does not acknowledge the presence of an underlying order thus eliminating the paradigm of a higher power or God from science. There emerged the scientific paradigm – the disconnected worldview which persists even to this day.
Implications of a Disconnected Worldview
The disconnected worldview is the dominant worldview of our time and you can observe its implications first hand. In accordance, the values brought about by a disconnected worldview are dominating, self-serving and destructive.
Thus, it seems acceptable to view the earth and the cosmos as mere objects. Environmental degradation, inequality in resource distribution, pollution, colonialism and neocolonialism, etc are the direct implications of this worldview.
This disconnection from the whole instigates the egoic aspects of our personality. It feels as if our actions and decisions make no difference either to ourselves, others or nature. Since there is no higher meaning, it leaves humanity with no integrity making humans more and more materialistic by the day.
Political hierarchical nations where the poor are exploited by the rich is considered normal. Ongoing wars to exercise dominance as a means of gaining superiority to promote self-serving agendas is also a result of this nature of reality.
Hence, to maintain the propagation of this competitive worldview, education, research, religious, corporate, political and technological systems evolved unconsciously to serve this agenda. Since most academic and research organizations receive funding from private, corporate, or governmental agencies, this worldview affects our evolution directly.
Implications of a Connected Worldview
The disharmony experienced in the world today is too hard to ignore. Thus, an increasing number of people are imbibing a connected perspective of the universe. It promotes selfless values based on integrity, instilling balance and harmony.
Many ancient civilizations believed in the presence of a unified field of energy that connects all things in the universe. It is via this field that a feedback/feedforward loop is initiated and all information is exchanged. It has major implications in terms of quantum research. The idea of a holographic nature of reality reduces the constraints of time and space. In a holographic universe, all points in the hologram contain information about the entire hologram. Exploring this avenue could also open doors for development in the field of AI.
It will also result in technological advancement with the advent of free energy. The vacuum of space that modern scientists deem meaningless apparently possesses vast amounts of energy. Philosopher Giordano Bruno and Issac Newton called this vacuum “aether”. This opens the possibility of generating energy anytime and anywhere without exploiting the environment. This will liberate people from generations of slavery to the government! There will be no more scarcity of resources resulting in a paradigm of abundance and harmony.
The connected perspective considers the well-being of all life on the planet unlike the self-serving perspective of the disconnected universe. As all humans feel the interdependentness, it creates an overall sense that what we do to ourselves, others and nature matter. Instead of competition, cooperation becomes more logical as it requires less expenditure of energy. Elisabet Sahtouris found a pattern of maturation cycle in evolution that results in bacterial colonies cooperating instead of competing. It made more sense for them to start negotiating with competitors for sharing resources, resulting in win-win situations.
Optimizing Your Nature of Reality
The two worldviews – logic and faith-based are at absolute extremes from one another. Those who believe in one worldview cannot possibly believe in the other. With the advent of globalization, this split in worldview is becoming increasingly apparent.
As more people are being aware of the paradigm of control operating our planet, they are beginning to question their own beliefs. You will achieve this connected perspective when your heart’s sense of connectedness is justified by your mind’s ability to rationalize it at a scientific level.
At a personal level, you must start by questioning your beliefs. The idea is to be aware of the authorities and circumstances that led to the formation of your beliefs. The most common authorities are parents, teachers, friends, books etc but not all authorities can be trusted. After all, not all information in books is true, and not always do parents and teachers have a well-formed belief system themselves.
Once you identify your beliefs that perpetuate this disconnection you can replace them with healthy ones. We humans often tend to ignore the power of choice that we have. However, it is not easy to change your belief system. Persistence here is the key as it requires a lot of time to subdue the authority of years of conditioning. When you set your beliefs right, it will not take as much time for your decisions and actions to follow suit.