Is This for Real?

If you look at Wikipedia, this is how the page defines Reality,

"Reality is the conjectured state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined. Reality includes everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible."

This pretty much says it all. Even humans acknowledge the limitation of our thoughts when it comes to defining the "Real World". Acknowledging this fact should be the first step of your "Belief" making process.

Reality can exist in either or both of the following forms,

1) Physical (Properties of matter that humans can sense with our 5 senses)

2) Metaphysical (Existence that is beyond the paradigm of human senses)

There's no space-time division in the Metaphysical world which means that it can even exist within the physical world. Imagine if you're alone in your room, someone is sitting right next to you that you're only able to visualize, had you an extra sixth physical sense! This means that this someone is as "real" as you're! 

Here's how Edmund Gettier, an American Philosopher describes this,

The first thing's that my beliefs grasp only a part of reality (truths). If somehow I understand the reality, it constitutes my knowledge. But the most part of reality that I believe is the one I cannot fully understand. These are the so called "poorly justified true beliefs". Such beliefs are true in their essence; a human mind simply can't justify them properly..........

But the question remains.......... how do I believe that any object is real? What is the transition from truth into Beliefs? Let's look into this question from the two perspectives,

1) Physical: The true properties of a physical object can be discovered by a human mind. That is how modern scientific world is evolving. We formulate a knowledge base for an idea and then we pursue it. Its like you want to follow something but first you have to lay some ground rational basis for it, after which you start pursuing it. During this course, we discover the true nature of that idea. After this discovery, we classify that idea as "knowledge" and then start to "believe" in that idea...... This is how science is discovering the truth these days and classifying it as "knowledge"......... Interestingly enough, sometimes the knowledge base is not mandatory to pursue an idea. In fact, the scientific ideas that have inspired true inventions have seemed to come out of nowhere in human thoughts. In this aspect, reality reveals itself more than humans discover it, e.g. the discovery of Penicillin by the mistake of Alexander Fleming....... But once an accidental discovery has been made, or an idea is revealed onto human mind, the mind automatically starts to formulate its rational basis. If that basis is not strong, despite that idea being true in its nature, gives birth to "poorly justified true beliefs".

2) Metaphysical: In this aspect, reality can NEVER be discovered; it chooses human mind to reveal itself. Traditionally this has given birth to the philosophical aspect of religions including mysticism. When reality appears in the thoughts of such philosophers, they try to put it in the most efficient rational, ethical and aesthetic perspectives for fellow humans. If this attempt is successful, it is classified as "knowledge", otherwise  "poorly justified true beliefs".

Believing in truth only is the ultimate objective of human mind. In the above figure, the union of blue and red circles achieves this objective. Humans should thrive to achieve this goal where they will be left either with "knowledge" or "poorly justified true beliefs". But remember, this is your goal, your objective, you should not think it as your current state of mind. Your actual current state is the figure above, where you are not believing in the truth and believing in the false ideas.   

So far, we have talked about indirect interpretation of reality by human thoughts. This means that every idea that i present to you is subjected to my understanding of it, its explanation for you, and your interpretation of it. This explains the subjective nature of reality and why it cannot be fully perceived by humans. There's one exception though............... which is in the form of religious scriptures. These scriptures represent the divine reality that has manifested itself directly from the metaphysical to the physical world. Given the assumption, that scriptures are not the creation of prophets and have remained free from human intervention across time, I conclude that these books are THE MOST REAL concepts. This means that their reality is beyond human capability of questioning, if and only if their text has remained free from human intervention, even from the intervention of their respective prophets.

The point of being "Educated"

At least once, you must have met someone in your life who seems to know almost everything.......... The purpose of education is to avoid building such personalities. "To know everything" ain't the point here.......

From a social and economic viewpoint, the western world has adopted an industry driven approach. The sole purpose of education seems to produce good scientists and engineers. In this aspect, the west has succeeded at least in producing good professionals who help industry in generating revenues. The same cannot be said for most of the eastern societies. The whole agenda here seems to produce money making machines. If these machines end up being good scientists and researchers, very well then! ...... otherwise the societies pretty much do not care! Since money is THE ONLY thing that matters here, some societies have even adopted this notion of turning up whole education sector as a profit making industry.

Let's talk about some of the psychological perspective......... This is where the whole human race is simply wrong! For a healthy mind, education should end up rectifying the rational thoughts of a person. It should help a person in developing his/her ethical sense. It is only after having a better 'rational' and 'moral' sense will I be able to build up my personality.

Humans are following an apposite approach here. Education has given us intelligence, and we are using  it as a tool to justify our mistakes, rather than rectifying them. Going back to the start, where I

mentioned this personality who seems to have a reason for everything...... this is what modern education  has ended up producing....... A person who is always looking for reasons to support his unethical behavior, who is trying to justify his emotions through any possible means.

The point of education remains the same that our forefathers used to tell us...... that is to help build up our consciousness. I remember when I was a teenager, my father used to force me and my brother to watch a TV show which discusses knowledge and beliefs. Frankly speaking, I hated it in the start........ after all, who in his teenage would like to listen to reason! Funny thing's that.... as time passed, my father lost his interest in the show whereas I started enjoying it!

The last paragraph has nothing to do with the scope of this article....... I'm just trying to give you guys a parenting lesson :)

Lets get back to some serious stuff, shall we! In summary, you should look deep into your heart and ask yourself this critical question "Am I intentionally looking for reason" or "is reason genuinely guiding my decisions". If not the latter, then I'm afraid you're using your own intelligence to destroy your consciousness. Your education has ended up destroying your morality! The correct approach will be to let your consciousness be the guiding force for your intelligence.