Picturing Spiritual & Scientific Reality: Healing the Rift by Bridging the Gap

Picturing Virtual Reality

Tommie, playing with his computer, asked me: “how does all that stuff get on the screen?"

"The stuff is due to individual dots called pixels. Together, they create the image."

"What are pixels?"

I explained that pixels are created by bits of energy. This energy creates the individual pixels.

"So the stuff I see is just energy."

"Not quite,” I told him. “The stuff you see is created by energy."

"Cool! So if I have energy, I can create the stuff on the screen?"

"Well, you need one other critical item. You need information to instruct the energy how to create the images. So, yes, with energy and the right information, all that stuff can be created."

"Then what's that box for?"

"That box is the computer that transforms the energy coming from the wall through the cord. It uses information and energy to create all that stuff."

"Awesome!"

I find it awesome that all the “stuff” of our world is believed by scientists to come about through energy transformed by information! But the explanation is far more complex than the one I provided Tommie.

Picturing Scientific Reality

The pixels on computer screens change (or “refresh”) about 80 times/second. The pixels which make up us and our world change a billion, trillion, trillion, trillion times/second. I call these upixels (universal pixels). Scientists don’t know their make up other than it is a form of energy—they can’t even agree on its name. What is the size of the upixels? If the size of a proton were enlarged to the size of the Milky Way these upixels would be the size of a dust particle!

In the case of a computer, as the colored pixels disappear and reappear, we perceive movement which creates the virtual reality. The upixels making up our world are controlled by information. Upixels disappear and before reappearing might move to other universes and dimensions before creating our reality. Does all this seem bizarre? It gets worse, in the last decade scientists realize that 96% of the upixels are missing! Imagine your computer screen with 96% of the pixels missing. Needless to say scientists’ picture of reality is an inscrutable image.

Picturing Spiritual Reality

Spiritual and religious teachings generally agree that we humans cannot picture reality, which usually includes God. In general, religions teach that God and mystical reality are different from what we experience in ordinary consciousness.

Jesus, according to the Gnostic script Gospel of Thomas 113, said, “The kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the Earth, and men do not see it.” Buddhists believe that it is impossible to understand the world through our senses, philosophies, or science. Judaism agrees that we cannot comprehend God. The Sufis of Islam teach that metaphors and symbols cannot reveal the divine. According to Hinduism, maya is the illusion of reality in which we live. Taoism and Confucianism, although in many ways different, both hold that reality is beyond human comprehension. How do we resolve these seemingly different pictures of science and spirituality?

Merging the Pictures and Healing the Rift

Let’s combine the two pictures. Let’s accept upixels as the fundamental stuff of our world and fill an ocean with them. Instead of water this ocean is filled with upixels. It is a bottomless ocean extending infinitely in all directions. We and our world are but one wave on the surface. We are lost in the multitude of all the other waves and wonder: What was the origin of our wave? What is our wave? What happens when our wave ceases to exist?

Our wave began with the creation of the upixels. However, no one knows when, how, or why the upixels were created. The upixels are energy, so all the waves are an illusion. They are immaterial energy. The ocean is an illusion for it also is merely upixels, energy. There is so much we do not know about this world. We don't know where the upixels go when they disappear. We don't know where the new upixels come from when they zip into our world for an instant.

We can neither fathom an infinitely deep and extensive ocean, nor comprehend the meaning of other dimensions or worlds. We perceive only a trillionth of what our world is, so we focus on our wave that is within our perceptive capacity. We have splintered into factions, each faction believing that they understand our wave, know what caused the formation of our wave, and comprehend what happens when our wave ceases to exist.

But the ancient sages and spiritual leaders teach us that all of this is truly beyond our comprehension. They speak of the essence of our wave surviving forever, long after it disappears. They agree that, somehow, energy creates our reality. They agree that we are one with nature and everything in the universe. They agree that our immaterial essence survives death.

I find it essential to keep both pictures in mind.