The Invisible World
Einstein quote on imagination
Your reality is a physical reality.
Everyday, you live in the physical world. Your car is physical. Your house or flat — and all the furniture in it — is physical. Your family and friends are physical. Your body is physical. Your job and your salary are physical realities.
This has led to a situation where as human beings, we have come to underestimate and even ignore the non-physical world. We believe only in what we can see, touch, physically experience and “prove”. Everything else is brushed off as “imagination”, madness or fantasy.
Well, today, I am going to show you that the most important part of your life is not the physical or visible part — it is the invisible part. I am going to make you “see” that
The invisible world controls the visible.
What is an Idea?
An idea is an image, object or structure in your mind. You have lots of ideas about everything — who you are, who your friends are and who your enemies are, how you should live, what kind of shoe you should wear, how you should dress. You even have ideas about how other people should live their lives.
What you may not realize is that you never actually see the things around you. You never see things as they really are. What you actually see is your idea of what is around you — your impressions, experiences and knowledge. You cannot actually see anything without forming an idea about it and interpreting that idea, and thereafter how you perceive that thing or object is limited or controlled by the idea you have formed about it.
Ideas We Worship, and Ideas We Fear
As human beings, we have a natural tendency to worship or assign authority to “holy beings”. Human beings need authority figures, and we create those authority figures not only in our political and social systems, but also in our spiritual affairs. Beings such as Confucius, Zoroaster, Ogun, Osun, Mohammed, and (my personal favourites) Jesus and Buddha, to name a few.
I will use the example of Jesus and Buddha because these are the two spiritual icons I identify with the most.
Jesus and Buddha, my favourite spiritual icons
I love Jesus and Buddha. Not because I was taught to love them — in fact, when I was a young Catholic I perceived Jesus as a stern figure always criticizing people, pointing out their sins and showing off his own perfection, and I wasn’t attracted to him. (I didn’t like Buddha because he had no place in Catholic or christian doctrine. I considered him “The Enemy”. Lol.) I love them now because in the process of my spiritual evolution I have had several personal experiences and encounters with them. They gave me lots of love, support and guidance during my most critical struggles. I have come to look up to them as loving, inspiring big brothers, and they fondly call me “Little Brother”. Without both of them, I would never have made it.
Having said this, let’s address the important question. Were Jesus and Buddha real people, or are they just ideas? Do you know some people suggest Jesus was not even a real person? There are many sources for this, but try this one.
What! The Audacity! — you may retort. Of course Jesus was a real person! There is so much evidence backing him up — the Bible, the Jewish traditions, holy relics like the Shroud of Turin…!
Okay. But I would like to point out here that stories are made up all the time, and evidence is frequently manufactured to support it. People have faked dinosaur skeletons, paintings, shipwrecks… and these are the ones that were caught. It’s always possible that the ones that weren’t debunked have become part of what you call “history”. Does the fact that everybody believes something make it true? (Have you heard that Adolph Hitler may have escaped to Argentina after WWII and lived to a ripe old age?)
But that’s by the wayside. Let’s assume Jesus and Buddha were real people (which I like to believe), and lived sometime in the distant past. Now, do you realize you never met them? You never experienced them physically. All that connects you to them are your beliefs, based on stories handed down to you by “authority figures” and writings that they are said to have authored, and the agreement of people around you that these figures were “real”.
You don’t know Jesus and Buddha. You cannot know the actual Jesus and Buddha, because you never met them physically. You have an idea of Jesus and Buddha, and that is what you worship/adore/respect/love. You cannot prove beyond any doubt that Jesus and Buddha existed. (In fact, you cannot prove beyond doubt just about anything on Earth at all, and there is a reason for that. It is a spiritual law called The Law of Confusion. More on that later.)
What does this mean? Does this mean that we should throw away Jesus and Buddha? What! No, I’m not saying that. In fact, if anyone suggested this, I would personally lead the protest march against them. But I’m simply trying to point out to you how much of what you think is “real” is really an idea in your mind.
If you think this is amazing, you will be surprised how much of your reality is based on ideas.
Ideas are the Fuel of Reality
Ideas are the most powerful things in The Universe. Maybe you have heard this before, but I want to give you a better idea of what this means.
- Ideas rule, and ideas overthrow.
Galileo before the Holy Office – by Joseph Nicolas Robert-Fleury
There is a story that in the 1600s, Galileo was punished for suggesting the idea that the Earth rotated around the sun, contrary to the ruling idea that the Earth was the center of the Universe. Whether this story is true or not, it shows the power of an idea – you can rule with one and overthrow with another.
- Some people are so attached to ideas, they are ready to kill you just for challenging them. For example, some Muslims will gladly kill you for attacking their idea of Mohammed. The Crusades and the Inquisition are long gone, but you some Christians will still hate you if you speak carelessly about Jesus. These people don’t even know you, but they are ready to maim or kill you just for the sake of their idea. And in Asia, people get arrested and deported for not taking Buddha seriously enough. Here are some examples — this and this.
- Ideas determine how you behave. Is it good to kill other people? You might not think so right now. But if someone cold-bloodedly murdered your son, father, brother, sister, wife or mother, wouldn’t the idea of murdering them back begin to look very attractive? Wouldn’t you want to exchange the idea of “killing is bad” for the idea of “killing is good”? You might not kill because of one idea, but you might certainly kill because of another.
- Ideas are the people you think you know.
Maya Angelou on relationships
Do you realize that you can never completely know another human being, even if you are married to them? You can only know some aspects of them, and based on those aspects you form an idea of “who they are”. When you say you love someone, are you really in love with that person, or with the idea you have formed of them? And when they break your heart, is it because they are “bad people”, or because they are showing you their true self, contrary to the false idea you have been holding about them?
- Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Confucius on beauty
People do not love or worship other people, places or objects. They love and hate ideas they have about those things. They engage themselves with fantasies that they create in their minds, and because of them they embrace or attack the physical objects linked to those fantasies. This is why people murder people. This is why people burn flags, or burn effigies. This is why people deface posters. This is why you watch a movie and decide that one of the characters is the “good guy” and the other is the “bad guy”. This is why you love your friends and hate your enemies. As long as someone acts consistently with your fantasies and expectations, they are your “friend”, and when they don’t they become your “enemy”.
- Can you even live in this world without ideas?
People present ideas to you all the time. It’s called “conversation”. You turn on your TV and absorb ideas all the time — it’s called “watching the news”. The news is just someone’s idea or perspective of what is happening in the world. Your own mind is always submitting ideas to you based on what you have experienced: ideas of who you are (“rich”, “poor”, “suffering”, “sick”, etc.), what you have done and experienced (“the past”, “a hard life”, “born with a silver spoon”, “victimized”, etc.) and what will happen (“the future”, “a bright future”, “fear for the future”, “a sad/happy future”, etc.) Everything around you started as an idea — your house, your car, your mobile phone, your clothes.
Conversation is the exchange of ideas
- You live in several layers of ideas.
The idea of statehood has armies of bodyguards.
Your country is an idea, ruled by your government — another idea, supported by an idea called “The Constitution”. Or do you want me to believe you live the way you do just because you are afraid of what some words printed on some paper might do to you? No. The Constitution is an idea supported by force. It is an idea that has its own bodyguards and army. That is why you obey and respect it.
- Without ideas, would you even be here? You are the result of certain ideas your mother and father had. Your education and upbringing was based on ideas of what you should be and should achieve. You are reading this right now based on ideas you had of what you want to know, who you think I am and what you think I have to tell you.
- Your ideas can even change your body! Have you heard of the placebo effect? Do you know that in multiple personality disorder, different personalities in a single person can display wildly different physical characteristics?
- I could go on forever. But consider this. Everything is an idea in your mind. Even your history and the events (you believe) led you to this point, because you can never be aware of all the circumstances surrounding the events in your past. You cannot know all the subtle nudges and conditions that influenced or made what you have experienced happen just the way it did. You can never really know all the reasons why. At any time, previously hidden information might surface that will make you look on your history in a completely different light. So you believe that things happened a particular way, because you do not – cannot – know any better. Your history is not true. Therefore you imagined it. It is a pure fabrication.
How can you know for certain anything you have not experienced or witnessed? And even if you witnessed it, how can you be sure you understand what you witnessed? Did you understand it, or misunderstand it? How can you assign meaning to anything, much less a sequence of events, if you cannot even prove that that is the only meaning it can have? How many times have you discovered in hindsight that what you were so sure of is totally wrong? A while ago, we believed that Hitler committed suicide at the end of World War II. Now, we are expected to believe that he might not have committed suicide, but escaped and lived to a ripe old age! What should we believe? What is true? What does true even mean?
In the world of computing, there are two important concepts: hardware and software. You probably know this already. Now think about this: hardware exists mainly to deliver software. Hardware exists to make software available. Without the software, the hardware is virtually useless. What’s the point of a keyboard without any letters, characters or documents to type on the screen? In the same way, your body and the physical world exists because of — and only to manipulate — ideas. The reason you have a body is so that you can try out different ideas, observe their consequences, and change your mind if you don’t like them and try out other ideas. Life is a process of invention, discovery and reinvention — a process of exploration of ideas.
So, can you see it now? Can you see that you should be careful what you believe? Can you see that…
The invisible world controls the visible.
How To Use Ideas
So, what is the moral of this story? Well, you decide for yourself. But here are a few pointers:
- When someone tells you something that seems ridiculous or hard to believe, or acts in a way you cannot make sense of, don’t laugh at them or call them “mad” simply because their ideas sound strange to you. If you cannot accept their ideas, simply file them under the “things I cannot accept right now” or “things I don’t understand right now” category, not under the “things mad people believe” category. You would be surprised how many amazing insights into life I have got from “mad” people.
- If everything is an idea, what should you believe? What is true and what is a lie? Here is my suggestion: accept only those ideas that make you happier, stronger and better. If it seems consistent with your reality, and it makes you happier, stronger or better, then accept it and use it. Or else throw it away. It doesn’t matter what other people think about it — if it serves you positively, use it.
- The mind is the steering wheel of the human being. If you want to change your life, or an aspect of it, the first place you should look is at your beliefs. What beliefs are keeping your life the way it is? What beliefs should you replace your current beliefs with to make your life change?
- Remember that you cannot become anything you cannot imagine. Not being able to imagine something excludes that thing from your list of potential possibilities. So, imagination is the highest superpower. Imagination is spirit itself. Develop your imagination.
PS: Message From The Universe
The Universe has requested I add this message to the article: