Universalist Unitarian Church Santa Paula, California

Where to Look for Reality
by Reverend John Alexie Crane

If the conversation turns to the subject of reality, people begin to mill around mentally. The conversation will usually conclude when one person observes, frowning, and others nod in agreement, "Well, who knows what reality is. Everybody has his or her own reality. There are as many realities as there are people."

There is just enough truth in this observation, and it takes so much effort to penetrate the confusion and despair, that it is usually a conversation stopper. This is as far as it goes.

However, when you look closely at the statement, "There as many realities as there are people," you begin to see that it is at once ridiculous and dangerous. It is far more an expression of despair than it is a description of reality.

The danger in it is found in the fact that, if there is no reality outside our own heads, then it is the most powerful individuals among us who will determine which conception of reality is dominant in society.

Indeed, this is a major theme in George Orwell's brilliant study of twentieth century social and political life in his novel, 1984. It is an imaginative account of what life would be like in a society which was governed by people who fully accepted the proposition that there are as many realities as there are people.

O'Brien is one of the most powerful leaders in the society that Orwell imagines in 1984, and he says confidently to Winston, the novel's central character: "Reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else."

Whatever your government holds to be the truth, is in fact the truth. O'Brien says this as he tortures Winston systematically in order to gain complete control of his mind. By controlling people's minds, the government can control the prevailing definition of reality. [1] The government determines what is real and what is not.

We should not think that this is a pattern limited to totalitarian societies. In a democracy, it is not the government alone that defines reality, but the established order collectively.

The established order in America declared for 200 years, in accord with the teachings of the Bible and of long-standing social practice, that, in reality, women were inferior to men, and hence should be excluded from positions of public responsibility.

It was not until about eighty years ago that women were permitted to vote, and only in very recent years that they have managed to gain access to high level posts in business and government. We are in the process of correcting a long-standing misconception of reality, and it is a protracted, taxing struggle, still not completed.

Reality? Where is it? What does the word mean? Webster's dictionary (to begin) has it as "that which actually exists; that which is not imagination, fiction, or pretense." This points our attention in the right direction. A dictionary of philosophy has it like this: reality is "that which is... everything that is... the sum total of all that exists... the universe."

The universe, in turn, is "everything that is, was, and will be. The totality of existence in all its forms... " See cosmos, the dictionary suggests. Cosmos: "the universe itself as a single, integrated whole or system..." [2] This last assertion, in turn, triggers a memory in me.

A few years ago, I stood on low hills east of Vienna in Austria, overlooking the ruins of a large Roman town, Carnuntum, which was the headquarters, 1800 years ago, for troops on the northern frontier of the Roman Empire.

I thought of Marcus Aurelius as I stood there: a remarkable and gifted individual, a philosopher, a rational mystic, a military commander,and Emperor of Rome. Marcus had died in the year 180 AD in this town, in Carnuntum.

I also thought of Marcus when I read the definition of cosmos in the dictionary of philosophy: the cosmos is"the universe itself as a single, integrated whole or system."

Marcus had (centuries ago) put it this way: "Cease not to think of the Universe as one living Being, possessed of single Substance and a single Soul... ; and how all existing things are joint causes of all things that come into existence; and how intertwined in the fabric is the thread and how closely woven the web....”

Marcus added this prayer: "All that is in tune with thee, O Universe, is in tune with me! Nothing that is in due time for thee is too early or too late for me!.... All things come from thee, subsist in thee, go back to thee...." [3]

The universe, the cosmos, reality: a single, integrated whole or system. The ground of our existence, that in which we live and move and have our being. Reality. God.

Reality is our cosmic home. We move about in reality every day, every moment of our lives. As we move through it, we see it, hear its sounds, smell it, feel its texture with our fingers.

We take this continual sensory experience of reality into ourselves and store it in some form (electrical, biochemical, symbolic, or whatever) within us. We each of us come to contain, over the years of our lives, a vast store of experience of reality, much of which we may be no longer consciously aware.

Truth is reality encoded in human substance, finding expression in human understanding; then expressed, insofar as possible, in words, in speech, in print.

If we contain a great deal of reality, why is it so difficult for us to know its nature? Because when we take in this sensory data from reality, it gets mixed with ourselves, with our preconceptions, our wishes and needs and fantasies, with our social conditioning. It takes knowledge, reason, intuition, takes thought, feeling and reflection to winnow out the unreal from the real, the fantasies from the facts.

It is my own conviction that the closer we get to reality, the more stable and steady, the more rewarding and secure will our lives be. Finding our way to reality is for me the most significant life goal for human creatures. It is a tacit goal in our philosophical form of religion.

I am aware that everyone does not share this view. There are many thinkers who argue that reality is much too harsh for humans to live with, that we must comfort ourselves with illusions in order to be able to bear living in reality.

It almost appears that, in us, the life force needs illusions in order to further itself. Without illusions, the argument is, we fall into fear, anxiety, and despair. We must believe, say, that Christ died for our sins, if we are to be able to live with our own guilt, our sense of failure and falling short. We must believe that we will live forever in order to deal with our fear of death. [4]

It does appear to be true that many members of our species have little affection for truth, for reality. They have a tendency to turn away from truth in much the same way a small child turns away from a spoonful of strange medicine.

Many people evidently tend to search out the kind of knowledge that will satisfy their ego needs, contribute to their feelings of security and satisfaction, that will expand their power, give them strength and comfort. They are slow to accept insights that are critical, that undermine prejudices, that lead them to doubt the validity of what they have been accustomed to believing and doing and feeling.

But it has seemed to me that, while this is indeed true of many people among us, their turning away from truth, from reality is a short-sighted solution, leaves them tense and uneasy, prone to grow hostile or even violent toward those who will not share their illusions.

They may find comfort in the short run, but much anxiety and little peace in the long run. They will be moved to lash out aggressively at those who are a threat to the belief system, the system of illusions in which their security is founded.

It is also true that for most of the people in any society reality is defined by general consensus, rather than by individual perception, reason, or critical reflection. Most people will faithfully see the world the way the vast majority of their people see it. They will accept the going definition of reality. This has always been true, though it is becoming less so as the level of consciousness rises in the species, as we become increasingly aware of the diverse range of world-views held by humans all over the earth.

Still, most of the people of each country, even now, will perceive their own nation as being the finest, most cultured, most peace-loving in the world. This is reality for the people of Iran and Iraq, of France, Russia, China, Italy and the United States as well.

In every nation the people see their own country as the finest, and all others as doing things somewhat strangely, as being people of questionable motives, lacking our virtues. The history of each nation is written in such a way as to establish this claim incontestably, and school children in each grow up with this consensual view established in their minds.

This parochial world view, this ethnocentrism is widespread, but, of course, it is also hideously destructive. It must be replaced by truth and reality if we are to learn to live in harmony with each other.

II. Is Falling in Love the Real Thing?
Falling in love: is that real love? When we "fall in love" are we having a real experience of love?

Certainly this is how most people in the Western world understand falling in love. This is true love, the only proper basis for entering into marriage. Probably no misconception has caused more profound, more widespread suffering, grief and destruction than this one.

That falling in love is real love is almost universally accepted by people in our part of the world. It is established as reality by consensus. But there is something peculiar here we need to face.

First of all, we do not "fall in love" with our friends of the same sex (unless we are homosexual) though we may have great affection for them. This is evidence of the fact that there is a strong sexual component in the experience of falling in love. Falling in love is erotically motivated.

We fall in love with a person to whom we are sexually attracted. Real love, on the other hand, is a sharing of self with another; it is a deepened companionship; a deepened caring about the well-being of another as well as one's own.

Another peculiar characteristic of falling in love is that it soon disintegrates. It does not last. When we fall in love it feels to us like it is for all eternity; but this is actually illusion. It is, in fact, almost invariably rather short-lived. As one pundit put it, romantic love “is a temporary insanity curable by marriage.”

The typical pattern is something like this: a couple falls in love, and are ecstatic about each other. The future looks like unbroken bliss. They are intensely involved in each other, want to see each other constantly. They perceive each other as without fault or flaw.

They decide to live together, whether in marriage or not, and soon, as the problems of daily living crop up repeatedly, as conflicts inevitably emerge they begin to fall out of love.

They find that when he wants sex, she doesn't; or the reverse. One opens the window too wide at night; the other squeezes the toothpaste from the middle, rather than the bottom. The eggs are cooked too hard. One monopolizes the newspaper when the other wants to read it. They do not like each other's friends. She wants to put money in the bank; he wants to buy a four wheel drive vehicle.

Each, then, harbors a secret, sad feeling of disenchantment. "The one I fell in love with has become just an ordinary person, for heaven's sake." Disgustingly ordinary. He leaves his dirty socks on the floor, and she nags him about it.

The illusory character of falling in love is making itself felt. This does not mean that they no longer love each other. Now in fact they may get into the task of developing a real love relationship between them. Indeed, it may have been developing all the time, under the fireworks of romance.

This misconception about the reality of love has generated endless grief in human life, because people work from the misapprehension that falling in love is real love, and that if that exciting feeling goes away then there is no love present.

It is possible, you see, for millions of people, consensually, for hundreds of years, to misconstrue the nature of reality. It is one of the central tasks of our religion, our churches to help us find our way to that which is ultimately real and really matters. [5]

III. Reality, Truth, and God
Philosophical religion such as our own is the quest for truth, for that which is real and true. Truth is reality embedded in human substance, encoded there in some form.

Consider this statement by a distinguished Harvard theologian, Wilfred Cantwell Smith: "Any statement is the word of God insofar as it is true.... God is truth... Wherever truth is found, there is God. And wherever truth is stated there God is speaking." [6]

It is the aim of philosophical religion to bring us ever closer to reality, to God.

That which is false or fanciful is unreal. The greater the clarity and accuracy of our understanding of the reality of the world, the more effectively, the more comfortably will we deal with it. "The less clearly we see the reality of the world -- the more our minds are befuddled by falsehood, misperceptions and illusions -- the less able we will be to determine correct courses of action and make wise decisions." [7]

Ever so many people are reluctant to accept this. They tend to shy away from truth, from reality, when it is threatening or painful. Our ultimate health and well-being, however, depends upon our accepting the initial pain we may encounter in facing reality.

In order to face it, we must be committed to the discovery of truth, to getting closer and ever closer to reality. We must be clear about the fact that truth is more important to our real self-interest than mere momentary comfort.

FOOTNOTES
1. George Orwell, 1984 (New York, 1949), p 205. Signet Classic paperback.
2. Peter A Angeles, Dictionary of Philosophy (New York, 1981).
3. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations..
4. Ernest Becker, Escape from Evil (New York, 1975), pp 153-158.
5 For detailed treatment of real love contrasted with falling in love, see F Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled (New York, 1978), pp 81-82.
6. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Questions of Religious Truth (New York, 1967), pp 84-5.
7. Peck, pp 44-5.

Dr Alexie Crane
2880 Exeter Place
Santa Barbara, CA 93105
(805) 682-3476

Lex1304@aol.com

Return to Sermons Page