By JP Malig

WHEN a teacher tells a student to "face reality," he implies that there is a concrete and objective standard of reality that applies equally to everybody.

But does a standard reality really exist? And if so, how is it to be determined?

Philosopher Theodore Roszak says that most people act within a single objective reality. Roszak says in "Eyes of Flesh, Eyes of Fire" that our enjoyment of the fruits of science and technology and our consequent reliance upon them has resulted in our acceptance of the scientific world-view; a world-view totally dependent upon reason and one which admits the validity of phenomena which can be logically perceived and analyzed.

Its central processing unit is the analytical mind which separates and categorizes the whole of anything to its different points and parts.

Thus, reality – from this perspective – is "out there". It is something that exists apart from the individual. Roszak however, speaks of an "alternative reality", one which is the opposite of rational and logical reality.

He speaks of the reality of the visionary – citing poets and artists as examples – who see with "eyes which see the world not as a commonplace sight or how scientific scrutiny sees it, but see it transformed, made lustrous beyond measure, and in seeing the world so, see it as it really is."

The concern to review the nature of reality is ever more important amid the onset of modern technology and tools of entertainment in our everyday lives, which are able to change and distort factual reality of religion playing an important role in the formation of an individual’s views on reality amid our continuous pursuit to define our world.

Mysticism surrounds and envelops the reality of the Hindu faith, with little sense of logical and rational reality.

To penetrate the depth and grandeur of Hindu mythology and philosophy, one must be made aware of two Hindu concepts: the maya and the lila. The maya is the formless reality continuously being created and changed by the Hindu divinity. Lila is the multiplicity and play of reality by a single energy only known as the Supreme Self.

Vishnu is one of the many names of the Hindu supreme divinity, with the physical incarnation of Vishnu called an avatar.

Hindus believe that the comings and goings of all worlds, all beings and all things is the described outbreathing and inbreathing of a One Life – eternal because it is beyond all dualities, comprising non-being as much as being, death as much as life, stillness as much as motion.

To easily grasp the Hindu concept of connection and mystical links between all beings – divine, human, demonic or animal – visualize a pan-universal and eternal Internet, with the atoms of all beings and things mystically linked like a network of networks of networks.

The described outbreathing and inbreathing of the One Life – the in and out rhythm or undulation – goes on endlessly through every dimension of life, according to the Hindu faith. It is the birth and death of innumerable universes, not only succeeding one another in kalpa-periods of 4,320,000 years, but also co-existing in untold myriads.

Small universes compose great universes: our galaxies are the dust in another cosmos, and the dust in our world contains suns and stars – infinitely small or infinitely great according to one’s point of view. An individual therefore is a vast cosmos in his or her own right and the ups and downs of his life are the same ups and downs of the macrocosms beyond him and the microcosms within him, according to the Hindu faith.

The Hindu belief of reality and life adds: To the eye of wisdom, size makes no difference: every mote, every being, every cosmos is an exemplar of one archetypal rhythm. All beings are, as it were, under the spell of a divine Juggler, tossing and catching the countless balls of the worlds with his thousands of arms and hands, simultaneously giving delight with the display of skill and terror with the thought that a ball might drop. Yet, the skill and resourcefulness of the divine Juggler are endless. The ball that seems to drop and shatter simply bursts into a million more Jugglers – the lila of the Supreme Self – and the disaster turns out, with unfailing astonishment, to be a new tour de force, though it is all part of the game – the maya or the formless reality - that is never expected. Yet, there is a clue for the wise. In all images of the many-armed Hindu divinity, there is one hand raised and unmoving, with palm toward the beholder – the gesture of "Fear not". It is just a game.

Under this divine game, the Hindu does not feel himself entirely a victim. However obscurely, he feels or knows that the source of this enchantment is some roundabout way, himself – as if being alive and human were to have gotten oneself deliberately lost in the game of the divine Juggler.

While the Hindus believe that man is a part of some greater unity or plan, the existentialist world-view postulated by philosopher Jean Paul Sartre is on the opposite end of the pole of belief on reality and life.

To Sartre, man’s reality depends upon man’s own definition of self and for whatever form that may take man himself is responsible. In "Existentialism", Sartre says: "Man is what he wills himself to be…man is free. Man is freedom."

"There is no other truth to take off than this: I think; therefore, I exist," says Sartre. Outside the Cartesian cogito, all views are only probable and a doctrine of probability which is not bound to a truth, dissolves into thin air.

Sartre emphasizes that men are born free, and once thrown into this world, the individual is responsible for everything he or she does.

"What the existentialist says is that the coward makes himself cowardly, the hero makes himself heroic… There is no other reality except in action. Man’s destiny is within himself," he says, adding that reality is based in concrete action.

Is the Hindu then to be dismissed as an irrational fatalist and the existentialist, a cold-hearted materialist? Is the scientific mind to be scorned as narrow, and the visionary, ethereal?

I think I need a cup of our favorite brew.