What Is Real? Reality, Illusion, and Perception

Five lessons on the gap between what we perceive and what actually is. The Upanishads mapped this territory millennia before Kant, Plato, and Schrodinger.

Lessons in this chapter

• Is the World You See the World That Is? — The Mandukya's four states of consciousness vs Plato's cave.
• Does the World Exist Independently of You Observing It? — Schrodinger read the Upanishads. Then he changed physics.
• Is There a Reality You Can Never Access Through Your Senses? — Kant drew a line at the noumenon. The Kena Upanishad crossed it.
• Is God the Universe, or Is God Beyond It? — Spinoza was excommunicated for an idea the Svetasvatara taught millennia earlier.
• If Everything Is One, Why Does It Look Like Many? — Yajnavalkya's salt-in-water teaching and the problem of the One and the Many.

Back to The Big Questions: Upanishads and the Philosophers Who Followed