What is Real ?

When one spends some time thinking about the nature of reality, that is how we perceive and interpret it, very quickly we come to that conclusion that objective reality is ultimately a construct formed by conscious thought. 

What we call "reality" is not a passive reflection of the external world, but a construct built by our mind to organise and make sense of sensory stimuli . A "rock," for example cannot exits to one in any meaningful way unless the mid assigns an identity. Solid, Heavy, Inert etc.. all based on prior perception, language and bias. Remove the construct and see it as a new born what possibly remains is an unknowable configuration of energy, devoid of qualities unless observed and interpreted. 

Further application of this reasoning to its logical end and one can find oneself at a radical and in the first instance a frightening realisation. Reality is not the external universe that we are part of and inhabit but a projection arising from within. The universe is not outside of consciousness, but rather within it. 

Quantum physics has in many ways shattered the idea of a deterministic universe waiting to be discovered somewhere out there. It reveals a universe that is fundamentally probabilistic, relational and observer dependent.  The “external world” is essentially a field of potentialities in constant flux, entangled and undefined unless brought into focus by observation. Physicists call this a state of superposition - a range of potential states. Classically explained by a thought experiment involving a cat. (Schrödingers Cat). These multiple states exist at the same time and because physicists also like waves the act of observing is known as a collapse of the wave function. (Complete Math provides a proof of this phenomenon) The boundary of what is without and what is within is essentially blurred, perhaps meaningless. 

What we consider to be the cosmos may in fact be the mind observing itself, dreaming its own existence into being.  The universe is not something we occupy space in we are what the universe becomes when it becomes self aware and gains the capacity to imagine and reflect. 

C