What is real?

I did a kung fu intensive over the weekend. Ten hours of practice in two days. Today was my second day. At lunch break I walked around to shoot an image for the blog. I came along this wall of glass, this skyscraper covered with windows that reflected the skyline. This brought up a question I had for quite a few years. Is the world a mirror image of our mind? Are the ideas we have in our head about the world and ourselves reflected in the world that we perceive? Do they create our reality? Is the world an illusion like in the movie “the Matrix” controlled not by machines but by our minds? Is the only difference between a bagger and a king their idea about themselves? Years ago I read a book by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj called “ I am that”. Sri Nisargadatta was a simple uneducated man but had reached enlightenment. People came from all over the world to his unpretentious home in Bombay to ask him questions and to find out how a self realized person perceives what we call “reality”. The book is about questions people asked him on their trips to India. My two favorite ones are: Q: Shri Nisargadatta what is real? A: Everything that has a beginning and has and end is not real. Q: Sri Nisargadatta what do you see when you look at me? A: I see you imagining yourself to be. Let’s assume Sri Nisargadatta is right.  Since the world has a beginning and an end it would mean it is not real. If we imagining ourselves to be who is imagining? And what is real after all? What has no beginning and no end? And if we imagining ourselves to be do we have control over what we imagine? Is it a projection of the mind? Does that mean our mind controls who we are? Does it control our illusionary self since our bodies have a beginning and an end and because of that are not real? We have to have a body to express ourselves on this plane but do we have control over who we are? Let’s say tomorrow I would start to believe that I am the greatest, most talented, best photographer of the 21 Century. And I would be able to get to a point to absolutely believe that without any doubt. Would that become reality to me in this unreal world? Since nothing is real and everybody lives in a self imagined illusion? Is there a ruler who rules the illusion or are we all separately imagining what we want to be and that becomes our illusionary reality? And if we are separately imagining who we want to be why do we not imagine what we want? If it is an illusion anyway why do we not imagine who we want to be? Why not live the life’s we want to live? Why not change what we think and with that change the world around us?

 World In A Mirror. Manhattan/New York 01-13-08 at 02:23 PM. 

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