We hear the word virtual quite a bit these days. It refers to an experience that appears to be real, to exist in its own right, but in actuality is not. In common parlance we speak of the virtual memory of a computer, but the computer doesn’t really have a memory. It’s a collection of technologies created by human consciousness that simulates what we know as memory. Close, perhaps almost indistinguishable, but not quite there. Then there is the avatar, the electronic facsimile of a person, or even more so a “world civilization” of avatars in a video game that can seem quite real to the human eye, but it's not. In each case the virtual experience can appear and simulate reality, but it is actually not true.
Virtual reality by another name – relative reality – is a basic view of Buddhism. It is similarly articulated in early Western civilization in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Both speak of a relative and ultimate reality. Relative reality is our day-to-day experience that to the participant or non-analytic observer seems quite real. However, to one that has access to deeper understandings, relative day-to-day reality is merely a mentally fabricated experience. It is real as an appearance but not true as a final irrefutable reality. It is virtual, not essence.
What is the distinction between relative reality, ordinary day-to-day experience, and virtual reality. Virtual reality, in common parlance, is a creation of the mind. Relative reality is also a creation of the mind. Ultimately, both are creations of the mind, of consciousness. Both are composites and have no essence of their own. Both appear real to common experience, but are false to the knower of fundamental truth. To perceive the virtual and relative as final truth is a source of confusion, illusion, and suffering. The entire process of awakening or enlightenment is to know truth rather than its impersonation, virtual or relative reality.
Our day-to-day world is a construction of our mind – memory, past experiences, learned and socially shared perceptions, and a plenitude of forms mentally generated in the visual and auditory cortex and projected onto the outer world. It is largely programmed and pre-determined. I know this is difficult to grasp, for you and for me. It is okay to experience our day-to-day world as real, live in it, and function in it. It is also essential that we know it to be a projection of the mind created by consciousness.
We can play with this internal/external drama, but only if we know it’s merely a play-like illusion. If we fail to understand this distinction, we suffer the related illusion of impermanence, attachment, unbridled desire, disconnection, psychological suffering, and the inability to know, experience, or live in the ground of our being, the center of our being, our true home and self.
The final reality, the ultimate reality is the simple, unconditioned consciousness from which arises and falls all impermanent mental activity and sensory experiences, that are the basis of our relative, virtual, day-to-day experience of people, places, and things. Awareness and consciousness are the foundational essence of our being and our experiences.
Words can only take us so far in understanding this. The final and irrevocable understanding comes from experiencing it directly in meditation practice or the glimpses that are given to us in the gaps between thoughts that are a gift of grace. You know these gaps as the experience of awe, delight, or astonishment, the “lostness” in music, art, nature, intimacy, service, dance, and so on. For a fleeting moment, what you lose is your small self, your relative reality, and gain the blessing of wholeness, flow, simple and pure awareness, ease, and delight. You experience and know the truth of reality and lose the impersonation of relative reality. You experience the final source and truth of all that we experience in life.
Why is knowing this ultimate truth so important? To know this truth is to avoid being caught up in the dramas and suffering of an unbridled investment and belief in the virtual/relative reality of the personal self. Unlike this temporary personal self, we find that the true self is permanent, serene beyond understanding, happy without a reason, selflessly loving and compassionate, and free of the oppression of the known. We can still play in the virtual/relative world of our day-to-day experience. It is also part of our consciousness. But we are not lost in it, attached to it, or suffer from its dramas.
We know it is a computer programmer that programs virtual computer technology. That programmer knows he has created a virtual world. Virtual reality is manufactured and pre-determined by consciousness. Similarly, day-to-day reality is manufactured and pre-determined by consciousness. As noted, it’s difficult to grasp that we largely live in a programmed computer-like experience. But it is so. Unlike a computer program which cannot transcend itself, cannot experience more than its parts, human consciousness can. In modern parlance, “Do you wish the red pill or the blue pill?” The choice is yours.
That understanding causes the wise one to ask, “What is the source of the fundamental consciousness that is the basis of all experience?” “What is the source of the unconditioned unprogrammed awareness, beingness, isness. That we cannot speak of here. Words cannot offer a knowledge of the fundamental source. That can only be known through direct experience. Yet, it is available to everyone because it is in everyone. And, the probabilities of a direct experience of the nature of existence increases with a clear mind and good heart.
But the best of us can be touched by this experience as well as the worst of us, the youngest and the oldest, the able and the body/mind challenged. The blessing of our sacred and wholistic nature is always there and the most we can do as an intentional act is to know the deepest truth we can, trust life, and let go of who we are not. If you are blessed, the source will reveal itself in its own time. If you are double blessed it will sustain itself and become your life.
But do not seek or expect to touch the divine. Simply live the most awakened selfless life that you can, surrender the illusions of the virtual/ relative self, drop into the vast expanse of beingness, and know the difference between what appears real and what is true.