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What’s Really Real? In Why God Won't Go Away, Newberg, D'Aquili, and Rause set out to defend religious experience by drawing on the discoveries of brain research. However, the implications of their work may be more sweeping than they realize. Instead of proving the truth of religion, their findings lead us to wonder if we can know anything for certain. They are convinced meditation and intense focus does expose one to a higher level of reality. Different levels of reality range from simple daydreaming to complete Enlightenment. Each person experiences each level differently and most do not even think twice about the various levels. Even though there are many levels to experience people have a hard time believing that there is a higher reality than the one we experience daily. Normal everyday existence is the level people are content with, but others long for another option, as if something was missing in their lives. This is where religion and beliefs come in. These are different mediums that are instilled into us from birth to help us cope with the mere thought of existence in our lives. Is there another reality above our own? Can we all not be fully awake? Are all levels just steps until we gain full Enlightenment? And if that is the case, have millions of people never really experienced true reality? They explore these questions with an opened mind to ensure nothing is overlooked. There basic argument presented is if there were any higher level of realities above our own, then is mediation the key to attaining it, and if that is truth how is it that we go on oblivious to another form of reality. They study in detail how our own senses can be fooled in believing what the mind wants it to believe. It states, “ Common sense, which tells us that nothing can be more real than the ground we walk on, or the chair in which we sit, compels us it reject their mystical reality as nonsense.”(Newburg 142) Here we read that our senses are the basis of what we believe is true and not true. What people do not comprehend is it that our senses were the catalyst for every thought we imagine. Form the cradle to the grave our senses determine the people we become by interacting with the world. But if one bases reality on your senses alone then one is not looking at it from a different perspective. “All perceptions exist in the mind. The earth beneath your feet, the chair you’re sitting in, the book you hold in your hands may all seem questionably solid and real, but they are known to you only as secondhand neurological perceptions, as blips and flashes racing along the neural pathways inside your skull.” (Newburg 146) We must look beyond the conventional method of thinking and seriously take into consideration if our lives really do not have purpose, but the purpose given by others who make us believe what is important and what is not.
Approximate Word count = 1904
Approximate Pages = 7.6
(250 words per page double spaced)
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