In the context of reality, people face the difficulty of telling whether the world we are living in is virtual or real. Such a confusion leads people to investigate the possibility that we are living in a simulation.

Whether are we living in a simulated reality or a real one may be indistinguishable in principle. The relativity principle in physics, which is mainly about the relativity of motion, states that motion has no absolute meaning. To say if something is in motion or rest one must have some reference frame. Without a reference frame, one cannot tell the state of being in rest or in uniform motion.

Similar things happen for reality, meaning that without a reference world, one cannot tell the world one is living in is real or not. Therefore, there is no absolute meaning for reality. The principle of relativity of reality is a generalization of the principle in special relativity, and may be called ‘super relativity principle’. Similar to the situation in special relativity or general relativity, there are two fundamental principles for the relativity of reality:

• All worlds are the same real.
• Simulated events and simulating events coexist.

The first principle says that the reality is relative and thus observer dependent. For a world, one calls it reality or virtuality depending on whether one lives in it. One calls the world one lives in reality, and other worlds virtuality. For example, if one lives in world A, one calls it reality and the other is world B virtuality. However if one’s consciousness is transferred from world A into world B, then, one shall call world B reality and world A virtuality.

The second principle states a fact sometimes known as a coexistence principle. Nowadays, there are mainly two kinds of simulators available, computers and human brains. For computers, suppose there is a glinting ball in the simulated world of a computer. The counterpart of it in the simulating world is the combination of zeros and ones (high and low electrical levels) of the running computer’s circuits. In fact, for anything in the simulated world, there is its counterpart in the simulating world.

For human brains, suppose there is an apple in someone’s imagination, the counterpart of it in the material world is the biochemical reactions in one’s brain. In fact, for anything in one’s imagination, there is its counterpart as a biochemical reaction in the material world. Essentially, simulated events and simulating events coexist, but that doesn’t mean that simulated events and simulating events exist in the same form. Actually, they can be quite different in existence form. Taking the above-mentioned apple in someone’s imagination as an example, its existing form in the simulated world is a apple, while the existing form of its counterpart in the simulating world is biochemical reactions in someone’s brain.

Yoga Nidra refers to yogic sleep and yogic lucid dreaming. It has been practiced as a spiritual practice for millennia by ascetics and yogic practitioners. Of the three states of consciousness of waking, dreaming and deep sleep refer specifically to the conscious awareness of the deep sleep state, referred to as “prajna”. This is the third of the four levels of consciousness relating to the state represented by the M of AUM. The four states are waking, dreaming, sleep, and turiya, the fourth state. The state of Yoga Nidra, conscious deep sleep, is beyond or subtler than the imagery and mental process of the waking and non-lucid dreaming states. As a state of conscious deep sleep, Yoga Nidra is a universal principle, and is not the exclusive domain of any specific tradition.

The practice of yogic relaxation has been found to effectively reduce tension and improve psychological well being of people suffering from anxiety. The autonomic symptoms of high anxiety such as headache, giddiness, chest pain, palpitations, sweating and abdominal pain respond exceptionally well to yoga nidra. Practicing yoga nidra successfully decreases the time required to fall asleep, thereby curing insomnia.

Adherents of the Yoga Nidra as guided visualisation technique hold that half an hour of Yoga Nidra may yield the benefit of up to three hours of standard sleep, although the regular engagement of this practice as a sleep substitute is contraindicated as the bodymind still requires sufficient rest through standard sleep. This tradition of Yoga Nidra should not be conflated with techniques of autosuggestion and autogenous training, though there is a palpable commonality in process if not in application.

Through practice of Yoga Nidra, one achieves true relaxation. During the practice of yoga nidra, one appears to be sleeping, but the consciousness is functioning at the deeper level of awareness. It is sleep with a trace of deep awareness. It is a state of mind in between wakefulness and dream. Normally when we sleep, we loose track of our self and cannot utilize this capacity of mind. Yoga nidra enables the person to be conscious in this state and nurture the seed of great will power, inspire the higher self, and enjoy the vitality of life.

With constant practice of Yoga Nidra people have found that the technique restructures and transforms the whole personality from within. With every session of yoga nidra, one is actually burning the old habits and tendencies in order to be born anew. This process is quicker than other systems that work on an external basis. It is a most powerful method for reshaping the personality.

Gnosis is the spiritual knowledge of a saint or mystically enlightened human being. In Byzantine and Hellenic cultures, gnosis was a special knowledge or insight into the infinite, divine and uncreated in all and above all, rather than knowledge strictly into the finite, natural or material world. It indicates direct spiritual experiential knowledge and intuitive knowledge, mystic rather than that from rational or reasoned thinking. Gnosis itself is obtained through understanding at which one can arrive via inner experience or contemplation.

Carl Jung worked on trying to understand and explain the Gnostic faith from a psychological standpoint. In many ways, Jung’s analytical psychology schematically mirrors ancient Gnostic mythology. Jung understands the emergence of the creator out of the original, unified monadic source of the spiritual universe by gradual stages to be analogous to the emergence of the ego from the unconscious.

However, it is uncertain as to whether the similarities between Jung’s psychological teachings and those of the gnostics are due to their sharing a similar philosophy, or whether Jung was unwittingly influenced by the Gnostics in the formation of his theories. Jung’s own writings would tend to imply the latter, but after circulating one of his related manuscripts, Jung declined to publish it during his lifetime. Since it is not clear whether Jung was ultimately displeased with the book or whether he merely suppressed it as too controversial, the issue remains contested.

On the other hand, it is clear from a comparison of Jung’s writings and that of ancient Gnostics, that Jung disagreed with them on the ultimate goal of the individual. Gnostics in ancient times clearly sought a return to a supreme, other-worldly God state. To contend that there is at least some disagreement between Jung and Gnosticism is at least supportable. The Jungian process of individuation involves the addition of unconscious psychic tropes to consciousness in order to achieve a trans-conscious centre to the personality. Jung did not intend this addition to take the form of a complete identification of the self with the unconscious.

Gnostic believers today retain much of the gnostic mysticism of early Christian centuries, in particular that human minds are independent of the realm of matter, and are emanations of the One, the non-physical Spirit, and that the physical world is a result of the creator manifesting itself, and it is ruled by demons which prevent the spiritual progress of the mind in every possible way and maintain its entrapment in matter.

Teleology is the philosophical study of design and purpose. A teleological school of thought is one that holds all things to be designed for or directed toward a final result, that there is an inherent purpose or final cause for all that exists.

As a school of thought it can be contrasted with metaphysical naturalism, which views nature as having no design or purpose. Teleology would say that a person has eyes because he has the need of eyesight, while naturalism would say that a person has sight because he has eyes.

Individual human consciousness, in the process of reaching for autonomy and freedom, has no choice but to deal with an obvious reality in the collective identities which divide the human race and which set different groups in violent conflict with each other. The totality of mutually antagonistic world views and life forms in history has been observed as being goal driven, that is, oriented towards an end-point in history. The objective contradiction of subject and object would eventually sublate into a form of life which leaves violent conflict behind. This goal oriented, teleological notion of the historical process as a whole is present in a variety of 20th Century writing.

It has been argued that a narrative understanding of oneself, of one’s capacity as an independent reasoner, one’s dependence on others and on the social practices and traditions in which one participates, all tend towards an ultimate good of liberation. Social practices may themselves be understood as teleologically orientated to internal goods, for example practices of philosophical and scientific enquiry are teleologically ordered to the elaboration of a true understanding of their objects.

Science concerns itself with physical causality and is well able to function within the bounds of naturalism, indeed, it has frequently to counter appeals to undemonstrable modes of causality. Yet teleological ideas still find refuge in the unpenetrated beginnings and endings of things. It has been claimed that within the framework of thermodynamics, the irreversibility of macroscopic processes is explained in a teleological way.

Teleological arguments in the field of chemistry have once again often centred around the fitness of materials to form the complex molecular bonds of life. Biology has always been susceptible to teleological thought, even after Darwin proposed survival as the only observable final good.

Norbert Wiener, a mathematician, coined the term cybernetics to denote the study of teleological mechanisms. Cybernetics is the study of the communication and control of regulatory feedback both in living beings and machines, and in combinations of the two.

According to some schools of Tibetan Buddhism, Dzogchen is the natural, primordial state or natural condition of every sentient being, including every human being. Dzogchen, or Great Perfection, is the central teaching of the Nyingma school and is considered by them to be the highest and most definitive path to enlightenment.

Our ultimate nature is said to be pure, all-encompassing, primordial awareness. This intrinsic awareness has no form of its own and yet is capable of perceiving, experiencing, reflecting, or expressing all form. It does so without being affected by those forms in any ultimate, permanent way. The analogy given by Dzogchen masters is that one’s nature is like a mirror which reflects with complete openness but is not affected by the reflections, or like a crystal ball that takes on the colour of the material on which it is placed without itself being changed.

Other evocative phrases used by masters describe it as an all-pervading fullness or as space that is aware. When an individual is able to maintain the dzogchen state continually, he or she no longer experiences dukkha, or feelings of discontent, tension and anxiety in everyday life. The symbol and teaching tool of Dzogchen is the Gankyil.

The Dzogchen teachings focus on three terms: View, Meditation, and Action. To see directly the absolute state of our mind is the View. The way of stabilizing that View and making it an unbroken experience is Meditation. Integrating that View into our daily life is what is meant by Action. Dzogchen is one of several approaches to nondualism.

This open awareness of Dzogchen is said to lie at the heart of all things and indeed of all Dzogchen practice and is nothing less than primordial wisdom’s recognition of itself as unbounded wholeness. This reflexive awareness of Enlightenment is said to be inherent within all beings, but not to be attainable by thought.

According to Dzogchen teachings, energy of an individual is essentially totally formless and free from any duality. However, karmic traces, contained in the storehouse consciousness of the individual’s mindstream give rise to forms that the individual experiences as his or her body and mind, and forms that the individual experiences as an external environment.

It is maintained that there is nothing external or separate from the individual. What appears as a world of apparently external phenomena, is the energy of the individual itself. Everything that manifests in the individual’s field of experience is a continuum. This is the Great Perfection that is discovered in the Dzogchen practice.

In Buddhist Dzogchen tradition, sky gazing is considered to be an important practice.

In Dzogchen the perceived reality is considered to be unreal. All appearances perceived during the whole life of an individual through all senses, including sounds, smells, tastes and tactile sensations in their totality are like a big dream. It is claimed that the dream of life and regular nightly dreams are not very different, and that in their essential nature there is no difference between them.

The non-essential difference between our dreaming state and our ordinary waking experience is that the latter is more concrete and linked with our attachment. The dreaming is slightly detached.

One aim of dream practice is to realize during a dream that one is dreaming. One can then dream with lucidity and do all sorts of things, such as go to different places, talk to people, fly and so forth. It is also possible to do different yogic practices while dreaming. In this way one can have a very strong experience and with this comes understanding of the dream-like nature of daily life. This is very relevant to diminishing attachments, because they are based on strong beliefs that life’s perceptions and objects are real.

The realization that the life is only a big dream can help us finally liberate ourselves from the chains of emotions, attachments, and ego and then we have the possibility of ultimately becoming enlightened.

Monistic Idealism is a metaphysical theory which states that consciousness, not matter, is the ground of all being. It is a monistic theory because it holds that there is only one type of thing in the universe, and it is a form of idealism because it holds that one thing to be consciousness. In India this concept is central to Vedanta philosophy.

It rejects any notion of consciousness being an accident or the mere side product of material interactions. Instead, consciousness comes before matter. Monistic idealism is the fundamental wellspring from which reality is created.

It is theorized that everything is made of matter, and everything can be reduced to the elementary particles of matter, the basic constituents or building blocks of matter. Cause arises from the interactions of these basic building blocks or elementary particles. Elementary particles make atoms, atoms make molecules, molecules make cells, and cells make the brain. But through all of this, the ultimate cause is always the interactions between the elementary particles.

The belief is that all cause moves from the elementary particles and is called upward causation. In this view, what human beings think of as our free will does not really exist. It is only a secondary phenomenon, secondary to the causal power of matter. Any causal power that we seem to be able to exert on matter is simply an illusion. This is the current view of reality.

The opposite view is that everything starts with consciousness and is the ground of all being. In this view, consciousness imposes downward causation. In other words, our free will is real. When we act in the world we really are acting with causal power. This view does not deny that matter also has causal potency and that there is causal power from elementary particles upward. It insists that there is also downward causation. It shows up in our creativity and acts of free will, or when we make moral decisions. In those occasions we are actually witnessing downward causation by consciousness.

Jainism is one of the oldest religions originating in India. Jains believe that every soul is divine and has the potential to achieve God consciousness. Any soul which has conquered its own inner enemies and achieved the state of supreme being is called jina.

According to Jain beliefs, the universe was never created, nor will it ever cease to exist. It is eternal but not unchangeable, because it passes through an endless series of cycles. Each of these upward or downward cycles is divided into six world ages or yugas. The present world age is the fifth age of one of these cycles, which is in a downward movement. Each age is known as an aaro. There are no specific names assigned to each age. Instead they are referred to numerically. All these ages have fixed time durations of thousands of years.

In Jain thought, the shape of the inhabited universe has been described as that of the figure 8 or a man standing arms akimbo. The dimension from the top to bottom has been described as 14 rajjus. One rajju or is the distance covered by a deva flying for six months, or 216.5 light years. At the top and at the middle point the universe is 1 rajju wide but the width of the bulges varies from 5 to 8. Thus, the distance between the two ends of the middle world is approximately 5.2 billion light years.

Associationism in philosophy refers to the idea that mental processes operate by the association of one state with its successor states. The idea was first recorded by Plato and Aristotle, especially with regard to the succession of memories. During the late 1700′s, members of the British Associationist School asserted that the principle applied to all or most mental processes.

The school developed very specific principles specifying how associations worked and even a physiological mechanism bearing no resemblance to modern neurophysiology. By the end of the nineteenth century, physiological psychology was so altering the approach to this subject that much of the older associationist theory was rejected.

Nevertheless, the everyday observation of the association of one idea or memory with another gives a validity to the notion. In addition, the notion of association between ideas and behavior gave some early impetus to behaviorist thinking. The core ideas of associationist thinking recur in some recent ideas on cognition, especially consciousness.

It is held that association is of objects not of ideas. It is between things thought of, between processes in the brain. The most natural way of accounting for it is to conceive of it as a result of the laws of habit in the nervous system, in other words, to ascribe it to a physiological cause.

Association thus results because when a nerve current has once passed by a given way, it will pass more easily by that way in future, and this fact is a physical fact. The important deduction is that the only primary or ultimate law of association is that of neural habit.