W.R.T.W: A Journey into Reality

What if I told you that everything you believe to be real—everything you see, touch, and know—might not be real at all?

You call a fire bright, a sunset beautiful, and a shadow dark. But why? Because you see them that way. Now, imagine I take your eyes away. Does brightness still exist? Is the sunset still beautiful? Or were these just labels assigned by your perception?

Let’s go deeper. I replace your eyes with an infrared sensor. Colors disappear. Your world is now shaped by heat, where once there was light. Did reality change? Or did you simply switch to a new way of seeing?

But sight is just one sense. What about sound? Imagine losing your ability to hear certain frequencies. A bat would still hear them. You wouldn’t. Would those sounds still exist? Or do they only exist for the observer capable of perceiving them?

It is the same in the case of all senses—if they change, then reality changes.

But this raises a terrifying question: Is this reality really real?

What if we’ve never actually experienced reality itself? What if we’ve only ever experienced an interpretation of it—one dictated by the limited tools we were born with?

Science itself suggests this might be true. In the quantum world, particles do not even have definite properties until they are observed. Does that mean reality itself is waiting to be defined? Einstein’s relativity showed us that space and time are not absolute—they bend, stretch, and shift depending on the observer. If time itself can change, what does that say about everything else?

But it gets even stranger. Even the laws we consider fundamental are built on assumptions. Take sight itself: electrons transition between energy levels, emitting waves that our retina detects. But why do we call this fundamental? Because we assume it to be. But Gödel’s work showed that within any system, there are truths that can never be proven within the system itself. Could reality itself be trapped in this paradox—an endless cycle of definitions that are only valid within the limits of how we define them?

Reality is not something we observe directly—it is something we construct from the assumptions we take as fundamental. And like everything else, those fundamentals exist only with respect to how we define them.

So, what do we actually know? That our perception of reality is dictated by our means of observance. That if our senses change, reality appears to change. That if our assumptions change, the foundation of what we call "real" collapses.

You’ve spent your entire life trusting your senses, believing in what they show you. But what if they have only been feeding you a version of reality, not the truth itself?

What if reality—absolute, fundamental reality—does not even exist?

Welcome to WRTW—where we don’t just ask what reality is, but WITH RESPECT TO WHAT it even exists.

If reality is shaped by how we observe it, then the real question is: what are the tools of this observation?

For centuries, humans have believed they were experiencing reality itself. But in truth, we are only experiencing a version of reality—one that is shaped, distorted, and reconstructed by the tools we use to observe it.

These tools aren’t just our senses—they are our instruments, our mathematical models, and even our own minds.

1. Biological Perception – Reality as Defined by the Body

Our first and most immediate tool of observation is our own biology. We assume the world is as we see, hear, and feel it. But what if our bodies are nothing more than filters, limiting what we can experience?

A snake sees infrared radiation—for it, warmth is as visible as color. A bat sees through sound—for it, the world is a structure of echoes. A mantis shrimp sees 12 colors while we see only 3—its reality is bursting with details we can’t even imagine.

So, which reality is the correct one?

The answer is simple: none of them.

What we call “the real world” is merely the version our bodies allow us to see. Change the way you observe, and reality itself changes.

2. Scientific Instruments – Expanding Reality, or Fabricating It?

We knew nothing of germs before microscopes. We knew nothing of galaxies before telescopes. We didn’t believe in radio waves, X-rays, or quantum particles until we built the right tools to detect them.

Every time we create a new instrument, reality expands. But does that mean we are discovering new truths, or just creating a new version of reality—one shaped by the limits of our technology?

The quantum world reveals an even deeper paradox. Electrons exist in multiple states until measured. The simple act of observation forces them to take form.

This leads to an unsettling question:

         Does reality exist before we observe it, or does our observation create it?

3. Mathematics – The Invisible Structure Behind Reality

Look around you. Everything follows rules—planets orbit, objects fall, waves ripple. We describe these patterns with mathematics—a language that seems to perfectly explain how the universe works.

But does mathematics exist in reality, or is it just a tool we invented to explain what we see?

Numbers aren’t physical things—you can’t pick up "2" or touch "π." The universe doesn’t have equations written on it. And yet, these numbers and equations predict the motion of galaxies, the behavior of atoms, and even the existence of black holes before we see them.

So, is mathematics something we discovered or something we created?

And here’s the real twist:

     Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem proves that no mathematical system can ever be truly complete.

This means that no matter how perfect our equations are, there will always be truths about reality that cannot be proven within our system.

4. The Mind – Reality as a Construct

Even if we had perfect senses, perfect instruments, and perfect equations, we would still have one final limitation—our own mind.

Kant argued that we don’t experience the world as it truly is. We only experience our mind’s version of it. Everything we see is processed, categorized, and given meaning by our brain.

Berkeley took this even further:

        If all reality is experienced within the mind, then does anything exist outside of perception at all?

Think about it—everything you have ever known exists only within your perception. Even your thoughts about the external world are happening inside your brain.

So, if our means of observance define our reality, and our definitions themselves are limited…

         Is there even such a thing as real?

But here’s the real question—the one that shatters the very foundation of everything we believe:

Did reality break, or did we simply reach the limits of the way we defined it?

For centuries, we have trusted reality to be fixed, absolute—a truth that exists regardless of how we see it. But every time we tried to define it, we found ourselves trapped within a paradox. Our definitions were never reality itself—they were merely the way we chose to describe it.

Think about it. When we call an electron a particle, we assume it behaves like one. When we call it a wave, we assume it spreads like one. But the moment we observe it, it conforms to our chosen description. The quantum world doesn't just reveal new physics—it exposes a terrifying truth: we define reality before we even observe it.

And if reality is shaped by how we define it, then what happens when we strip those definitions away? What remains when we try to understand something at its most fundamental level—when we ask for its electron definition?

Take gravity. We say objects fall because of a force. But what is a force? It is an interaction. What is an interaction? A change in energy. What is energy? A property of a system. And so on, layer by layer, until we realize that at the deepest level, everything we explain is only defined in relation to something else. There is no final truth—only a chain of assumptions we take as fundamental.

So, let’s take this even further. If everything is built upon assumptions, then have we ever truly understood anything at all? Or have we only ever understood it with respect to the way we chose to define it?

This is where our journey leads us next. If we truly want to understand reality, we must go beyond just observing it. We must uncover the nature of fundamental definition itself.

If our perception of reality is bound by our senses, by the frameworks we construct, and by the definitions we assume to be fundamental—then where do we look for something absolute?

Science, philosophy, and even our own experiences have shown that reality is never a fixed entity. It shifts depending on the observer, the scale of measurement, and the medium of perception. But across time, across civilizations, one idea has remained constant—the notion that behind all of this, there must be something unchanging, something beyond relativity.

Religious texts, spiritual philosophies, and even modern scientific theories whisper the same idea in different tongues: that reality is not self-contained, but emerges from something beyond. God. Not as a person, not as a concept limited by human language, but as the ultimate, the undefinable, the absolute.

But here is the paradox—if God is truly absolute, then by definition, He must be beyond all definitions.

"ਅਚਿੰਤ, ਅਮੰਤ" — Beyond thought, beyond mind.
"ਅਨਾਸ, ਅਮਾਸ" — Without end, without cause.
"ਅਨਰੂਪ, ਅਲੂਪ" — Without form, beyond disappearance.
"ਨ ਰੰਗੇ, ਨ ਰੂਪੇ" — Without color, without shape.
"ਨ ਲੇਖੈ, ਨ ਭੇਖੈ" — Beyond written form, beyond disguise.
"ਅਗੋਚਰ, ਅਲਖ" — Unobservable, unseen.
"ਅਜਨੀ, ਅਮਨੀ" — Without birth, beyond intellect.

These lines, like countless others from Jaap Sahib and other spiritual texts, tell us that the ultimate truth is not something we can observe—it is something that escapes observation itself. If we define reality through our senses, our instruments, or even our reasoning, then we will always be looking at reflections, never the thing itself.

But here is the real twist. If God is beyond form, beyond color, beyond space, beyond time—then what does that actually mean?

Perhaps it does not mean God does not exist. Perhaps it means our means of observance are simply inadequate.

We assume something does not exist if we cannot see it, touch it, or measure it. But what if reality is something that our senses are simply incapable of detecting? What if we lack the instruments—biological or technological—to even begin to comprehend it?

We know that an infrared camera reveals a world we cannot see. That a bat's echolocation constructs a reality different from ours. That a mantis shrimp perceives colors we don’t even have names for.

Then what if the absolute reality—the ultimate truth—is simply something beyond our spectrum of observance?

"ਅਨਭਉ ਪ੍ਰਕਾਸ" — A light that is experienced, not seen.

And so, we return to where we started. "Is this reality really real?"

The answer we sought—the absolute—does exist. But perhaps, by its very nature, it cannot be known through the senses we trust. It is "ਅਨਾਮ, ਅਕਾਮ"—Nameless, without desires. It is "ਅਲਖ, ਅਭਖ"—Unseen, unspeakable.

The mind reaches out, hoping to grasp something solid, something final. But in the end, all we hold are shadows of what we think reality should be.

And perhaps… the real truth has been here all along—hidden not in absence, but beyond perception itself.

"Perhaps reality isn’t what we see, nor what we define—but what exists beyond the reach of every means of observance we possess."

-MANJOT SINGH