My truth depends on what I see through my World

The world is whatever I consciously choose to see, feel, think, whatever I consciously choose to perceive for my happiness and enjoyment of life. And hence, the world is my idea.

This concept is specifically framed for individuals who wish to live and consciously enjoy their life as independent beings. The concept of ‘The world as an Idea’ requires a comprehensive understanding of three important inter-related concepts as follows:

The Psychological Reality:

The mind is an amalgamation one’s feelings, opinions, wishes, thoughts, experiences, impressions and memories. The nature of mind is as such, that it thinks, without one’s conscious choice to exercise the faculty of thought. Ease your senses, sit in a relaxing position and be calm. You can still sense thoughts running sub-consciously. This is the psychological reality, in simple terms, it is one’s imagination. Psychological reality as such does not exist existentially. It is only a formless abstraction and exists only as an idea psychologically. It exists without a logical connection to the actual reality. It is only an experience and is specific to one’s nature. The function of psychological reality is automatic. One need not exercise a conscious will to form it. The essential feature of psychological reality is that it changes with one’s feelings and desires, and their nature.

For instance, one’s desire to have sex with a specific woman can fill one’s imagination with that woman. The nature and degree of imagination depend on one’s idea and past impression of it from a visual projection or a conversation.  Whatever the existential reality, the feeling exists until the desire is satisfied in one’s imagination and the presence of the woman, in the immediate reality, is immaterial. 

Similarly, fear, a feeling that gives an apprehension that something dreadful or harmful is going to happen. As a child, one is afraid of darkness, for instance, because of an impression that ghosts exist. A child may not consciously know if ghosts exist, but an impression of fear for darkness can be formed from a horror movie or a story heard.

In both cases, the feeling is determining the imagination and vice versa and the person is being driven by his/her feeling. When one observes every such experience where one reacts based on one’s feeling and study the cause that particular reaction, one will understand that it’s a reaction based on one’s past impression on the mind. These impressions when not consciously studied and guided, during a series of events in life, determine a person’s fundamental view of his existence and the existence of the world.  For an explicit understanding, check your fundamental view of existence and life. Check the nature and understanding of your happiness. 

The Existential Reality:

 Existence exists – The act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms; that something exists which one perceives and that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists.  -Ayn Rand

Existential reality is the reality that exists. The sun exists, the planets exist, matter exists, a human being as a physical body exists, every inanimate object that has a specific physical structure exists. The existence of all these things is determined by nature. They exist irrespective of one’s capacity to perceive them, independent of one’s feelings, thoughts and wishes. For instance, a neem tree cannot give you mangoes at your wish and you cannot change its nature. If it is hot and sunny today, your wish will not bring clouds to cover the sun. 

To exist is to be something, it is to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes. We as physical beings exist in this existential reality and it is by nature, we can perceive this reality as it exists, through our consciousness. Consciousness is not your feelings, nor your thoughts nor your impressions. It is simply you. You who know that you are feeling something, you who know that you are perceiving or thinking something. This “You” also exists independent of your feelings and wishes. This ‘You’ along with your ‘Thinking Mind’ in search of ‘Happiness’ is called Life. The function of your thinking mind is to give you an abstract view of your senses. It is you who should exercise the ‘choice’ to use the information provided by your thinking mind to enhance your experience of life and its enjoyment. And your enjoyment and experience of life are very specific to your nature and the nature of your mind. The nature of mind is to perceive and think. But what it thinks and perceives, what gives you happiness is determined by your nature which only you can discover by choice. 

Determination of the relationship between Psychological reality and Existential reality:

It is the conscious determination of the relationship between one’s psychological reality and the existential reality that determines the degree of one’s happiness and the clarity of decisions one makes. 

Between your thoughts and your feelings, you exist. The choice is either you guiding your feelings and thoughts or you being guided by them. By nature, you as a conscious being can and have to guide your feelings and thoughts and it is naturally possible. The result is happiness and a real sense of control over life. On the contrary, when feelings and thoughts guide you the result is suffering and helplessness. Suffering is the direct result of acting against one’s nature.

To be conscious is as simple as looking at things as they are. As an exercise, sit back, control the rhythm of your breathing. Let your heartbeat be normal. Let the random thoughts flow sub-consciously. Do not observe them, do not react or feel. Observe whatever is in front of you through your eyes. Now you feel something capable of determining and distinguishing that which is in front of you as it is. That is your thinking mind, your consciousness. It is naturally capable of determining things as they are. When one starts exercising the thinking mind, as a natural process, one determines the relationship between one’s psychological reality and the existential reality. Once the relationship is clearly understood, one starts to gain control over one’s thoughts, decisions and actions. 

The World is an Idea:

This is a relative perception. Close your eyes, you see nothing. Open your eyes, you see and determine things around you. It is your faculty of sight that is giving you the information about the things around you. Similarly, it is the collective function of all your senses that’s giving you the information of the world around you. Suppose your senses never functioned, you never determined things around you. The world would not exist.  Existentially, your existence or non-existence is immaterial to the world. But relatively, it is your existence that is making the existence of the world possible. The world is whatever you see, sense and understand through your perception and mind. Whatever you feel is the direct result of your perception. Which means, when you guide your perception, you guide your feelings and emotions. When you control your perception by a conscious exercise of choice to achieve your happiness, in accordance with your nature, life becomes an act of a play, a joyful play. Hence, the world is actually in your mind. It is existing only as an idea in your mind. This is true for every individual who is existing in the world. 

Application of the concept:

We are born in this world by chance. We die someday by chance. Between these two points, every decision we make and every act we perform should be our choice. It is the nature of life as such, to live and act by choice. If one chooses to exist by chance, the existence is equivalent to death. As a direct demonstration, look at the people around you, how many of them are living, on their choice? The answer is obvious. 

Before we were born, millions already lived and died. The form and nature of the world we are perceiving existentially is a world that was shaped by independent men who chose to shape it that way, whose view and vision of the world was uncorrupted. Every individual has his view of the world and life. A man’s fundamental view of the world is determined by the environment he is born and lives in during the early stages of his life. But when one becomes conscious of his nature, his life and of the nature of the world as such, it is his choice to exist in the world as he sees it or to reshape it as he wishes to see it. It is for those men the concept of the world is an idea. 

Only you as an individual with a thinking mind can know whether your view of the world is your own or it is corrupted by the existing views. Your view of the world by your uncorrupted ‘thinking mind’ is what is required to live and enjoy life. When you are suffering fear, pain and guilt, for no reason and your life seem to be hopeless and happiness seems to be unachievable, that’s the direct sign that your view of the world is corrupted and you are thinking against your nature and your view. It is a crime you commit to yourself if you are looking at the world through other individuals’ eyes. Like you are living, every other individual is living. Like you are looking at the world, every other individual is looking at the world. It is your view of it that is important to you. It is you as an individual who has to live your life as you should, demanded by your nature and the pursuit of happiness. 

As long as you have the fundamental ability to think and judge things on your own, you have every possibility to enjoy life as it must be enjoyed. Discover your nature. Discover the relationship between your psychological reality and existential reality. Define every little thing perceived by your thinking mind in your way as per your view of it. As long as you are sure of what your world is, understand it, live in it. Give it a concrete form through your conscious actions based on your ideas. And hence, ‘the World is an Idea’.

I propose this concept, not as absolute truth, but as truth, I see through my world. And I choose to seek truth at any given moment based on my judgement. Your truth depends on what you see through your world.