Open The Box And Create Your Universe

If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one around to hear it, does it make a sound? If the whole world were deaf, would sound exist at all? If the world were blind, could there be light? 

“The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper,” posited the writer Eden Philpotts. Can there only be existence where there is awareness? 

The people of Northern Natal in South Africa greet each other with the word “Sawabona.” This literally translates as “I see you.” But it’s more than a simple “I can see you.” It’s a deeper acknowledgement of presence. A respectful appreciation of the existence of the other. I see you. You have my attention. I am focused on you. You are important.

The response to Sawabona is “Sikabona.” It translates as “I am here.” Your attention and acknowledgement of my presence makes me real.

To be seen is to exist. Can we exist without being seen? If we are not seen, do we cease to be?

In Western cultures, each birth is recorded, and a birth certificate is created. As a new life enters the world, society “sees” and registers that being on a piece of paper. That person becomes official. They become legitimate and real because the thin piece of paper says so. Just as society prefers the tangible and shallow to the deep and mystical, so too we relegate ‘being’ to a document that gets filed in a cabinet by your local authority, and an entry in a database.

Such is our world that this flimsy notion of being persists into culture, into our idea of what makes us us. Existence becomes quantifiable, tangible, measurable. Magic and dreams and the quest for something more esoteric are consigned to the margins of society and reality. Whereas the material and that which has a monetary value deemed to be real, and significant. The successful have the big bank accounts, the big jobs, and the big cars.

The result is that with each passing generation we become more disconnected from our spiritual selves. But there is a hole inside us that needs filling, and no amount of bling is going to satisfy this hunger for recognition of our real selves beyond our paycheque and smartphone. We want more, but we don’t quite know what. 

We can no longer hear the trees falling in the forest, and our spirit doesn’t know what to do about it. 

We yearn for acknowledgment. We crave the attention that validates us as people. We long to hear someone say, “I see you,” so that we can reply “I am here”, yet the abstract veneer of our material society has confused validity with status. Now we think that being seen – being valid and whole – is about likes, and stuff, and envy and attention. We have abstracted the concept of ‘being’ to fifteen minutes of fame. We want followers and fans. X-Factor and Love Island. But does this abstract idea of being ‘seen’ validate our existence? If these superficial artifices are what it is to exist – likes on social media, a birth certificate in a filing cabinet – do we really exist at all?

Schrodinger suggested that reality was fluid, until it was observed. His cat was both alive and dead – or possibly even a dog – until we looked inside the box to reveal one or the other. The eminent physicist John Archibald Wheeler – the man who came up with the name for black holes – suggested the idea of the “participatory universe”. His theory is that the universe only exists when we observe it.

Quantum superpositions suggest that an atom and its entangled pair can be in any number of states simultaneously – until we take a look at them, at which point its fate, and its existence is sealed.

This isn’t theory. It’s not a poetic misuse of ideas. They’re actually building computers that work on this principle, and experimenting with the teleportation of photons from one side of a lab to another. In universities around the world there are chalk boards covered in equations that explore the idea that anything is possible until it is decided

It is abstract reality – abstract notions of what is real and what isn’t – in practice.

Alchemy.

All of reality – and none of it – is happening at once, like a tumultuous soup of all possibilities, waiting to be noticed. Shapeless. Purposeless. But literally filled with infinite potential. It is ethereal, magical, dream-like, until we look at it. At that moment, it becomes solid, defined, real. It is our consciousness, our awareness, that gives form to reality.

You can be anything you want, until you choose. Your day can go in any direction, until you choose. Your choice defines the universe, but until you choose – until you look inside the box – it is everything and nothing at the same time.

Reality is created in perception. The universe is made real by our awareness of it, at the interface between our sensing selves and the thing we are sensing.

So what of us?

When we practice self-awareness, we practice observing our states of being. We are no longer simply in a bad mood, but we become aware of being in a bad mood. In this way we become an observer of our feelings and our thoughts. We get to say yes, I am happy, and as well as feeling it we recognise that we are feeling it.

But a strange thing happens when we are not only in our states, but aware of being in our states. We take a step back from being and become aware of being. We become a witness to our being. And in that same moment, we become aware that we are aware of being. The witness becomes a witness becomes a witness to the state of being. And on and on and on, potentially infinitely. 

Turtles all the way down.

So if we are no longer just us, but also witnesses to ourselves to the nth power, who are we? Are we even a ‘who’ anymore? What are we?

When we are infinitely aware in an ever-decreasing circle of awareness, perhaps that is what we are. Awareness.

And it is in this awareness that the universe is made real. Our awareness of the universe is the universe. We are the universe.

Alan Watts said, “you are the universe experiencing itself.”

Like a snake eating its own tail, we are everything, because without us there is nothing. When we are gone the lights go out. The universe rotates around that which is aware off it, as a projection of that awareness. It is a single player game that can be anything until we decide.

“Because you are alive everything is possible,” said Thich Nhat Hanh. And it is in looking, in choosing, in deciding and taking action, that everything becomes real.

Don’t be distracted by the shiny shiny. You can have whatever you want. You simply have to find the courage to open the box, take look inside and decide.