Do we have a clear understanding of objective Reality?

According to idealism, the world is a world within the mind. Physical objects do not have any independent objective existence. Rather they exist as thoughts in the mind of the perceiver. They arise as bubbles in the mind as things but have subjective existence only.

To understand this we have to contrast it with the opposite point of view, which is called realism. In common sense understanding naive realism is the view of reality that we all hold. We believe that objects exist just outside ourselves, that they have independent objective existence and that they are made of a substance called matter. If we pick up a rock and hold it in our hand, it is difficult to believe, that it is an idea in our mind.

All science is based on the assumption that we perceive the world outside through the senses. Even abstract physics comes down to observation.

The problem is that we doubt the evidence of the sense as we realize that things are not always what they seem to be. Science ends and philosophy begins, when we start to question the process and begin to mistrust the evidence of the senses.

We all have to ask, do things exist outside of our minds. Empirical objects are only terms of our consciousness. The outer world is only a play of our minds. We create our world in our mind in the so called waking state. Yet we must also realize that the objects in our waking and dream state are similar, even though we think that there is a radical difference between the waking and the dream state, but is it so?

It is helpful for us to compare the waking and the dream state, we will find that there is time, sensation, future, objects, a sense of cause and effect; we even have subjective thoughts in both states.

Modern analysis shows that everything in dream takes about the same time as in the waking state. There is no way to distinguish the waking from the dream state. The question we now have to ask is, am I now dreaming? Did I just now dream up this world?

This reminds me of what Yogananda said: ‘when we leave this world we will realize that what we had experienced was just a dream’.

According to subjective realism, we are dreaming our own dream.

According to subjective idealism, each of us creates his own world.

New age teachers claim also that we create our own reality, which implies that the ego alone exists.

Vedanta claims that we do not create our own reality. Shankara refutes the idea of New age teachers and that of the Buddhists which claim that we create our own reality. He states, the jiva, the individual being fabricates this world (jiva denotes the individual being, the Atman the cosmic Self).

Vedanta objective idealism says this world is dependent on a conscious perceiver. Although the microcosm mirrors the macrocosm, it is not the microcosm, not the individual that is the perceiver. It is not the jiva, the apparent man, the individual that creates the world. It is the Atman, the cosmic man, the Self, the purusha that is the creator of the world.

We are a reflection of a cosmic me, which we call God. This world is a dream in the mind of god. God is the cosmic dreamer. We are just part of His dream.

Our dreams are just castles in the air, so is the world viewed by the wise. We do not dream up the world, we do not create our own reality. This world is as unreal as a dream.

We know that dreams are unreal, what we need to learn is that the waking state is also unreal. There is a higher reality. When we wake up to the higher truth, this world will disappear, just as it does in deep meditation. If we are seeking the truth, until we give up the idea that the world is the ultimate reality, the mind will continue to focus on objects outside itself and we will pursue the world of appearance.

In order to realize God, we have to go beyond this world of names and forms behind and accept that there is a higher reality to attain.

That alone is real which reveals itself, by itself, which is eternal and unchangeable.

Definitions

Subjective idealism, a philosophy based on the premise that nothing exists except minds and spirits and their perceptions or ideas. A person experiences material things, but their existence is not independent of the perceiving mind; material things are thus mere perceptions. The reality of the outside world is contingent on a knower. The 18th-century Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkeley succinctly formulated his fundamental proposition thus: “To be is to be perceived”.

Objective idealism (Vedanta) is an idealistic metaphysics that postulates that there is in an important sense only one perceiver and that this perceiver is one with that which is perceived. One important advocate of such metaphysics are, Josiah Royce and G. W. F. Hegel, who were indifferent "whether anybody calls all this Theism or Pantheism". Plato is regarded as one of the earliest representatives of objective idealism. It is distinct from the subjective idealism of George Berkeley.