What is Real?
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
“Schrodinger’s Cat” Acrylic on canvas by Barbara Fisher, 2019
As we were re-recording our first podcast episode last night (The first recording was a bit of a mess, so we decided to start over), Kendra and I had an exchange that touched upon the nature of reality.
She had previously described her experience of seeing Mothman with a friend. And I had said something along the lines of “spirits like Mothman….” and she said, “But Mothman isn’t like that. At least, not to me. It was solid. It took up space, it was physical.”
And I said—”Until it isn’t physical.”
While Kendra’s Mothman didn’t fade into nothingness like an apparition or a spirit, other witnesses have seen it do just that. Such a sighting, however, is no less real than Kendra’s—they just are at different ends of a spectrum of experiences that encompass both the physical and non-physical aspects of reality.
And that’s the crux of the issue. To say that something is Real doesn’t mean that it necessarily has to be made of matter. It doesn’t have to take up space and have weight. Reality is not determined by mere physicality.
Light is energy.
Energy isn’t matter—it has no weight, nor does it take up space, but it most certainly -is- real. We can all agree that light energy is demonstrably real. We can see sunlight; we can feel the heat that is radiated by its rays. Our skin can be burned by it. Light can interact with photographic film and create an image when focused by the lens of a camera.
Gravity is a force—it doesn’t take up space, nor does it have weight, but it is most assuredly real. You can’t see gravity itself—but you can see its effects when you throw a ball into the air and it falls back down for you to catch in your hand.
You can’t feel gravity itself, but you can feel its effects when you fall down a flight of stairs.
Gravity is quite real.
Ideas are real.
What is the Constitution of the United States? It’s an idea. A foundational idea that frames our government and legal system. It’s made of words, and is written in ink on paper, but the heart of the Constitution itself isn’t encompassed by the physicality of that ink and paper. The reality of it isn’t bound by the materials that were used to record it. The reality of the Constitution is in the ideas that it articulates and the framework of the United States Government that would not exist without it.
Reality can be both physical, and non-physical at the same time.
And there are objects in reality that can also be both physical and non-physical, or can phase between the two states of being.
There’s a liminal space between the physical and the non-physical, and that’s where mysteries like Mothman exists.
Mothman and UFO’s, Bigfoot, fairies, ghosts and other apparitions can encompass physical and non-physical aspects of reality. They are betwixt and between, and I tend to see them as being both physically present as well as being non-material images of projected light, beings made of energy or perhaps even ideas manifested by some unknown intelligence.
They are both real and unreal at the same time.
A paradox, I know.
Kendra and I agree that we didn’t want witnesses and other experiencers to think we were saying something is only real if it is physical. Nor do we want to give the impression that we favor a strictly non-physical psycho-social explanation for all of these mysterious things we and others experience.
There is no one right answer, as near as I can tell for any of these experiential oddities.
Both understandings of reality are valid and true at any given moment. Kendra’s Mothman at that moment when she experienced it was physically present and real. But to another person, were it to appear to on that lonesome stretch of road a few minutes later, it could have just as likely been a shadow, an apparition lacking physical substance.
And both of those experiences would have been equally valid and dare I say it—equally real.
And, I think that is why I will never lose my fascination for these impossibilities—they are like Schrodinger’s Cat—they exist in two opposing states of being at the same time.
