The reality we are immersed in is illusory. That’s right, this world is an illusion. That is not to say that it doesn’t exist. Rather, it is not perceived as what it really is, and furthermore, our physical reality is only one of an infinite number of realities, parallel universes, if you will.

Let me start off with the simple stuff.  What we call light is an extremely narrow slit of a continuum of radiation that spans a tremendous spectrum.  Electromagnetic radiation spans a vast range of frequencies from the longest radio waves through gamma rays.  It is mediated by photons.  In other words, photons carry the force of electromagnetic radiation.  This radiation can also be thought of as waves propagating through space, each wave being made up of countless photons.

At the low-frequency/ long wavelength end of the spectrum you have the longest radio waves, which are miles in length. At the high-frequency/short wavelength end of the spectrum you have gamma radiation. The entire spectrum, somewhat simplified, goes something like this; long radio waves, shorter radio waves, microwaves, infrared light, visible light, ultraviolet light, soft X-rays, hard X-rays, and gamma rays. The long-wavelength end of the spectrum has low-energy photons and the short-wavelength end of the spectrum has high energy photons. The huge spectrum of electromagnetic radiation spans many orders of magnitude of energy. The part that our eyes can see, what we call visible light, spans about one-billionth of the entire spectrum. Think about it. We can see only one-billionth of the spectrum of photon energy!

Now I shall address the illusion of solidity. Hit your hand on the table. Feels pretty solid, doesn’t it? The fact is, it is mostly empty space.  On their own scale, atoms are very far apart from each other in a solid object such as a piece of wood or a rock.  And the electrons are orbiting so far from the atomic nuclei that on their own scale they are like miniature solar systems.  If you took all of the electrons, protons, and neutrons that make up Mount Everest, and packed them together like billiard balls, you could put the highest mountain on the planet into a thimble. Everything is mostly empty space. In Nick Herbert’s book, ‘Quantum Reality,’ he says that although 99.9% of a hydrogen atom’s mass is in the nucleus, “if the nucleus were the size of the sun, the hydrogen ground state would be twenty times larger than the solar system.” The ground state is when the electron has the least amount of possible energy, and is the lowest-energy state of the atom. When the electron acquires more energy, the size of the atom swells.

So if the table (and also your hand) is mostly empty space, then why does it so abruptly stop your hand? Every electron orbiting the atomic nuclei near the surface of the table is repelled by every electron orbiting the atomic nuclei in your hand. That is why your hand doesn’t go through the table.

Einstein proved to the world that time itself is illusory. His special relativity theory shows how time and space are two aspects of the same thing, which he called the space time continuum. Time and space both can be stretched or compressed. The predictions of time dilation in Einstein’s theory have been validated to an extremely high degree of accuracy by experiments in particle accelerators. Einstein also showed that matter and energy are flip sides of the same coin. Matter can be thought of as sort of a concentrated form of energy. A small amount of matter can be converted into a huge amount of energy, as was horrendously demonstrated by the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, and later by the hydrogen fusion bomb. Einstein’s other theory, the general theory of relativity, shows how space itself is warped by the presence of a gravitational field.

Now we shall enter into a more esoteric domain.  When you delve deeper into quantum physics you will discover that the very concept of electrons, protons and other subatomic particles is just a convenient tool for understanding nature.  Subatomic particles only exist in the mind.

Early in the twentieth century, experiments in physics produced a most troubling enigma.  Depending on how you set up the experiment, you could prove that matter, as well as electromagnetic radiation, is made of subatomic particles, or you could prove that it is made up of waves of some sort. How could it be both?

The most arcane high-tech experiments in physics have demonstrated that our physical reality is actually composed of waves of some sort. Even more astounding is the evidence strongly suggesting that these waves are affected by, or even caused by consciousness! A subatomic particle can be thought of as a place in a wave where the energy is more concentrated. Instead of thinking of an atom as a miniature solar system, it is more like a dynamic vortex of concentrated energy, a manifestation of the interaction of various waves of some mysterious type of energy. So why does your hand not go through the table? Because the “electron waves” in the table repel the “electron waves” in your hand.

One of the most important experiments in history is the Alain Aspect experiment of 1985. Alain Aspect was a French Physicist who set up an extremely difficult, high-tech experiment involving interactions with subatomic particles. The physicist Nick Herbert says in his book, “Quantum Reality,” that the Alain Aspect experiment proves, “….that our phenomenally local world is in actuality supported by an invisible reality which is unmediated, unmitigated, and faster than light.”

The upshot of all this is that there is an unseen reality that supports our reality and furthermore the reality we perceive is illusory. The evidence strongly suggests that our consciousness is not merely a product of neurons firing in our brain. I believe that our consciousness is independent of our physical bodies. Consciousness is really the only thing that has an independent existence. This whole universe and everything in it is a manifestation of consciousness.

The notion of parallel universes is used quite often in fiction, but can there be any validity to it? You betcha! Physicists and cosmologists are exploring the notion of parallel universes as a way of explaining certain anomalies in their understanding of the laws of physics. For instance, why is the force of gravity many orders of magnitude weaker than the three other known forces? One theory says that the energy of gravitons ( the mediator of the gravitational force) is “bled off” into other dimensions.

Another interesting puzzle is that on a subatomic level,  time could run backwards with no contradictions or anomalies. If you could run the universe backwards and look at it only at a subatomic level, there would be nothing that you would see that would violate the laws of physics. But on a macroscopic level this is obviously not true. What causes time to flow in one direction? This seemingly absurd question is something that bothers many physicists. The concepts of entropy and second law of thermodynamics imply an arrow of time.  But why? Some physicists have postulated an infinite number of parallel universes, half of which have their arrow of time running the opposite direction from ours. Although there is no direct proof of parallel universes, it is interesting to note that many scholarly physicists and cosmologists take the idea very seriously.

Another problem that is resolved by the notion of parallel universes is the fact that our universe is devoid of antimatter. In our universe, antimatter can be created in certain high-energy particle interactions, but its existence is fleeting. This asymmetry of our universe is puzzling. The puzzle can be solved by postulating and infinite number of universes, half of which consist of matter, the rest consisting of antimatter.

The Hindus call this illusory world Maya.  All of the great mystics in history, no matter what religion they professed to believe in, knew that our everyday physical reality is not the ultimate reality. Though they may have not known it on an intellectual level, they knew it intuitively.

Reality is much stranger than we can imagine.