Nothing/Everything: What is the True Nature of Reality?

This is a segment from my book Nothing/Everything: The Mindbending Philosophical Theory of Everything

The quest for the Ultimate reality isn’t something new. Everyone from Einstein to Buddha to other figures investigated the same.

Let’s explore the works of the great thinkers of the past so that we can then logically build upon what they have asserted, regardless of whether we agree with them or not. If yes, we will accept it as a truth to build upon. If not, we will reject it.  If it seems to be partially true, we will modify it so that it makes sense in the puzzle. 

Let’s go back in time and briefly discuss the works of two figures. You may have already heard of one of them. His name was Charles Darwin.

Whether you agree with the theory of Evolution of or not is irrelevant, much of the evidence in nature stacks up heavily in its favor.

Look at the monkey. Look at its eyes, habits, teeth and even “human like” habits of grinning, reacting to humor, stealing and overall troublemaking in general. Don’t tell me you see there is no similarity between the monkey and us.

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to spot the obvious similarities between us and other apes. And yet for a very long time, humans LITERALLY refused to accept it, thinking we were a super special creation, descended from the heavens, until of course Darwin proved that we evolved from the Apes.

NOW, the other thinker I would like to introduce you to, if you don’t already know of him is the German Philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer.

In the 1800s he wrote a book on his own theory of how the world came to be. The book was titled “The World as WILL and Representation” which describes his theory of how the world manifests.

The book is PHILOSOPHICALLY very similar to the Theory of Evolution.  What’s more he wrote the book BEFORE Darwin wrote “the Origin of Species.”

In their books, both Schopenhauer and Darwin both describe a fundamental force or drive at the core of all living things. Schopenhauer calls it the “WILL”. Darwin called it the “Struggle for Existence”

What is this Mysterious “WILL and what is Representation?”

Before we understand the “Will”, we need to first understand the idea of “Representation”

When Schopenhauer says the world is “my representation,” he means:

“The world you see, hear, feel, and experience isn’t the world as it really is, it’s the world as it appears to you, through the filter of your mind.” Imagine you wearing a super advanced VR headset that simulates the world perfectly. It takes input from your senses and builds a detailed virtual world around you, sights, sounds, smells, everything. But here’s the twist:

You never take the headset off. You were born wearing it. You don’t even know it’s a headset, you think what you’re seeing is the real world.

“The world you know is not the world in itself. It’s a mental image, a picture. Your brain is like a movie projector, it takes light, sound, touch, etc., and projects an image you call ‘the world’.” – That’s Representation

Let’s say you’re meeting someone

You look at them. That’s sight. They say “Hello” to you and you hear it. That’s sound. They shake hands with you and feel the sensation on your hands.  That’s touch. You are receiving signals from the outside, and your mind is stitching it all together to create a coherent 3D world.

That stitched-together world? That’s what Schopenhauer calls Representation.

Let’s say an average man sees a ripe mango on a table. It looks bright yellow

NOW, a colour-blind person sees the SAME mango, but to him it appears dull grey.

Then a guy high on drugs walks in, looks at the mango, and sees it melting next to a bunch of pebbles and breathing like it’s alive.

So, who’s right?

They all are, in terms of their own minds. But none of them are seeing the mango as it is in itself, they’re each seeing their own representation of it.

Let me share even more examples to make the idea of a representation (the world you see is not how it REALLY is but how your brain filters it) even more clear.

Think about life from the point of a Schizophrenic. They often see, hear and feel things that other people do not. Their mind constructs an alternate reality that is not “really there.”

Think about someone who has taken a psychedelic drug like LSD. They start seeing patterns that a person who doesn’t have the drugs in their system will not. How? Because their brain starts creating a different version of reality for them.

Finally, ever had had a dream where you were talking to someone or Walking through a city?  Of course you did

Now pause and realize: your brain created the entire world in that dream. The streets. The dialogue. The people. The buildings. Even the laws of physics for that dream.

You already have proof you’re capable of building entire worlds from within. You do it ALL THE TIME when sleeping.

So, when you can construct entire worlds with their own rules, objects and beings when you are asleep, what makes you so sure that your brain isn’t still creating a “dream-like” interface” when you are awake?

You never experience the world as it is. The world you experience isn’t the raw world, it’s the version of the world your mind FILTERS using its own software. That’s “Representation” in a nutshell.

 

 PART 2: What Schopenhauer Meant by “Will”

Schopenhauer says: Behind the world of appearances, behind all the things you see, hear, touch, think, there is one fundamental force, one thing-in-itself.
That thing is Will.

By the Will, He means a blind, striving force that exists in everything, from humans to rocks to plants to animals to galaxies. It’s not intelligent. It’s not moral. It’s just… wanting, pushing, craving, striving, being.

Imagine you are standing in front of a mirror.  You lift your hand From the outside, that hand is just a thing, an object in space. That’s Representation.

But you know something else.
You FEEL the movement.

You aren’t just observing the hand, you ARE THE hand, and you are moving it from the inside. That “inside experience,” that pushing, that desiring to raise the hand is “The Will” It is easy to confuse the will for an “Intelligent sense of self.”

But here’s the thing. Schopenhauer says:

The Will isn’t intelligent. It doesn’t care about your happiness. It doesn’t have a reason.
It’s blind striving, desire without purpose, motion without end.

Imagine there’s a zombie force behind all life. It doesn’t know what it’s doing. It doesn’t care who suffers or dies.It just pushes everything to keep moving, keep living, keep reproducing, even when it hurts.

So, according to Schopenhauer, when you see: A plant bending toward the sun. A lion chasing a gazelle. A baby crying for milk. They are all the manifestations of the underlying “Will.”

Even gravity, even magnetism, even chemical reactions, they’re all just different expressions of the same primal urge to be, to move, to act, to continue (although without what we call, consciousness or intelligence)

The “Will” is it’s not a conscious urge. It doesn’t “think.” It doesn’t plan. It doesn’t know what it wants.

At this point, before moving further ahead, let’s briefly go over what Darwin’s called the “Struggle for Existence” in nature.

In nature, all living beings are constantly in a competition to survive and reproduce in limited environments. This leads to variation, adaptation, and natural selection over time.

This is observable, empirical biology. Plants compete for sunlight. Lions compete for prey. Every species is trying to persist, and only those that are better adapted to the current situation tend to pass on their genes.

This isn’t metaphysical, Darwin isn’t saying there’s some invisible “force.” He’s just describing how life works on the ground, generation after generation.

So basically, Darwin is saying: In nature, living beings are in a constant battle to survive and reproduce. There’s limited food, space, mates, and safety. So, creatures compete. It’s not intelligent, not moral, and has no goal, it just happens.The result: life is competition and death for the less fit.

But look closer and here’s what Schopenhauer’s will states. Everything in existence is driven by a blind, irrational force he calls Will. It’s not conscious, not intelligent, not moral, and has no goal, it just wants to continue. You feel it in yourself as hunger, lust, fear, boredom, ambition, endless wanting. The result: life is suffering, because we’re always chasing, never satisfied.

Clearly there is AT LEAST a thematic similarity between the two.

 And both come to this conclusion.

Life keeps going, not because it’s good, or happy, or smart, but because it can’t help itself.

Let’s pretend life is a giant train, an old steam-powered monster. It runs on raw, blind hunger. It just wants to move. It doesn’t know where it’s going. It’s driven by Will.” BUT That train throws off parts, replaces them, changes gears when the track changes. Only the most efficient parts survive. That’s the struggle for existence.”

In both systems:

There’s no end goal. There’s no “completion,” no perfect species or final state. There’s only ongoing struggle, change, suffering, striving. A reality in which being alive means being caught in a loop of restless wanting, conflict, and impermanence.

But why.

Why does this so called Will want anything at all? Why is there a struggle for Existence at all? Why do our lives take one DIRECTION, but not the other?

In other words, why is there SOMETHING rather than Nothing?

This is where Schopenhauer’s explanations fall short and even ancient philosophies have not given a satisfactory answer to this.

Schopenhauer also has a tendency of ascribing humanlike qualities of “suffering” and “desire” to the will, while nature probably doesn’t give a damn about emulating qualities of some tiny beings on some tiny planet

So, for the will “to inherently want” something or be the “Ultimate Reality” in itself, just doesn’t add up,

Did this will manifest you? It’s possible. But what manifested this so- called will?

So is the point from which we are going to start argument.

WHY IS THERE ANYTHING AT ALL and explain the ultimate reality behind what is, why it is and where it’s going to end up.

The Biggest Problem with trying to figure out an “Ultimate Reality”

Picture a mouse trying to figure out complex ideas like space and time. The mouse’s brain and senses are very basic compared to a human. It can’t grasp or test ideas that are very abstract or beyond its simple sensory experiences.

The mouse might be able to understand and test basic things within its world, like finding food or avoiding danger. But when it comes to abstract concepts like space or time, it’s beyond what it can comprehend or test.

Just like the mouse has limits, humans also have limits in what we can understand and test. Our brains are more advanced than mice, but they still have boundaries. We may not be able to fully grasp or empirically test very complex or abstract ideas about space, time, or causality.

So, the challenge is going to be hard for us mice, but we are going to try anyway, by trying to think unlike Mice.