Share this article

Materiality vs Spirituality: Which is Actually Real?
Spirituality is often dismissed as the domain of fantasists, the reasoning being that if one can’t touch, smell, hear, taste, see or think it, it’s of no tangible benefit to those occupied by the ‘real world.’
Yet what most of our species thinks of as the real world – the one they’re busy sensing and stressing over – is anything but. Ask some scientific heavyweights and they’ll tell you the world around us is an illusion.
“Reality is merely illusion,” said Albert Einstein, “albeit a persistent one.”
Take vision. We open our eyes and believe we are seeing the world. But the truth is we’re seeing just 0.0035% of the electromagnetic spectrum.
“As humans, we can perceive less than a ten-trillionth of all light waves,”says David Eagleman, a Stanford University neuroscientist and author of The Brain: The Story of You. “So you have radio waves and microwaves and X-rays and gamma rays passing through your body right now and you’re completely unaware of it.”
“The more one is awake to the material world, the more one is asleep to the spirit.” – Rumi
The same story applies to the other senses as well. Even touch, that most obvious and salient of human senses, depends entirely on an elaborate atomic interplay known as electron repulsion.
Whether we’re holding hands with a loved one or burning a finger on a hot stove, what we are actually perceiving is an insanely complex dance between the charged outer limits of atoms, nerve endings, and a central processing unit called the brain. And that’s putting it simplistically.
Lastly, consider that every cell of that body of yours pretty much replaces itself every seven years. This means that what you and everyone else takes to be the most materially self-evident entity in the universe is in a never-ending state of regeneration. Which part of you is real if all of it is constantly being replaced?
Might be worth giving spirituality another look?