Reality tunnel is a theory that, with a subconscious set of mental filters formed from

belief A belief is an attitude that something is the case, or that some proposition is true. In epistemology, philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either true or false. To believe something is to tak ...

s and

experience Experience refers to conscious events in general, more specifically to perceptions, or to the practical knowledge and familiarity that is produced by these conscious processes. Understood as a conscious event in the widest sense, experience involv ...

s, every individual interprets the same world differently, hence "

Truth Truth is the property of being in accord with fact or reality.Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionarytruth 2005 In everyday language, truth is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise correspond to it, such as belief ...

is in the eye of the beholder". It is similar to the idea of representative realism, and was coined by Timothy Leary (1920–1996). It was further expanded on by

Robert Anton Wilson Robert Anton Wilson (born Robert Edward Wilson; January 18, 1932 – January 11, 2007) was an American author, futurist, psychologist, and self-described agnostic mystic. Recognized within Discordianism as an Episkopos, pope and saint, Wilso ...

(1932-2007), who wrote about the idea extensively in his 1983 book ''

Prometheus Rising ''Prometheus Rising'' is a 1983 guidebook by Robert Anton Wilson. The book includes explanations of Timothy Leary eight-circuit model of consciousness, Alfred Korzybski general semantics, Aleister Crowley Thelema, and various other topics related t ...

''. Wilson and Leary co-wrote a chapter in Leary's 1988 book ''Neuropolitique'' (a revised edition of the 1977 book ''Neuropolitics''), in which they explained further:

The gene-pool politics which monitor power struggles among terrestrial humanity are transcended in this info-world, i.e. seen as static, artificial charades. One is neither coercively manipulated into another's territorial reality nor forced to struggle against it with reciprocal game-playing (the usual soap opera dramatics). One simply elects, consciously, whether or not to share the other's reality tunnel.

Considerations

Every kind of ignorance in the world all results from not realizing that our perceptions are gambles. We believe what we see and then we believe our interpretation of it, we don't even know we are making an interpretation most of the time. We think this is reality. – Robert Anton Wilson

The idea does not necessarily imply that there is no objective truth; rather that our access to it is mediated through our senses, experience, conditioning, prior beliefs, and other non-objective factors. The implied individual world each person occupies is said to be their reality tunnel. The term can also apply to groups of people united by beliefs: we can speak of the fundamentalist Christian reality tunnel or the ontological naturalist reality tunnel. A parallel can be seen in the psychological concept of

confirmation bias Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values. People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring ...

—the human tendency to notice and assign significance to observations that confirm existing beliefs, while filtering out or rationalizing away observations that do not fit with prior beliefs and expectations. This helps to explain why reality tunnels are usually transparent to their inhabitants. While it seems most people take their beliefs to correspond to the "one true objective reality", Robert Anton Wilson emphasizes that each person's reality tunnel is their own artistic creation, whether they realize it or not. Wilson — like John C. Lilly in his 1968 book '' Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer'' — relates that through various techniques one can break down old reality tunnels and impose new reality tunnels by removing old filters and replacing them with new ones, with new perspectives on reality—at will. This is attempted through various processes of deprogramming using neuro-linguistic programming,

cybernetics Cybernetics is a wide-ranging field concerned with circular causality, such as feedback, in regulatory and purposive systems. Cybernetics is named after an example of circular causal feedback, that of steering a ship, where the helmsperson ma ...

, hypnosis, biofeedback devices,

meditation Meditation is a practice in which an individual uses a technique – such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity – to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm ...

, controlled use of

hallucinogens Hallucinogens are a large, diverse class of psychoactive drugs that can produce altered states of consciousness characterized by major alterations in thought, mood, and perception as well as other changes. Most hallucinogens can be categoriz ...

, and forcibly acting out other reality tunnels. Thus, it is believed one's reality tunnel can be widened to take full advantage of human potential and experience reality on more positive levels. Robert Anton Wilson's ''

'' is (among other things) a guidebook to the exploration of various reality tunnels.

Similar ideas

We don't see things as they are; we see them as we are. –
Anaïs Nin Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell (February 11, 1903 – January 14, 1977; , ) was a French-born American diarist, essayist, novelist, and writer of short stories and erotica. Born to Cuban parents in France, Nin was the d ...

Harvard sociologist Talcott Parsons used the word ''gloss'' to describe how the mind perceives reality. We are taught, he theorised, how to "put the world together" by others who subscribe to a

consensus reality Consensus reality is that which is generally agreed to be reality, based on a consensus view. The appeal to consensus arises from the idea that humans do not fully understand or agree upon the nature of knowledge or ontology, often making it unce ...

. "The curious world of Talcott Parsons was where society was a system, interactive subsystems adhering to a certain set of unwritten rules." The

meme A meme ( ) is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ...

is another source of ''gloss''; it is "transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena." Because we're social creatures, there are reasons for us to adopt some social currencies. In line with Kantian thought, as well as the work of

Norwood Russell Hanson Norwood Russell Hanson (August 17, 1924 – April 18, 1967) was an American philosopher of science. Hanson was a pioneer in advancing the argument that observation is theory-laden — that observation language and theory language are deeply inter ...

, studies have indeed shownNew Scientist: ''Party chat' brain filter discovered''
that our brains "filter" the data coming from our senses. This "filtering" is largely unconscious and may be influenced—more-or-less in many ways, in societies and in individuals—by biology, cultural constructsThom Hartmann, ''How We Experience The World Differently''
/ref> including education and language (such as memes), life experiences, preferences and mental state, belief systems (e.g.

world view A worldview or world-view or ''Weltanschauung'' is the fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the whole of the individual's or society's knowledge, culture, and point of view. A worldview can include natural ...

, the

stock market A stock market, equity market, or share market is the aggregation of buyers and sellers of stocks (also called shares), which represent ownership claims on businesses; these may include ''securities'' listed on a public stock exchange, ...

), momentary needs, pathology, etc. An everyday example of such filtering is our ability to follow a conversation, or read, without being distracted by surrounding conversations, once called the

cocktail party effect The cocktail party effect is the phenomenon of the brain's ability to focus one's auditory attention on a particular stimulus while filtering out a range of other stimuli, such as when a partygoer can focus on a single conversation in a noisy room ...

. In his 1986 book ''Waking Up'',

Charles Tart Charles T. Tart (born 1937) is an American psychologist and parapsychologist known for his psychological work on the nature of consciousness (particularly altered states of consciousness), as one of the founders of the field of transpersonal psyc ...

—an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

psychologist A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the pre ...

and parapsychologist known for his psychological work on the nature of consciousness—introduced the phrase "consensus trance" to the lexicon. Tart likened normal waking consciousness to hypnotic trance. He discussed how each of us is from birth inducted to the trance of the society around us. Tart noted both similarities and differences between hypnotic trance induction and consensus trance induction. (See G. I. Gurdjieff). Some disciplines— Zen for example, and monastic schools such as

Sufism Sufism ( ar, ''aṣ-ṣūfiyya''), also known as Tasawwuf ( ''at-taṣawwuf''), is a mystic body of religious practice, found mainly within Sunni Islam but also within Shia Islam, which is characterized by a focus on Islamic spirituality ...

—seek to overcome such conditioned realities by returning to less thoughtful and channeled states of mind. Similarly, the philosophy of life

Pyrrhonism Pyrrhonism is a school of philosophical skepticism founded by Pyrrho in the fourth century BCE. It is best known through the surviving works of Sextus Empiricus, writing in the late second century or early third century CE. History Pyrrho of ...

seeks to overcome these conditioned realities by inducing epoche (

suspension of judgment Suspended judgment is a cognitive process and a rational state of mind in which one withholds judgments, particularly on the drawing of moral or ethical conclusions. The opposite of suspension of judgment is ''premature judgement'', usually shortene ...

) through skeptical arguments. Constructivism is a modern psychological response to reality-tunneling.

For Wilson, a fully functioning human ought to be aware of their reality tunnel, and be able to keep it flexible enough to accommodate, and to some degree empathize with, different reality tunnels, different "game rules", different cultures.... Constructivist thinking is the exercise of metacognition to become aware of our reality tunnels or labyrinths and the elements that "program" them. Constructivist thinking should, ideally, decrease the chance that we will confuse our map of the world with the actual world.... his philosophyis currently expressed in many Eastern consciousness-exploration techniques.R. Elliott Ingersoll and Cecile Brennan, in Eriksen, McAuliffe 2001, p.336.

Another example is Lacan's distinction between " The Real" and the "Symbolic". Lacan argued that the Real is the imminent unified reality which is mediated through symbols that allow it to be parsed into intelligible and differentiated segments. The symbolic, which is primarily subconscious, is further abstracted into the Imaginary (our actual beliefs and understandings of reality). These two orders ultimately shape the way we come to perceive reality.

References

External links

How our reality tunnels allow us to see only certain things

Robert Anton Wilson discusses reality tunnel concept
(MP3; 11m) {{World view Belief Consciousness studies Community building Popular psychology Reality Social constructionism Timothy Leary Robert Anton Wilson

Considerations

Similar ideas

See also

References

Further reading

External links