THREAD OF THOUGHT

What if from the beginning we had known how things were going to be? What if before
this whole situation of confinement and isolation had passed, someone had told us if things
were going to end good or bad? If that had been the case, today we wouldn’t be thinking
about what will humanity be and what will happen tomorrow or a week later. Our reality
has changed as that much that we have no control of what tomorrow will be and what we
will do in it, this situation has caused us to be away from each other, and in some cases, we
find ourselves in a complete loneliness that pulls out the deepest part of us. And being in
such a deep place we put aside what the physical world is and we go further, to a world of
thoughts and ideas, where we come to question what reality is and who I am to judge what
it is real and what is not. And that's where I am. This period of isolation affected me a lot
mentally, and it’s not because people can’t go out, but, it´s because the loneliness I’ve felt
during this situation; the fact of being accompanied doesn’t n mean that you are not alone,
and at the moment of being alone, I’ve stopped concentrating on what is the physical world
and concentrate in my thoughts and ideas, where I usually start to compare my actual
reality with what was a few months ago, and I got to the point of question me what reality
is. The first time I asked myself what reality is, I defined it as what is real and makes part of
a non-fantasy and imagination world. But with the pass of time, I have come to the
conclusion that reality is not one but many, with this am trying to say that reality is
subjective and that I am nobody to judge what or who is real and what is not. This is how
Empedocles, Anaxagoras and Democritus considered reality, these pre-Socratic
philosophers believed that it was not singularity, but rather plurality, and this is how they
reject the belief in the corporeal monism of Zeno and Parmenides that established that
reality is one. Purism is the position that contradicts monism, which believes that there is
only one reality; while purism believes that the world, the earth, the totality is made up of
independent or interrelated realities; An example of multiplicity could be the doctrine of the
four elements: earth, water, air and fire; who together would create new bodies. Meanwhile
monism only considered a reality, a position that the philosopher Thales of Miletus
believed. An example of what monism would be the Thales of Miletus doctrine, which
established that water was the primary element.

But what do I mean by the fact that there are many realities and in what is this related to all
this current situation? What I mean is that no matter how difficult is this situation for me or
for others, my reality and my concerns are very different from those of a person who every
day has to think where is he going to sleep or what is he going to give their children to eat
that day; While I think about when I will return to school, there are children who think
about how they are going to get their food of the day. And it is not only for this that I say
that reality is subjective; something that I have also thought about these days is how
different people see the world, I thought of how a person diagnosed with a mental illness,
from a bipolar disorder to Schizophrenia sees the world, and normally these people are
classified as "Crazy” just because they see things that we don’t see, things that for us are
not real and are not part of reality; now, what I ask myself is that, just for the fact that these
people do not see the world in our same way, is their reality not true or does it not exist?
Clearly their mental condition is not the same as us because their brain does not work like
ours, but that doesn’t make “normal people” more than them to judge what is or is not real.
Personally, I consider that reality is a union and balance of a physical world and a world of
thoughts and ideas. Like Anaxagoras, who said that all bodies are mixtures of elements,
also that differences exist and they must be accounted for. This is almost the same thing
that I tried to say with people who see the world in a different way, but in an
epistemological way rather than metaphysical.

When I sometimes think about the fact that I am surrounded by many realities, it is a bit
overwhelming and confusing, I begin to doubt very much if I see things in the ways that
they are or if I see them differently and how I can see the things in another way, like being
able to see another reality, which if you say it out loud is a bit strange. But the truth is that
it is more common than we think, the human being is capable of experiencing different
realities through dreams, through the art of dreaming. But, what is the art of dreaming? This
concept is explained in the book "The Art of Dreaming" by Carlos Castaneda, in which he
describes his experience of being his apprentice Don Matus, a Mexican sorcerer from the
Yaqui tribe. The book mentions what the art of dreaming is and how dreams are the doors
to other worlds. Throughout the book Carlos tells that for Don Juan the art of dreaming is a
branch of witchcraft practiced by the Mexican Yaqui Indians which tries to use normal
dreams as a gateway that leads human consciousness to other areas of perception. This
definition implied, for them, that common dreams could be used as a hatch that guided
perception to other regions of energy, different from the world of everyday life and yet
extremely similar to this in its basic core. The result involved the perception of true worlds
in which one could live or die, worlds incredibly different from ours and, at the same time,
extremely similar. In the book Don Juan mentions that “by dreaming we can perceive other
worlds, which we can certainly describe, but we cannot describe what makes us perceive
them. However, we can feel how dreaming, let open those other realms and that when we
are in that dream state, dreaming seems to be a sensation, a process in our bodies, an
awareness in our minds.”

The two previous concepts are from very different cultures and from different times, but
they are two themes that if you analyze under a specific branch or theme such as
epistemology, they complement each other; since both try to explain what reality is and
what is beyond a physical world. Why? Because, Pluralists talk about how there is more
than one reality and how the unity of four elements creates new bodies, while Don Juan
talks about the medium by which these different realities can be perceived or felt. And they
are also two concepts that have been inside my head during this time because throughout
these days I have come to experience things that I had not felt, think things that I didn’t
think were possible, and finally, dream things that feel so real, and the previous sighting a
(little epistemological), is a way of how all those sensations that I have felt are possible and
how they are reflected.