The image that you see and the image that I see are two entirely different things. If we both look at a tree, for example, the tree that you see is not the same one that I see, literally. The light waves reflected from it and received by your eyes are not the same set of light waves that are reflected from it and received by mine. You see the tree from a slightly different angle and perspective, and with a different set of values and judgements. Your sense of depth perception and color recognition is different from mine. We may agree upon certain conventions and facts about what we see, but the reality that you perceive is not the same as mine.

We understand the nature of things by the act of comparing one to another. Because there are flowers of many different shapes and colors, we can know tulips from roses, lilacs from daffodils. And, because we perceive time as a line of movement from past to future, we can distinguish between the events of 12th century Japan and 20th century America. But, there is only one Universe of Universes. It is a singularity. We cannot compare it to anything else.

Emptiness permeates you, me, and everything in Existence. There is more empty space than material substance to the Universe. This can be understood by merely looking at the composition of a single atom. If we could make it as large as the solar system, there would be even more empty space between its nucleus and its outer particles than there is between the planets themselves. Nothingness. Empty and void of any matter. In fact, the particles of an atom are not matter at all; they are energy polarities.

Atomic particles must remain forever separated from each other, or they tend to annihilate everything around them in an intense explosion. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were tragic examples of this principle. So, the emptiness between these particles, and between atoms themselves, is almost unimaginable... when compared to their relative size. Indeed, if it were possible to eliminate all of the empty spaces from your own body, for instance, it would be reduced to a size about a million times smaller than a single grain of sand.

Yet, walk over to the nearest wall, place the palm of your hand against its surface and tell me if it is solid? Yes? Good. But, no matter how solid it may appear, it is still just a collection of protons, neutrons and electrons. It is a mass of subatomic energy particles. It is solid and not solid, both at the same time. So, is the reality what we see and feel? Or, is it what we know to be scientifically true?

The wall is solid. That is a physical reality to which we can immediately relate. On the other hand, we intellectually know that it is not a single object at all. It is a collection of atomic particles, individual polarities, arranged to create the illusion of solidity and substance. That is the truth we know. And, we also know that both are reality. The wall is and it isn’t, both at one and the same time.

The reality of the entire Universe of Universes is based upon this same interaction of atomic particles, upon invisible energy somehow made visible. From the inferno of the largest star to the hairs upon the leg of the smallest ant, everything in Existence is a paradox and a contradiction, an example of the Yes and the No. This is the nature of Truth. If a question can be answered either yes or no, then only half of the truth has been exposed and considered. The entire truth must look at both sides of the coin, heads and tails, yes and no.

Now, answer these simple questions for me: How many people occupy your world? How many can see it exactly as you do? How many would agree with every idea, belief and philosophy that you hold?

If you answered: "Just one, myself!" Then, congratulations and give yourself a pat on the back. You have taken a giant step into True Reality. Not my reality, or anyone else’s, though. The reality you see is yours and yours alone, since no one else can ever see anything exactly as you do, now or ever.