In Our OMpinion…

By William Bezanson

Everything that is real is not necessarily actual.

What is real to me may not be real to you. And what is actual may be different still.

Reality is what we perceive. Actuality is what truly is.

I learned this distinction years ago in my Rosicrucian study, and the lesson has reinforced itself many times as I looked around and observed the world. The phenomena that I experience are real to me. But they are not necessarily actual.

Take a simple example. It is quite obvious, and it has been obvious for millennia, that the sun revolves around the earth.  Our whole mythology, art, literature, and language attests to that fact. That is our Reality:  sunup, sundown, sunrise in the East, “Rosy-fingered Dawn” (Homer), “For the sun is in his harbour” (Wordsworth); and there are many other examples from our culture.  Then around 500 years ago Copernicus, Galileo, and others persuaded us that the heliocentric model was correct:  the earth revolves around the sun, and the earth’s daily rotation about its own axis gives us the impression that the sun is revolving around the earth, thus giving us the yearly and daily cycles.  So, we now realize that the actuality of the earth’s rotation explains the reality of the sun’s daily journey.  The Actuality explained by our intellects and scientific observations is different from the Reality originating from our instincts and casual perceptions.

A richer example is evident in dreaming. What we dream can be very real, sometimes alarmingly so. We can wake up with our hearts pounding, breathing rapidly, convinced of the reality of what we were dreaming. Indeed, it was our reality for a time. Of course, we can then rationalize, after shaking ourselves awake, that it was only a dream. The events that we dreamed were not actual events. The key point is that they were real ones for a time. But, Reality in dreams does not necessarily correspond to Actuality in wakefulness.

Another, very complex, example comes from Ufology, the study of unidentified flying objects (UFOs). What can we make of the actuality or reality of such phenomena? Are they actual or real … in other words are they truly “objects” or just figments of our imagination? I am very impressed by C.G. Jung’s book Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies (New York, MJF Books, 1978, p. 131), in which he refuses to conclude anything about the actuality of UFOs due to his lack of full evidence, even after many years of interest. But he does speculate about their reality as a psychological compensatory fulfillment. In short, people needto believe in UFOs, and therefore they see them. Writing in 1954, Jung states, “A psychic phenomenon of this kind [a subjective or collective vision, for an individual or a group; i.e., a hallucination—my bracketed words] would, like a rumour, have a compensatory significance, since it would be a spontaneous answer of the unconscious to the present conscious situation, i.e., to fears created by an apparently insoluble political situation which might at any moment lead to a universal catastrophe. At such times men’s eyes turn to heaven for help, and marvelous signs appear from on high, of a threatening or reassuring nature.”

 So UFOs present the possibility of a significant example of the difference between Reality (what we perceive) and Actuality (what truly is the case).

OM Times Magazine » syndicated