What Is Real, What Is Not, and Why Awareness Is the Only Way to Truly See

Dr. Clifford Illlis

1. We think we see everything. We don’t.

Stand in the sun and look around.

You see colors, shapes, people moving. You hear cars, voices, music. You feel wind on your skin.

It’s easy to think:

“This is reality. What I see and hear — that’s all there is.”

But that’s like listening to one radio station and believing there are no other stations.

Your eyes only see a tiny slice of light. Your ears only hear a narrow band of sound. Your skin feels only certain kinds of touch.

Reality is much wider than what your body can pick up.

So if we want to ask seriously, “What is real?”, the first honest answer is:

“Much more than I can see, hear or touch.”

That’s the beginning, not the end.

💡 FACT: Human eyes see only a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum (roughly 400–700 nanometers). Infrared, ultraviolet, X‑rays, radio waves — all totally invisible to us — are still very real and used in everyday life (remote controls, Wi‑Fi, medical scans).

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2. Invisible light: proof that “I don’t see it” ≠ “It’s not real”

Think about:

Infrared light — we can’t see it, but infrared cameras “see” heat.
Ultraviolet light — we can’t see it, but it can burn our skin.
Radio waves — invisible, but they carry your phone calls and Wi‑Fi.

Before we built special machines, none of these were visible.
Did they suddenly pop into existence when we invented the right cameras and antennas?

Of course not.

They were always there.
We were just blind to them.

So we already live with one clear fact:

Many real things are invisible to our biological senses.
The problem is not reality — the problem is our instruments.

If we forget that, we become arrogant. We think:

“If I can’t see it, it’s not real.”

But physics already proves that this is false.

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3. Same street, three different worlds

Now let’s move from light to life.

Imagine one street in Sint Maarten.

On this same street:

A fish vendor is selling fresh fish at the market.
A quantum physicist is walking by on vacation.
A spectrum specialist (someone who studies patterns and ranges — in light, sound, behavior, or data) is doing fieldwork.

They are all looking at the same street.

But:

The fish vendor sees:
Freshness, smell, flies, ice melting, hungry customers, today’s income.
For her, “real” = “Will I sell enough to feed my family?”
The quantum physicist sees:
Atoms in the air, light scattering on fish scales, quantum effects in sunlight.
For him, “real” = equations, fields, probabilities.
The spectrum specialist sees:
Color intensities, noise levels, social patterns (who talks to whom, who is ignored).
For them, “real” = patterns in frequencies and behaviors.

Same street.
Three different realities.

Who is right?

All of them — and none of them fully.

Each one:

Picks up some parts of the street.
Ignores or filters out other parts.
Lives inside a slice of reality shaped by training, needs, and beliefs.

This is important:

Even before we talk about “spirit” or “destiny,” we already know that what is real for each person depends on how and from where they look.

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4. The pain you can’t see but can’t deny

Now we add something much deeper.

Someone you love dies.

The body stops. The doctors can measure that. Biology says: “heart, lungs, brain — no more activity.”

But what happens inside you?

Your chest feels like it’s being crushed.
Your stomach tightens. You can’t eat.
Sleep disappears. Time becomes strange.
A year later, a smell, a song, a place can make you cry again.

There is no cut. No burn. No broken bone.

The pain is not on any light spectrum.
A camera can’t see it.
No scan shows a hole with the exact shape of that person.

Yet:

People can die from “broken heart” conditions (extreme stress affecting the heart).
Immune systems weaken.
Whole lives and families are permanently changed.

This pain is not “just in your head” in the sense of “imaginary.”
It is deeply real, more powerful than many physical wounds.

If grief were not real,
it would not break us the way it does.

So now we have something new:

There is a level of reality made of love, bonds, meaning, and presence.
It is not visible like a glass of water.
It is not measurable like temperature.
But it is real, because it changes our bodies, minds, choices, and histories.

Call that layer:

Soul
Spirit
Relationship
Deep meaning

Ignore it, and you are not a realist. You are half-blind.

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💡 FACT: Studies on bereavement show that losing a spouse or close loved one significantly increases the risk of illness and even death (the “widowhood effect”). Emotional pain has clear physical consequences.

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5. So we have at least three layers of “real”

Let’s collect what we know:

Body‑real (physical):
Stones, water, money, fish, your arm.
What we see, touch, weigh, and measure.
Science is very strong here.
Mind‑real (thoughts and feelings):
Joy, fear, hopes, plans, ideas.
You can’t touch them, but they change your life.
Psychology and anthropology study this.
Spirit‑real (love, soul, destiny, deep meaning):
The pain of losing someone.
The feeling “I am more than my body.”
The sense of destiny or “I am here for a reason.”
The urge to do what is deeply right, even when it costs you.

Each layer:

Is real in its own way.
Influences the others.
Is only partly seen by our biology and our tools.

We already know:

Senses miss things (infrared, UV).
Training limits what we notice (physicist vs fish vendor).
Deep experiences reveal a layer beyond simple biology (grief, love, destiny).

So the question becomes:

How can we really see all of this, together?

Not just “see” with eyes, but understand reality in a fuller way.

This is where your final piece comes in.

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6. Awareness: the only way to truly see

If we rely only on our biological senses:

We see a slice of light and sound.
We miss invisible forces (infrared, radio waves).
We also miss inner realities (love, grief, destiny).

If we rely only on scientific instruments:

We extend our senses. We see atoms, galaxies, brain scans.
We still don’t automatically see the meaning of grief or the experience of destiny.
Instruments show “activity,” not the importance of that activity.

If we rely only on our culture and beliefs:

We might see only what fits our story:
“Men must be strong; their pain is not real.”
“Spirit is fake because I can’t measure it.”
Or the opposite: “Science is evil; only feelings matter.”

All three approaches — senses, instruments, beliefs — are partial.

So what is missing?

Awareness.

By awareness, we mean:

The ability to step back and notice:
What your eyes show — and what they don’t.
What your instruments show — and what they ignore.
What your beliefs allow you to accept — and what they block.
What your heart and spirit feel — and how that shapes your life.

Awareness is not another sense.
It is more like a space inside you that can hold all the senses, all the thoughts, and all the feelings at once.

Awareness can say:

“I see the physical facts.”
“I feel deep pain or love.”
“I know my culture sees some things and hides others.”
“I also sense there is more — a pattern, a destiny, a spirit level — that I do not fully understand yet.”

Only from that space can you be honest about reality.

Without awareness:

The physicist says: “Only what I can measure is real.”
The fish vendor says: “Only what feeds my children is real.”
The skeptic says: “If I can’t see spirit, it’s not real.”
The believer might say: “If I feel it, it must be true about everything.”

With awareness:

You see that each of these is a partial truth.
You stop confusing “what I can see today” with “all that exists.”
You stay open and humble.

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7. Spirit, soul, destiny: what awareness can sense before science can measure

Think again about invisible light.

Infrared was real long before we built infrared cameras.
Radio waves were real long before radios.
X‑rays were real long before X‑ray machines.

For a long time, humans only felt their effects:

Warmth, sunburns, strange pains or burns, strange transmissions.
They had no clear theory, no good instruments — just effects.

Over time, as awareness and curiosity grew, we built tools to detect and measure those invisible parts of reality.

Now apply this to spirit, soul, and destiny:

We feel love, grief, conscience, and deep meaning.
We see how they change bodies, choices, cultures, and histories.
We do not yet have perfect machines or formulas to capture them.

That does not mean they are fake.

It may mean they are like “infrared of meaning” — a layer of reality our current tools are too crude to fully see.

Your point is:

Our awareness is our first instrument for this deeper level of reality.
Through awareness, we can sense that there is more — even before we have perfect equations or machines.

That doesn’t mean every feeling is correct about the world.
It means we must not throw away whole layers of human reality just because one method (biology or physics) doesn’t yet know what to do with them.

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8. How to practice this awareness in daily life

This is not just theory. It’s a way to live.

A simple exercise:

Body check (body‑real):
Ask: “What do I see, hear, touch right now?”
Name 3 things.
Mind check (mind‑real):
Ask: “What am I thinking and feeling about this?”
Name 3 thoughts or feelings (e.g., “worried,” “hopeful,” “angry,” “curious”).
Spirit check (spirit‑real):
Ask: “What deeper thing is at stake here?”
Is it love? Safety? Justice? Freedom? A sense of destiny or purpose?
Awareness step:
Gently notice: “All of this is happening in me at the same time.”
Don’t rush to “fix” it. Just see it clearly.

If you do this often, you start to:

See how small our usual way of “seeing” has been.
Respect physical facts and emotional truth and deeper meaning.
Become more open to the possibility that spirit and destiny are not fantasies, but real dimensions of life that awareness can sense first.

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9. Final thought: real is bigger than our eyes, and awareness is our doorway

So, what is real?

Not only what you can touch.
Not only what your culture likes.
Not only what your favorite science can measure today.

Real includes:

The invisible parts of light.
The parts of the world only different experts or cultures notice.
The deep experiences of love, grief, conscience, and destiny that shape us more than many physical forces.

And we only begin to see all of this when we shift from automatic sensing to awake awareness.

Biology lets you survive.
Instruments let you measure.
Beliefs give you a story.

But awareness is the only thing that can hold:

biology,
science,
culture,
spirit,
and your deepest experiences

together in one honest view.

If we want to really see, we cannot look only through our biological senses.
We must look from awareness — from that wider, quieter place inside us that knows there is more.

💡 FACT: Mindfulness and awareness practices have been shown in research to change how the brain processes pain and emotion. People still feel, but the experience changes because awareness changes the relationship to what is felt — hinting at awareness as a distinct way of being with reality.