What is more real, the physical or the metaphysical?

The physical and the metaphysical are equally real, because they are two sides of the same coin of consciousness. Consciousness generates physical reality, and in turn physical reality precipitates more consciousness. This is the fundamental yin-yang. Existence/non-existence. Everything has polarity (like, everything) so there is no way one can be more real than the other because together they are simply what is, each informing the other.

The physical world has value precisely because it has physical laws and limits, which to the boundlessness of pure consciousness offers an exciting and fertile frontier for the exploration of possibilities. Consciousness is curious, it wants to know “what happens when…?” “what does this feel like…?” (Maybe that’s why I like Quora so much: this website is yet another expression of the insatiable questioning nature of consciousness :) Consciousness wants to grow and expand and a reality of physical consequences absolutely informs and evolves perspective: you have to burn your hand to know what fire feels like, to know that it’s hot. Everything is like this — love, grief, satisfaction, disappointment… these are the nations consciousness explores.

Life itself is a beautiful manifestation of this growth and expansion process, as everything grows and expands before contracting and disappearing. Things start out small and get bigger. Life begins, takes shape, and then eventually life fades and dies. Small/big; birth/death — notice the polarity and the symmetry? This is how consciousness expresses itself. The entire physical universe is itself cycling through this same process.

The very fact that this question considers the relative value of “physical” versus “metaphysical” is in itself a beautiful holographic microcosm of the process by which consciousness probes and tests its perceptions of physical reality: you, me and everyone else on this thread are examining polarity from the inside out as individual conscious beings, each of us an innate expression of “the metaphysical.”

We are here to think these questions, from within the dollhouse of reality that consciousness built. The dreamer inevitably awakens within the dream.