Reality may refer to the principle of existing or being in existence, yet what existence is made of and what the structure of a Universe or Multiverse really is, and that relation to the mind of God (it could be a tiny part of His thought), has different meaning or content to different people in relation to what they think about it.
The Cave allegory and the Republic with the description of forms and higher structures has been a paradigm for describing reality (Platonic realism) in contrast to superficial appearance, or nominalism. The forms did turn out to be true, in the sense that physics and particle physics have forms that exist as the foundation of all matter. There are particulars and Universals- a particular hydrogen atom and the Universal form of hydrogen atoms, for example. There are even more forms including forces such as the nuclear and gravity that are probably the same everywhere in the Universe. Plato's idea of forms may be comparable to Democritus' thought about atoms. Tegmark actually speculated about the entire Universe being made at its foundation of mathematics, spin vectors, spacing, intervals etc I suppose. Math is an idea- perhaps of God. Logical spacing and energy compounded into complexity.
Neo-Platonism such as Plotinus wrote about in the 54 Tractates named The Enneads elaborated Plot's ideas and considered The One and why The Intelligence would issue forms and more concrete reality.
Molecules, atoms electrons, quarks, muons, hadrons, gluons etc have forms of energetic interaction. Limits to their being exist, and some believe it is pure idea. Bishop Berkeley speculated in the Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous that all matter may be an idea of God, and of course Leibniz thought the smallest particle-an atomic irreducible structure was a one-dimensional windowless monad made of spirit. A point in modern physics as zero dimension and a string-one-dimension.
Yet I think that the topic about reality and contingent being may be compared to that Chinese puzzle box or cups with another smaller (or larger) one within (or without) another one infinitely- Buddhist of course regard belief in God as a heresy, and believe that phenomenal reality must return to nothing- as if the big bang and universe of being must return to nothing for ever, while Hindu's believe that God (Brahma to them) recycles it now and then, and Christians believe it occurs once and then God places souls into different realms than the material, temporal Universe, eternal realms.
The Cave allegory and the Republic with the description of forms and higher structures has been a paradigm for describing reality (Platonic realism) in contrast to superficial appearance, or nominalism. The forms did turn out to be true, in the sense that physics and particle physics have forms that exist as the foundation of all matter. There are particulars and Universals- a particular hydrogen atom and the Universal form of hydrogen atoms, for example. There are even more forms including forces such as the nuclear and gravity that are probably the same everywhere in the Universe. Plato's idea of forms may be comparable to Democritus' thought about atoms. Tegmark actually speculated about the entire Universe being made at its foundation of mathematics, spin vectors, spacing, intervals etc I suppose. Math is an idea- perhaps of God. Logical spacing and energy compounded into complexity.
Neo-Platonism such as Plotinus wrote about in the 54 Tractates named The Enneads elaborated Plot's ideas and considered The One and why The Intelligence would issue forms and more concrete reality.
Molecules, atoms electrons, quarks, muons, hadrons, gluons etc have forms of energetic interaction. Limits to their being exist, and some believe it is pure idea. Bishop Berkeley speculated in the Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous that all matter may be an idea of God, and of course Leibniz thought the smallest particle-an atomic irreducible structure was a one-dimensional windowless monad made of spirit. A point in modern physics as zero dimension and a string-one-dimension.
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