Talk:Personal Reality/@comment-177.92.28.35-20141212155329/@comment-5230978-20141213165212

Well, surely PR has similarities with Phases on a conceptual level, but only if Phases are really created by simple belief. Othinus said that the religions added the religious phases, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it was caused by human belief. After all, the starting point of a religion is the existence of a god (whether it's true or not) to believe in (and differently by our world in Toaru there are tangible proof of gods' existence and even episodes of manifestation of beings related to them, e.g. angels) so the gods of the various religions could have (logogically) created their own Phases. If the Phases were created by human belief this would mean that even what they contain (god(s), its/their "subordinates" and the type of magical energy filling that phase, like telesma) was created by humans, but Fiamma pointed out that normal humans can't even create an angel, let alone a god (and in Christianty's case it is an omnipotent one). Even if all the humans living in the planet believed in the same religion, it's unlikely this would have created a Phase with a god, beings related to it, and the Phase's magical energy (and we we don't have only one type of these, but multiple ones), but even in Toaru people believes in different gods and in ancient times the Earth's population was even lower. Also, religious Phases, or at least what resides in them, are magical in nature but not all ancient times' humans were magicians, and even if they were, when we talk about magical and scientifical powers belief alone can't accomplish much if not anything (before manifesting a PR an esper needs external stimuli and a magician needs knowledge and preparations for their spells). The only option for having Phases created by humans' I can think of is that the creators of those religions or their first/strongest believers literally became the gods representing their creeds and created everything related to them (consciously or as a byproduct). Essentially, Gremlin's Majins could be the gods of the various religions. We know that originally Othinus was a normal girl who later became the god known as Odin, therefore it's not so far-fetched. The high priest (a Buddhist term) could be Buddha and the Old man, who seems to be the leader and presumibly the strongest member, could be the Christian God (though it sounds too blasphemous to me as they are seemingly depicted as bad guys).

Said that, as vol 3 implies, Ars Magna still is more similar to the PR's mechanincs than Phases as both Ars Magna and PR apply the reality in the user's mind to the outside world and distort it, both of them require a lot of concentration, and the brain is the most important organ for using them. Also, Ars Magna's knowledge is implied to have been used by Aleister in his plan as "it was the technique of sublimating a human soul that had been dulled like lead into an angel’s soul that was like gold", in a word, Awakening.

Anyway, there are examples of bilief and perception alone (apparently) causing supernatural phenomena such as Miracles (movie), but in this case we have a power unrelated to science and magic. Even Ollerus' theory of IB being the recollection of magicians' hopes and fears of magician, hough probably wrong, was used to explain a power unrelated to science and magic, so it could be that only the powers related to the "third side" can be created thanks to human percetion/belief alone, but I doubt there is something like Alaya, at least not at the Nasuverse level. I also believe IB is more like a non-violent Beast of Gaia, being the reference point of the world, then something related to human belief.

Obviously, human belief an dperception still play a major role even in esper powers and magic mechanics, but they don't seem able to cause supernatural phenomena by themselves as other factors are required as basis.