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 says that the religions added the magical phases, but it doesn't necessarily mean that was human belief's doing. 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 created the Phases. If the Phases were created by human's belief this would mean 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 that it would create 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, but 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 religions is that the creators of those religion or their first/strongest believers literally became the gods in which they believed 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 Othinus was a normal human who then became the god known as Odin so 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, both of them require a lot of concentration, and the brain is the most important organ for them. Also, Ars Magna's knowledge is implied to be 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". Essentially, it's used as base for the Awakeining.

Anyway, there are examples where bilief and perception alone (apparently) caused supernatural phenomena, like Miracles (movie), but in this case it was 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 manifested  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 soemthing related to the human belief.

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