Our brain simulates reality. So, our everyday
experiences are a form of dreaming,
which is to say, they are mental models, simulations,
not the things they appear to be.Stephen LaBerge, founder, The Lucidity Institute
We are unmistakably and undeniably trapped in a matrix (brain-in-a-vat) scenario. We do not dwell in real reality, as we like to believe, but in a rendering that we call reality. The reality in which we place our belief is supposedly transmitted by our alleged senses through rumored neural pathways to our assumed brains. In short, reality is based entirely on trust. Nonduality, on the other hand, is a trustless system. I don’t trust or believe anyone or anything but my own powers of reason. No sane, serious person would.
Our connection to reality is always secondhand. The brain is a black box, meaning we live in a black box, meaning we can never know where the origin story of our dreamstate. Maybe we’re floating in matrix womb-pods, or maybe we have matrix spikes stuck in the back of our heads, or maybe our brains are suspended in fishtanks hooked up to a computer through wires, or maybe, as we universally but wrongly believe, that fishtank is a skull and those wires are neural pathways delivering a synchronized array of sensory perceptions that we recombine and interpret as reality.
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Strange, indeed, that you should not have suspected that your universe and its contents were only dreams, visions, fiction! Strange, because they are so frankly and hysterically insane – like all dreams.
Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger