I was nonchalantly watching the news on TV, and as is oftentimes the case, my mind started wondering about some inane programmatic detail. This resulted in the known phenomenon of "seeing without seeing", the situation where your eyes are observing a scene, without you being aware of what this scene is, until your consciousness returns from whence it was wondering.
I was in fact daydreaming and I was completely unaware of what I was observing in front of me. As soon as the thought of coming back to "watch some news" entered my distracted mind, the process of "reidentification" of the visual scenery got initiated.
This process usually is almost instant. I.e., the brain cannot ascertain the speed with which the reality scene reassembles when your consciousness returns, perhaps because the inter-relationship between the brain and reality is optimized to avoid any discontinuity in reality perception.
What really happened to me, was, there was a time gap, between the actual reassembling of the regular visual scene in front of me, and the place I was daydreaming in. For a split second, perhaps a hundredth of a second actually, my brain managed to observe what was in front of me, prior to reassembling the usual scenery from memory and experience.
What I saw, in that split second, was totally weird. I can only remember very small fragments of the scene, because apparently the brain "erased" the discontinuity as well as it could as soon as the scene reappeared in full force.
I vividly remember a colorful scenery in front of me, that resembled some sort of huge fractal, with thousands of colors, yet nothing was clearly discernible and nothing could be really identified. The only thing I could claim was a bit visible, was the periphery of the TV box. Anything else, was a huge nonsensical set of colorful patterns and delineations. Complete chaos.
I remember looking into what appeared to be the TV box. It was full of a set of overlaying patches, intricately connected, like the geographical map of some unknown country, where the states alternated in colors, to make the boundaries easier to spot.
As soon as I "realized" that this reality I was perceiving was not the one I *should* be in, or rather, that what I was seeing was not quite what I was supposed to be seeing, the huge fractal started to gradually disassemble, piece by piece, and every little detail on my familiar forward scenery visible from my restroom chair, started to show up.
First, the outline of the face of the news announcer. It was the first thing that became recognizable. Then the eyes, the nose, until the well known anchor man showed up. Then hearing and vision got synchronized. The voice of the anchor man, started being synchronous with his lip movement. Then, the rest of the things inside the TV image, became discernible. As soon as the TV became the well known object, its surroundings started being formed, out of big chunks of the huge chaotic fractal.
Big colorful nonsensical pieces of the surrounding space, transformed into my coat hanger, my black coat, the desk the TV sits upon, and finally the white stucco wall behind the TV, the last object that got reassembled.
The process of reality reassembling, was tremendously fast, but not instant. My brain was able to clearly trace the recreation of the scenery, and when finally the complete scene appeared, I just sat there, amazed, at the incredible link between the observer and his reality.
When I later was recalling the left over bits and pieces of what "existed" in this small discontinuity of reality, it became apparent thus, that this was a "mini-proof" given to me, that observer and reality are really tied together. It became further proof that without consciousness, there *is* something there, but this *something* is not only completely unrecognizable, not only chaotic and turbulent, but even this last sentence will make little sense, since even this bit was observed under the aegis of some sort of "secondary" consciousness, that *evaded* reality's natural mechanisms, and not *without* consciousness, whatsoever.
A good analogy would be, to imagine a huge random state 2-D map, a fractal map if you will, with thousands of intricate border-boundaries, between billions of infinitesimal objects, alternating in color, spanning infinity. And then imagine you, being a little dot, standing at a distance of 1 meter, looking at this map.
This map, contains in its fractal encoding, billions of "mini-instructions", that are parsed visually, and processed through your brain somehow to create the illusion of reality. The processing of the instructions by the brain is so incredibly fast, that the brain perceives the various segments of the map contiguously, and without gaps.
Also, the brain somehow, is inherently tied with the *interpreted* image of the map. Reality. Not the code itself. This is an interesting question: Why does the brain not see the map, and instead it sees reality?
The answer to this is probably obvious to most of you: If our brain could see only the map, the horrible truth would become immediately visible: That we are essentially "brains in vats" interpreting the map according to its instructions.
Here, I was tempted to deduce again the well known pitfall that plagues me: That essentially I am the only consciousness out there, and all of you are figments, in a well orchestrated sequence of reality perceptions, as to conceal the horrendous truth of "The Oneness".
The above is a *possible* scenario, but not the *only* possible scenario. Here, I extrapolate from personal experience: What do I like best? Do I like company? Yes. Do I like to be alone? No. Do I enjoy being with others? Yes. Do I enjoy and humor being socially accepted? Yes. Yes to all the questions that ask about multiplicity. As such, I have to surmise that the illusion of multiplicity, cannot be a mere illusion, but finally, has to be at least duality. There is at least *one* entity/thing out there except me. The map.
However, the horror of regressing back in time, trillions of years in the past, begs to be addressed. And this horror is: "But back then, Ioannis, when everything started, there was only ONE mind in existence." Fine!, Fine, Great! That was THEN. It's not anymore, nor can I go on living, thinking in terms of some sort of intimate soul-matter bonding between myself and a random human.
But I digress. What I want to emphasize with all this, is that all of us, are in it together. You may have had a similar experience, (if you had any experience with hallucinogens, you would immediately see the map, as a friend had testified long ago for example). You could, in principle, view such a reality both ways: As a horrific hell consisting of billions of brains in vats interpreting the same map-code, thus having similar experiences, from which the only way to escape is death, or as a wonderful paradise for which you could care less.
Either way, as you have already surmised, whoever has constructed this map, has gradually allowed us (me in particular) to see glimpses of it, even through popular Hollywood movies. The movies "Dark city", "The Truman Show" and "Matrix" are essentially variations on this theme. I haven't seen yet "Matrix" (I have now), but my cousin seriously remarked one month ago, "My God, Ioannis, they stole your ideas about reality and made it into a movie!!.." It's not so much about stealing, as it is about "revealing". And if you were careful enough and watched all the imminent prophesies and predictions of the whatever weirdoes lurk in the Internet newsgroups, they *did* claim that in the year 2,000 some sort of "raised consciousness" would permeate the planet.
Well, you now know what this raised consciousness is all about. It's about "the Truth". And lo and behold, this truth is being slowly unveiled. I don't know if this "Truth" will liberate us, kill us, or maim us or fill us with further hope. What I only hope for myself, is that there finally is some sort of resting place, some sort of "Original Principle" if you wish, to which we can go and finally rest for the rest of eternity. Even if such a place does not exist, we must construct one for ourselves.
I wish you all peace and a happy new year. And I love you all. However, the final countdown has started: Jan 1, 2,000. The hidden side of reality has started to grow stronger. And it will continue to do so for some time.