The world as we see it is not the world itself,
rather a shadow of our perception of it.
Only the one who dares to look
at the source of light
will begin to see the world as it truly is.
What is reality — this is not an idle question of metaphysicians, rather the foundation of our being. Everything that we feel, value, love, fear, strive for, and reject is based on one single premise: we consider IT REAL. However, what if this foundation is illusory? What if the difference between reality and illusion is merely a perceptual adjustment, a filter through which a signal is transmitted? Modern man not only lives inside images, HE BECOMES them. The world that yesterday seemed material is already virtualized today, and tomorrow it will no longer be distinguishable from the imaginary. The boundaries are blurring — between the organic and the algorithmic, between sensation and code, between body and data. In this vanishing landscape, only one question remains: WHAT REMAINS when everything disappears? Before you is ANOTHER STEP in dismantling the old construct of perception. We continue the deconstruction of the last illusion of the old world, the very one that concealed the entire previous system of programming human reality. Not ghosts, not images, not mirages — but the foundation of CERTAINTY ITSELF in what “is” and what “is not.”
Reflecting on the question of what is illusion and what is reality, many thinkers of both antiquity and modernity arrived at the same conclusion: undoubtedly, ONLY THINKING EXISTS. In the 6th century BCE, Parmenides declared, “To think and to be are one and the same.” Two thousand years later, Descartes echoed this: “Cogito ergo sum” — “I think, therefore I am.” And in the 18th century, Berkeley carried this idea to its extreme: “Being is either that which is perceived or that which perceives.” In other words, what is not perceived DOES NOT EXIST at all. In that same century, Kant introduced the category of the “thing-in-itself,” pointing out that man does not know reality itself, only phenomena — the imprints of his own sensations. That which lies behind sensation, which gives rise to sensory impulses, lies BEYOND THE LIMITS of possible knowledge. Reality as such was thus placed outside the brackets of consciousness. In the 20th century, Poincaré summarized: “A reality entirely independent of the mind that perceives it is impossible.”
However, traditional science still clings to the postulate that REALITY — IS an objective external world existing independently of perception. Lenin, on a more everyday level, expressed it this way: “The world is an objective reality given to man in sensations, copied and reflected by them, existing independently of these sensations.” Yet the key phrase here is “given in sensations.” In other words, the world, as it is accessible to man, is ALWAYS MEDIATED by perception. Nevertheless, science does NOT PROVIDE proof of the independent existence of reality — it DEMANDS FAITH, just as religion demands faith in its dogmas. 
As once the opponents of Galileo insisted that the Sun revolves around the Earth because “it is obvious” — “visible to the eyes.” But what exactly do we "see?" When I look at an iron, it's not the iron that travels through the nerve fibers to the brain — it's impulses. The brain, based on these impulses, SYNTHESIZES AN IMAGE. This always happens: reality, as we see it, is merely a collection of sensory stimuli packaged into images. We don't have access to the object itself; WE HAVE access to an impression. And how closely this impression corresponds to external reality remains an open question. For clarity, let's imagine a monitor on which we see an iron. There are two scenarios: in the first, the camera ACTUALLY CAPTURES a real iron and transmits an image. In the second, there is no iron; the computerITSELF GENERATES the image. In both cases, the result on the screen is the same: an iron. In the first case, it is a reflection of a real object; in the second, it is a simulation. The brain, being a universal decoder, DOESN'T DISTINGUISH the source — it receives a signal with the same structure.
Modern science is based on faith that the sensory impulses we receive are caused by an objective reality — and not by an emulation. And perhaps that is indeed the case. Yet the question remains: WHY MUST WE believe it? Why not allow for the possibility that everything we see, hear, and touch is the result of a COMPLEX PROJECTION — a simulation, a dream, or another form of mental reality? I do not want to believe. I want to know. However, to achieve that, perhaps one must step beyond both the senses and the mind — to the place where proof ends and DIRECT SEEING begins.
Imagine a device that GENERATES IDENTICAL signals to those our brain receives from the external world. It connects directly to the nerve endings of the senses and transmits the same impulses through them. The brain, UNABLE TO DISTINGUISH the source, constructs from these impulses the familiar “world” we perceive. A natural question arises: how can we tell the difference between an image formed from signals coming from a real object and one built from SIGNALS ARTIFICIALLY GENERATED by a computer? 
The answer is — we cannot. If the nature of the impulses is the same, it is impossible to distinguish reality from simulation. A nut lying in the palm of your hand and squeezed by your fingers seems undeniably real — we feel its hardness, texture, resistance. Yet these sensations are merely the result of the brain processing nerve impulses. The same signals could be generated by a VIRTUAL REALITY system. The only difference lies in the source of the impulses, not in the result. Thus, the feeling of reality is merely a consequence of an authentically reproduced SENSORY IMAGE.
If a primitive tribesman were dressed in a full- immersion virtual suit and plunged into a digital simulation, he would be convinced that everything he saw and felt was real. He would offer solid arguments: “I saw it with my own eyes, touched it with my own hands, felt it with my own skin.” Yet all these sensations are merely RESPONSES TO SIGNALS. And we, modern humans, in our conviction of the world’s reality, are no different from him. For our certainty rests on the same grounds — “I see,” “I hear,” “I feel.” However, what is perceived is NOT ALWAYS identical to what exists. The fact that something is registered by the senses DOES NOT PROVE that it exists “outside of us.” We may be convinced of the reality of what we see, yet that conviction is NO MORE justified than a tribesman’s faith in the power of a magical amulet.
Many philosophers have said that the only thing one cannot doubt is thinking. I would add: one also cannot doubt sensation itself. Not that “something” exists — rather THAT WE FEEL. I may not know whether what I sense truly exists, but in the very fact of sensing — I am certain. The sensation is. However, that WHICH SUPPOSEDLY causes it — is in question. What does not exist cannot be registered by sensation, thought, or even imagination. Even an all-powerful being CANNOT REGISTER the nonexistent. And conversely: everything that is registered — exists, even if only as a phenomenon of perception.
On an everyday level, what is CONSIDERED TO EXIST is that which is registered by the senses. Astronomers deem a celestial body to exist if it can be observed through a telescope, detected by radar, or inferred from gravitational disturbances. What cannot be registered is regarded as nonexistent. Yet this is a VERY UNSTABLE foundation for distinguishing being from non-being. 
Here, within the framework of our current understanding, I will present a thought experiment with a porcelain teapot, supposedly orbiting between the orbits of Earth and Mars, which clearly illustrates this. I can claim that such a teapot exists, and add that it is so small that it is NOT VISIBLE even to the most powerful telescope. You cannot disprove this assertion. However, if I then declared that “because it cannot be disproven” you are OBLIGED TO BELIEVE in this teapot, it would clearly be nonsense. Nevertheless, if the idea of a teapot were enshrined in sacred texts, repeated for millennia, and ingrained in schools and church practice, then its denial WOULD BE REGARDED as heresy. Dissidents would be anathematized, and perhaps later — subjected to psychiatric treatment. The parody religion of Pastafarianism1 pushes this logic to absurdity, proposing the worship of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Its DIVINE ESSENCE, it is claimed, cannot be detected by the senses — it must be BELIEVED IN, just like any other “invisible” god. The point of this parody is clear: it shows that the claims of religions are NO MORE JUSTIFIED than fictions about celestial teapots or pasta deities. However, all this is a TRAP OF RATIONALISM. For if something is registered by imagination or mind, it already exists — at least as a form. The mind is capable of registering not only sensory but also INTELLECTUAL OBJECTS. Thus, any image that comes to us as a construct of reason already is. It has entered the field of perception. It has LEFT A TRACE. And that, too, is existence.
Materialists who insist that only what is REGISTERED BY THE SENSES exists are like a fish living in an aquarium covered with an opaque cloth. 
It has bumped into the glass hundreds of times and never gone beyond it — therefore it concludes that nothing exists outside the glass. Even if for a moment the cloth were lifted and the fish saw SOMETHING ELSE, it would take it for an illusion or a dream. For it, reality would remain only what is DIRECTLY FELT, and everything else — unreliable. Yet even among fish there are dreamers who sense that the world DOES NOT END at the glass, that something else exists beyond the aquarium. They believe that after death they will go there—to the fish heaven. THESE INTUITIONS are the seeds of spiritual insight; they cannot be dismissed merely by pointing to the “LACK OF EVIDENCE.”
The paradox is that in the near future we will encounter virtual realities more vivid, intense, and convincing than our present world. And then ALL THE CRITERIA upon which our familiar idea of “reality” rested will collapse. What was once considered “real” will become a pale simulation, while the new, virtual existence will be FELT AS AUTHENTIC. So, what, then, will be considered reality at that moment? Perhaps the same as always, that which is — felt most convincingly?
The reality we have GROWN ACCUSTOMED TO TRUSTING is changing before our eyes. Yesterday, people could only transmit their voices — and the telephone seemed a miracle. Today, the voice is accompanied by a two-dimensional image. Tomorrow, the person you’re speaking with will appear not on a screen rather right in front of you — in space. You will be able NOT ONLY to see and hear them but also to touch, smell, and even taste. Everything will be so realistic that the ONLY WAY to disconnect from a meeting will be to press a button and disappear — to evaporate. However, to make this possible, you will need to take the next step — to become a hologram. Realism will become a matter of technology. Just a few decades ago, computers WERE THE SIZE of a room and cost millions of dollars. Today, computing power greater than that which launched Apollo fits in the palm of your hand — in your smartphone. It costs a few hundred dollars and surpasses past machines by millions of times. Progress is advancing so quickly that if aviation had developed at the same rate, an intercontinental flight would cost as little as a lunch, and a Boeing would run on a teapot of fuel.
This is NOT RHETORIC; it is a premonition of a new existence. Given current trends, we can state with full confidence that in the near future, virtuality will become NOT LESS rather MORE TANGIBLE than what we call the “real world.” And if that’s the case, the term “virtual” loses its usual meaning, for it implies a distinction between “true” being and an “illusory,” secondary one. However, if both worlds are given to us through sensations of equal intensity, how can we tell them apart? The real is that which IS PERCEIVED. It makes no difference whether its source is a physical object or a digital simulation. We live not among things, rather among sensations, among images endowed with persuasiveness. And so, when virtual palaces, scents, bodies, and touches become indistinguishable from the “real,” WHAT WILL REMAIN of the reality we once trusted? 
Moreover, virtuality will prevail: it will be brighter, richer, safer, more pliant. Everything will be created “FOR US,” tailored to our desires, moods, and psychological contours. The shades of emotion we will experience in these worlds will be as vivid as those of real events — if not more so. Virtual bodies, virtual homes, virtual experiences — ALL WILL BE composed of impulses that the brain perceives as unquestionably real.
A person is not only a consumer of images — he is a creator. And for this world to be complete, other beings MUST ENTER it as well. The virtual world, as conceived by the “creators” of the fading Old System, will be inhabited by digital agents — bots — beings made in the image and likeness of humans. They will NOT JUST respond like early 21st-century chatbots; they will possess adaptive intelligence, CAPABLE OF LEARNING, imitating, persuading, loving, manipulating, and feeling. The Turing Test,2 once seen as the ultimate measure of humanity, has lost its meaning. Today’s internet already places us in A SITUATION where we cannot say with certainty whether we are speaking to a human or a machine. The unsettling truth is that some “bots” are already MORE HUMAN than real people — if measured by flexibility of thought and originality of reaction. Humanity is entering the era of simulacra. Online, we are NO LONGER OURSELVES, we are avatars — images we choose or invent. They can be an approximation of our bodies — or their complete negation. Tomorrow, social networks will become three-dimensional universes. We will enter them as complete DIGITAL PROJECTIONS — avatars capable of NOT ONLY walking but also interacting with the world and other beings at the level of sensory reality. And the external appearance, so valued in the previous material world, will LOSE ITS MEANING. What will remain of the concept of "human" if they are NO LONGER limited by body, voice, gender, appearance, or smell? One will become what one imagines oneself to be, and what the imagination creates will manifest in an endless zoo of forms. People IN THE NEW WORLD will combine traits of animals, machines, abstract structures, and mythological beings. The virtual universe will become a stage for the manifestation of the inner without the outer — PURE CONSCIOUSNESS taking on any form. It will be a theater for the play of second selves — alter egos born of the flesh of imagination. Reality itself will shift. It will NO LONGER be “out there,” but “in here,” or rather, in that space where reality and virtuality coincide within perception. And this is no longer beyond the horizon — THIS IS TOMORROW.
If in the course of evolution, according to Darwin, humans lost their tails, then in the transition to another reality — the virtual, meta-corporeal one — they will LOSE THE BODY. Literally. The fleshly, physical “self” will become for future humanity as RUDIMENTARY A FORM as our tailed ancestors are to us. Humanity will shed the need for a body as naturally as we have lost — as we were always told — gills and fur. Imagine: you are inside virtual reality. 
Your body, the objects around you, ALL EVENTS — are products of computer simulation. But if so, why not extend this image into everything that WE RECORD daily? Why not suppose that our current “reality” is also a digital, three-dimensional, hyper-realistic simulation? What prevents us from admitting this? Technical limits? Insufficient power? Who said that today’s limits are limits at all? Is it NOT OBVIOUS that in a thousand years the human intellect will be able not only to model the Universe, it will be able to reproduce entire universes within each of its particles?
Reality and virtuality do not differ by sensations — they DIFFER ONLY BY THE SOURCE that generates the flow of information. Consciousness is NOT A PRODUCER of being, rather a receiver. It is like an antenna tuning in to different frequencies. Change the frequency — and the perceived world changes. Expand the range — and you will see what was once considered nonexistent. And it doesn’t matter whether this is done through meditation, dreams, DMT, or an artificial impulse — the result is the same: a NEW REALITY on your inner screen.
Most people believe that what IS “PERCEIVED” is the truth itself — that what is seen by the eyes is more real than what is imagined. However, THIS IS AN ILLUSION, born of the degree of resolution. A clear pane of glass on the south side of a house gives a sharper image than a frosted one on the north — however, does that mean the world beyond the frosted glass is unreal? Some perceptions are simply brighter, others dimmer. Yet reality exists — both there and here. Following this logic, it becomes clear: there is more than one reality. Everything that is registered, NO MATTER whether by the senses, the mind, or imagination, IS REALITY. The very category of “existence” is identical to perception. What is perceived — exists. And what is NOT PERCEIVED — DOES NOT EXIST at all. Not “does not exist for you,” but truly — nowhere and never. This is no metaphor. It is a literal truth: if no image of something has been imprinted in consciousness, it neither was nor is.
Consciousness is a screen, and perception — the imprint of being. What is imprinted — exists; THE REST IS IMAGINARY. Sensation itself is neither good nor evil; it has only power — not moral, but energetic. Like the wind, it can be strong or weak, yet whether it is favorable or opposing depends only on your direction. Nevertheless, ordinary perception continues to insist: roses smell pleasant, filth does not; red is beautiful, green is bright. However, NONE of these sensations ARE a property of the thing itself. Temperature is the speed of molecular motion; color is wavelength; smell is molecular shape. Tastes, scents, and warmth are merely decoded signals. The pleasant and unpleasant are not qualities of the world rather RESULTS OF INTERPRETATION. The brain assigns the molecular form of a “rose” as desirable and that of “waste” as disturbing. However, in another coordinate system, the programming could differ: a rose could smell of death, and filth of hope. A computer might perceive even numbers as good and odd ones as evil — or the opposite. Both are JUST CONSEQUENCES of the code. This brings us to the most delicate point: if everything perceived is the result of neuro-programs, then the concepts of "black" and "white," "good" and "evil," "tasty" and "disgusting" are the ESSENCE OF THE SETTINGS. We fear losing these axioms. We fear hearing that beauty, goodness, God, and truth are nothing more than a CONSEQUENCE OF FIRMWARE. We fear abandoning the comfort of self-deception, because, as Nietzsche wrote, “to renounce false judgments would be to renounce life itself.” However, perhaps that is precisely what true awakening means. So, as a brief intermediate summary, the contour of our perception today is:
- external object → sense organs → brain → perception → image → action
- alternative: computer/simulation → impulses → the same brain → the same
The modern type of person, raised on the residual programming of the Old Control System, is less an individual than a construct of habits, instincts, and embedded firmware. His perception is the result of EMBEDDED CODE, and without realizing it, he lives inside algorithms. One person finds a hamster cute and a rat repulsive; another, having changed his internal setting, sees the hamster as vile and the rat as an intelligent, endearing creature. The example is simple, but the essence is clear: THE PERCEPTION OF THE WORLD IS PROGRAMMED, and therefore our reactions are the result of pre-set patterns, NOT FREE choice. This is exactly what Socrates pondered: what is freedom? How does a human differ from an animal? 
According to Socrates, it lies in the ABILITY TO CONTROL one’s instincts. The animal obeys its impulse; the human can stop the impulse and make a choice. Thus, freedom is choice. Yet can one choose WITHOUT A reference point? Without a standard or criteria, any choice becomes random — a guess, a blind press of a button. Choosing between two dark boxes is not a choice rather a draw of lots, something even a fly could do by landing on a lid. To choose, one must RELY ON SOMETHING — a program, a cultural norm, an inner standard. Yet if that's the case, the choice is NO LONGER FREE. It is dictated by a pre-installed coordinate system. Hence, FREEDOM IS AN ILLUSION, and every “choice” we make is merely the replay of our internal programming, like a computer that “prefers” even numbers to odd ones, not because it decides so, rather because it was coded that way.
Socrates also sought another essence — the beautiful. What is beauty? A girl, a horse, a pot, a law — all can be beautiful. Yet what is beauty in itself? In trying to answer, Socrates suggested that beauty is THE MAXIMUM correspondence to a function: a girl, if she attracts men; a pot, if it is strong and useful. Yet, this leads to absurdity, for a deadly virus or a torture device would also be beautiful if they PERFECTLY FULFILL their purpose. Another assumption: perhaps beauty is some ideal essence that enters an object and transforms it? Yet if so, a virus possessing that essence should inspire admiration — which it DOES NOT. Beauty slips away. Not everything beautiful is useful, and not everything useful is beautiful. As with freedom, Socrates confronts an empty center — a concept THAT CANNOT BE grasped directly. In the end, he concludes: “the beautiful is difficult.” Not ephemeral, not ideal — SIMPLY DIFFICULT. Likewise, a person, programmed for perception and interpretation, is NOT A MASTER rather a performer. His notions of freedom and beauty are reflections of embedded algorithms. And until he BECOMES AWARE of these programs, he is not truly human rather merely a CARRIER OF BIOCODE. Freedom begins not with choice rather with the discovery of one’s starting points — the moment you become aware of THE VERY ARCHITECTURE of your thinking.
Beauty is a program — like taste, like smell, like musical harmony. What pleases the eye we call beautiful because THAT’S HOW IT’S SET UP, how it’s accepted, how we’ve been taught. What pleases the tongue is tasty; what delights the ear is melodic. However, once the internal criteria is reprogrammed, everything changes: yesterday’s elegance becomes ugliness, and what once seemed hideous SUDDENLY GAINS charm. Beauty is not a property of the object, rather it is a reflection of the preset configuration within the observer. Kant comes to mind: “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe — the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.” Yet both are CODED PROGRAMS. The sky inspires awe because we have imbued it with symbolism. The moral law functions as a cultural pattern instilled in childhood. We revere not the things themselves rather the image embedded in our consciousness.
A person is inseparable from society. An animal raised in isolation still retains its biological identity — it will behave naturally in a pack. A person DEPRIVED OF A CULTURAL environment turns into a wild creature. If development occurs outside human surroundings before the age of fourteen, there is no return — such a being remains human in form yet without human essence. This suggests that man is NOT A COMPLETED being, but a draft, a potential, a blank slate. This raises the question: what is a human? Where lies the boundary between human and animal? Why should “human” sound noble? An unbiased look destroys this illusion. “Human nature” is NOT AN ESSENCE rather a label — just like “computer nature.” In reality, it is merely a set of programs: innate, acquired, imposed. Remove these programs — and NOTHING REMAINS but the physical shell. In this sense, a person resembles a video game character: enter any algorithm, and he will follow it. A program of virtue or a program of cannibalism — there is no difference. This is precisely how human civilization has lived for the last two millennia: WITHIN A PRESET SCENARIO. Eras changed, labels changed, yet the structure of submission to the program remained.
It is impossible for a person to find the bottom of his essence — because there is none. All concepts of morality, good and evil, conscience, and humanism are configurations of consciousness implanted by those who created and administered the old Control System. We like to think we differ from beasts, yet in reality we are covered only by a thin layer of cultural gilding — one that is now rapidly peeling away. Beneath it lies the base code: a “BIOLOGICAL MACHINE” with a set of reactions and preferences. This is not a cause for despair — it is a starting point. Only one who has understood his own illusory nature can break free from it. The FALSE PERSONALITY is merely packaging. However, once we realize this, we can “rewrite the code,” remove the viruses of the old world, and create ourselves anew.
If what exists is only that which is registered, then a person, as the bearer of perception — ceases to be what he believed himself to be. He is NOT THE SUBJECT of cognition, rather an instrument of tuning; not the crown of creation, rather its temporary assembly. Everything we call “reality,” “morality,” “beauty,” “freedom” turns out not to be truth, rather an interface. We do NOT LIVE in the world — we are connected to its image. Until this very day, in our present, we have NOT CHOSEN — we were chosen by programs. We have not felt, we were felt. That said, if illusion can be indistinguishable from truth, then in what direction should we seek the way out? Not toward a return to the “real,” which we have NEVER TRULY KNOWN, rather toward the awareness of the mechanism of fixation. Not toward the destruction of images, rather toward the interception of the one who produces them.
Today we find ourselves in a special phase: the old control system is collapsing, and its images are being laid bare. The delicate gilding of culture is cracking, and beneath it begins to show the raw animal core. There is less and less of the “spiritual” and “elevated,” and MORE AND MORE of the algorithmic and consumerist. What should we call this? Awakening? Simplification? Degradation? Perhaps all at once. Yet one fact remains: the mask of humanity is slipping. What’s left is to understand — what will we do with THIS KNOWLEDGE.
Thus, the conclusion is this: everything we have grown used to calling “ourselves” is a layering of programs, reflections, images, and masks embedded in us through the external world. We are not so much individuals as interfaces. NOT SO MUCH essences as constructs. And if anything remains in us beyond all these layers, it is the ABILITY TO KNOW that we are programmed — and the determination to go further. From this arises the main fork in the path: we can continue playing at being “human,” “real,” “beautiful” or “ugly,” “good” or “evil” — like in a familiar yet decaying game; or we can, for the first time, ask ourselves: what within us IS NOT a program? What within us is real? What remains un- awakened? If only what is perceived exists, and awareness is the act of perception, then victory over illusion is NOT DENIAL, rather illumination. Not in destroying the world, rather in seeing through it; not in rejecting the body, rather in understanding that the body itself is both an illusory window and a mirror. Thus, the path to liberation is NOT ESCAPE rather the stratification of perception, where one remains on the screen, while the other begins to see who is turning it on. This is the beginning of the movement toward reality without a mask, toward freedom without a program, toward immortality beyond code — the overcoming of aging within the idea of Conquering Death. And if everything read and seen here was only one facet, then in the next article we will reveal another — even deeper. For the path to oneself is the path through the dismantling of all versions of oneself.
To be continued…
1 Pastafarianism — a parody religion based on wordplay and created as a protest against the teaching of the “Intelligent Design” theory. Its main object of worship is the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) — an invisible Being that created the Universe. Its followers, called Pastafarians, believe that the FSM deliberately manipulates all evidence of evolution in order to test human faith.
2 The meaning of the Turing Test lies in a machine’s ability to imitate human thinking and conduct a conversation so convincingly that the human evaluator cannot distinguish it from another person. The test is designed to answer the question: “Can a machine think?”