Since antIs reality was defined in the book TotIs, a number of words have been utilized to describe its nature. They are;  interpretation, fabrication, creation, process, product and illusion. Depending on the context, any one of these descriptions are apt, and in a sense its descriptor requires a word that combines all of these into one. But the word that carries the most baggage, so to speak, is the word ‘illusion’. It is, I think, the most difficult to accept, and so, for the purposes of this post I will use it to make the following point

There remains, despite the greatest effort to overcome it, an inability, seemingly instinctual, to accept the finding that our very experience of reality and the world around us is, at its core, an illusion. This belief that our antIs reality can not be an illusion stems from the seeming evidence that appears all around us. We live in and experience a world where time flows. We experience objects and events moving through space-time. Through our observations we have discovered deep laws of reality via science, medicine, engineering, etc, and have manipulated our environment to create novel creations in both art and science. How can all this, and the rest, be an illusion?

As described in earlier posts, and in the book TotIs, due to the nature of the process by which we biological beings observe our interactions with our reality, we are denied any observation or experience of actual totIs reality. As far as the organism is concerned, antIs reality is absolute, it is the one and only means we have to interact with totIs reality, and it provides us with the only experience of reality that we are capable of partaking. However, the aforementioned evidence does not disprove the illusory nature of antIs experience, to the contrary, given that this evidence is generated through our antIs experience, it only serves to verify that it derives from antIs reality, an imperfect interpretation of totIs reality. For this reason I make every effort to avoid arguments that rely on questions stemming from our antIs experiences that seek to reject the illusory nature of those experiences. I have focused instead on substantiating the nature of the underlying process of observation and experiencing, for biological entities like ourselves. To quote Sherlock Holmes – “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” If it can be shown that the very process that creates observers, and thus, their experienced universe, is an interpreted representation of actual reality, and that the inputs used to fabricate that interpretation are limited, fallible and prone to inaccuracy, then it  becomes impossible to use the ‘facts’ generated by that interpreted product in order to prove they are anything other than interpretations and not reality itself. This is what is done in the book TotIs, and, it is in this sense, as they relate to totIs reality, that they can be called illusions.

To Illustrate this point let’s imagine an international group of ‘observers’ with specialized knowledge and sophistication in finance and investing, in other words, investors. Furthermore, let’s imagine a small group of people who have created an investment company we’ll call IC, that promises to generate a constant 10% annual return (APR) on those investments. In reality the folks at IC are not going to invest much, if any, of the money they receive but instead will simply pay out the APR with the investors own cash and keep the rest of the money for themselves. This is the classic Ponzi scheme. To make it work, IC will keep account of the money they take in and pay out with one ‘prime’ process while creating the illusion of a working investment company with another ‘illusory’ process. This illusory process will be the only information generated by IC that the investors, and the world at large, will have access to. The information generated by the illusory process will consist of typical financial and investment artifacts and other things, such as, account statements, graphs and charts, personal communications, meetings, press releases, etc. All of this information will be processed, based on the reality of what’s happening at IC, so as to give the appearance that the investors money has been invested and is earning returns. Meanwhile, the people at IC are the only ones who have access to the actual, ‘prime’, information regarding the reality of the money they control.

This illustration is not meant to explore or highlight any moral issues, nor the nature of finances, fraud, or theft. Neither is it concerned with any aspects of actual human to human interactions. This illustration concerns itself with one thing, and one thing only, the relationship of a processed, dependent ‘reality’ and the prime reality it is dependent on, in order to clarify the effects inherent in such a relationship. 

In this illustration, the prime reality is very different from the illusory reality. None but the few people at IC who maintain the prime reality know of its existence. Everyone else in the world, including the investors, know only the illusory reality. They don’t, and can’t, see it as illusory, so for all intents and purposes, to them, it is actual reality. All information received as well as conversations, decisions, and actions undertaken will be based on this illusory reality, as it is continually processed and represented to them, and everyone else, by IC.

Two salient points stand out in this relationship. First is the fact that the illusory reality would not exist except for the existence of the prime reality. The illusory reality is a function of the IC’s processed information, fabricated for the investors, in relation to the prime reality itself. It is wholly dependent on the prime reality. The prime reality, however, is exactly that, prime,  everything else flows from it, and is not dependent on the fabricated, illusory reality. Second is the fact that those who experience the illusory reality have absolutely no way to experience or gain knowledge of the prime reality via any experience or observations based on IC’s fabricated illusory reality. The ‘prime’ reality is completely inaccessible to them, and as such, has no real existence for them.

Given these two facts about this relationship between the prime and illusory reality, we can see that should someone insinuate or even accuse IC of fraud, that is, claim it to be an illusion, the investors would consider that nonsense, as they could easily debunk such an accusation by pointing to the ‘facts’ as they know and experience them to be. Each doubt would be met with a cascade of verifiable ‘proof’, which is, in actuality, only confirming and validating the illusory reality. This illustrates that in this, and all instances like it, it is impossible to use the facts generated by such an illusory process to gain an experience or knowledge of the actual nature of the underlying reality it is dependent on. As described in the book TotIs, the relationship of antIs reality to totIs reality is just such a case.

Some might say that such a scenario is unrealistic or too far-fetched, and so, is unsuitable for use as an illustration of this point. Amazingly though, this illustration is drawn from actual history, and giving credence to the saying “Truth is stranger than fiction”, exemplifies this illustration in a clear and unambiguous way, to wit.

In 1960, a financial investment company called Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC was formed. Between that date and Dec of 2008, when it crashed, Bernie Madoff and a tiny staff operated the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history. When he was arrested in 2008, a whopping $65 billion existed only as an illusion in his clients accounts, which amount included the illusory gains represented to, and believed by them, as real. During that time $18 billion actual dollars disappeared into the insatiable maw of their greed. That is over $1 million per day for 48 years. The illusory money, believed real until that moment, when the scheme finally collapsed, is the equivalent of $3.71 million per day, every day, for 48 years! Madoff’s company was investigated by the SEC no fewer than eight times before it crashed, during which they found only a few minor trading violations. His investors were not amateurs, quite the contrary, the list was international, and included banks, brokerages, hedge funds, money managers, charities, insurance companies, and more. The scheme was only discovered when, on the verge of its collapse, Madoff himself revealed it to his son, who then reported it to the FBI. Had the great recession not interceded  it would, very likely, still be in operation today. This example shows that the effects and consequences described in the above illustration are very real and are not relegated only to the ignorant or gullible.

To point to our experience, say of time’s flow, tells us nothing more than that the process we undergo as biological entities, interfacing with totIs reality, produces for us an experience of flowing time. Because it is the only experience of reality we are capable of having we will equate it as reality itself, even though it is not. Much like the investors in Madoff’s scheme, the more we look to antIs experience for validation, the more convinced we become that it is actual reality. This is the absolute nature of antIs experience and the source of our inability to accept our antIs experiences as illusory. This is also why I continue to focus on revealing the nature of the relationship between antIs to totIs reality as opposed to challenging specific or particular antIs experiences of reality. By focusing on the former a perceptual platform is created whereby we can begin to conceptualize the underlying nature of a totIs reality that transcends the limited experiences and interpretations that our biological processes supply. By acquiescing to the latter we continue to conflate antIs and totIs reality, believing that our biology’s processed and interpreted product is actual reality itself. The two approaches and their respective revelations couldn’t be more different.