There’s this idea I keep returning to: that reality, as we perceive it, is a hallucination. A shared, adaptive hallucination. Our senses don’t give us truth—they give us usefulness. The way a bat “sees” with sonar or a fish senses electric fields—those are real to them. We just get the human version. Filtered. Trimmed. Functional.
But here’s the kicker: if reality is filtered, then maybe we never perceive the most important parts. Maybe the universe is teeming with patterns, energies, or signals we’re blind to—not because they’re too faint, but because they’re irrelevant to evolution. It’s like living in a vast mansion, but we’ve only ever used the hallway because that’s all we needed to survive.
And yet, sometimes—through poetry, psychedelics, philosophy, dreams—we stumble into the other rooms. The trick is not getting lost in them. I don’t want to abandon the hallway. But I do want to peek into the doors more often.