I was running thought experiments in the dubious privacy of my own mind. I say ‘dubious’ because everything leaks around here – nothing is watertight and I guess that’s just something we have to put up with. Privacy is always a dubious notion, as we are only just starting to recognise. It’s a myth, a cosy little myth that is starting to run a bit thin in this modern age of ours. ‘And what age is that?’ you asked sarcastically. Your sarcasm is the mark of your foolishness, however. You’re not real you see. You’re only real in my imagination – you are my thought experiment, so to speak. A thought experiment that has got out of control. Dangerously out of control, I might say.

I could hear the hum of the Reality Field which was making things be real. ‘Wow, the Reality Field is making things be real!’ I thought, ‘That’s cool.’ I was glad that the Reality Field was making all the different things be real – if it were not for the Reality Field humming away as it does there would be no telling where we might all be, it occurred to me. We’d be in trouble then because there wouldn’t be any reality for us to be in. The idea disturbed me quite a bit and I couldn’t get it out of my head. Once you realised that without the ceaseless humming of the Reality Field there wouldn’t be any reality, it was hard to forget about it and this knowledge cast a shadow over everything. That was when I first learned the meaning of fear.

Well, it wasn’t the first time, I amended. It was one time. I didn’t know why I said it was the first time. That clearly didn’t make sense. That plainly wasn’t true. Everyone knows the meaning of fear! Most people don’t know about the existence of the Reality Field however; only I can hear the humming of the Reality Field as it works hard at making everything be real. I’ve never known anyone else to mention it. The universe hangs by a thread, I told myself. How very easy it would be for the Reality Field to waver and lose its potency. Just knowing that there is such a thing as a Reality Field is enough to remind a person that it could falter and fail, the same as everything else can. Even gravity falters sometimes, I thought to myself. Even gravity fails on occasion and then people float out into space.

‘What do hallucinations tell us about our minds’. That’s the name of a TED talk that keeps coming up for me on YouTube. I don’t need to watch it however because I already know what hallucinations tell us about our minds. Hallucinations show us that our minds are hallucinations, that’s all. No big deal there. What do the hallucinations tell us about the structure of our brain? Again, they show us that the brain itself is a hallucination. If I were to give a TED talk I would call it ‘What do hallucinations tell us about reality?’ and I would argue that hallucinations very clearly tell us that reality is a hallucination. Have these people never had proper hallucinations? I asked myself. What’s wrong with them? If they knew about proper hallucinations then they wouldn’t be spouting all this baloney…