Chapter One

Follow the Breadcrumbs

As my business partner and I have explored and developed our VR company, I have come to realize that virtual reality is a perfect metaphor for what we commonly call “life.” In fact, all of the different explorations of my life, which I will describe to you here in this book, point to the same conclusion.

Things are not as they seem.

In this book I am going to guide you through a number of different seemingly random experiences which have all led me to a new understanding of reality. At the core of this shift of understanding is the recognition of a collective error of perception. What we think of as “reality,” is more like a personal and private simulation, than a fixed tangible objective actuality. This simulation is unique to each individual.

If you ever go to one of the VR studios that have cropped up in most of the big cities around the world, they will give you goggles, headphones and a bodysuit. Once the software boots up, if you look down you will see that your body and clothing are no longer the same as you are used to. Now maybe you look like a cat, or a warrior. If you look around the environment, you will see that it is quite different from the world you left behind.

Imagine now for a moment that you go with your friend together to a VR studio like this. You each put on the gear, but they boot you up on two different software programs. For example, maybe you find yourself in a twinkly technicolor world, rather like the fantasy world. You might see little bunnies, elves, and angel dust. Meanwhile, your friend is in a completely different game. He is seeing a war scene: with bright flashes of gunpowder, invading armies, and the need for weapons and defense.

Now imagine a little elf throws you a fluffy pink love-ball. How delightful! Playfully, you toss this ethereal object over to your friend. But your friend, locked in the other reality, sees a flaming fireball coming towards him, which he needs to immediately deflect with his shield. He looks over to you, and sees a huge monster, aiming to destroy him. In his world, he sees that you were behaving very aggressively, and therefore the need to be defensive, strategic and even counter-aggressive in order to survive.

“What is his problem?” you wonder. “I sent him a nice little fluffy love ball, and he just deflected it away with his arm. What on earth is wrong with him?”

Actually, this happens all the time, although we may not notice. We are all living in separate simulations. When your spouse comes home, you might casually ask, “Did you remember to buy the butter?” This question could land completely differently, depending on the simulation. You might have asked the question within the context of “Our cozy life together,” in which we are going to make cookies, and have fun. Your partner might hear the question as an accusation, a judgment about their reliability, and respond defensively.

Somehow, we all manage to negotiate these completely separate simulations, and try to make sense of the sometimes confusing signals that are coming at us all day. We create common objects and language, even though they may have different significance in each private world.

This could not be more evident than in our current polarized political discourse. Same events, completely different interpretations. One sees a furball, the other a fireball and the results of this discrepancy can be deadly. Literally.

It is not as simple as to repeat the worn out pop New Age mantra: “You are dreaming all this, you are creating your own reality.” That statement still leaves an entity called “you” unexamined, as solid and real. No, when we explore this inquiry deeply enough, we realize that this is ALL a simulation. Everything that is perceived, seen, heard, smelled, remembered or imagined, is being dreamed. Equally, every notion we have about the qualities of “me” as a localized, personal entity is equally part of the simulation. In the way that we usually use the word “you,” it would not be true to say that “you” create reality, or that you can dissolve it.

In VR, you take the body of an avatar, which has certain powers, weapons, armor and clothing. As long as you remain absorbed in the game, you are the avatar. The avatar is you. Of course, most people playing video games maintain some small degree of peripheral awareness: recognizing that this is just a simulation written by programmers for entertainment purposes. Then it is obvious that the avatar did not create the video game, or define its rules and restrictions. That was done by someone with very different superpowers: a programmer working for a company in Silicon Valley. No, the avatar has certain abilities defined and limited by the rules of the game, but cannot change those rules. The avatar can only affect the game in the ways dictated by the one who created it.

Everything about “you,” is part of the dream. As we slowly awaken to this, it does not make us immediately omniscient: able to snap our fingers and pull a white rabbit out of thin air. Instead, it leads to a much more playful, humorous and ingenious relationship to the dream, where we can now respond to seemingly external events in unexpected ways, ways in which the localized avatar (“me”) was not programmed to respond. As you will discover, one of the consequences of shifting our relationship to the dreamlike nature of reality is that we become naturally and spontaneously more compassionate, more service-oriented, and more creative. That is what this book is about: a manual in successfully, sanely, and heartfully navigating the virtual reality we have previously taken to be real.

In 1520, Nicolaus Copernicus was the first person to suggest that the earth was a planet, among many others, which were all revolving around the sun. It was the opening shot in a revolution whose consequences were greater than those of any other intellectual event in our history. Copernicus did not just revolutionize astronomy, but the whole western worldview changed from medieval thinking to the Renaissance. A little less than one hundred years ago, Einstein, Niels Bohr, and others postulated theories about the nature of subatomic particles: that they only behave like particles when an observer perceives them, and they are otherwise wavelike, without a fixed location in time and space. In the same way, the consequences of theoretical quantum physics have generated most of our modern technology. I believe that we are now at the beginning of another paradigm shift, one just as powerful, which is correcting an error of perception about reality, and catapulting us into a leap of evolution and maturity perhaps even more significant than the Renaissance.

Sometimes, our simulations align to give the appearance of a solid, reliable external reality. Then we try and measure that temporary appearance and call it “reality” based upon “empiricism.” It feels comforting and convenient, but it is not actually true and, as you will discover in these pages, does not stand up to the rigor of deeper examination. When we build VR environments, each end user wears a headset. I might see a cup in my headset. You might see a cup in yours. If we are playing an interactive game, I could move the cup in my simulation, and you would see it move in yours. This leads us to believe that there is only one cup, that we are both seeing from different perspectives. But that is not true, is it? There is no real cup. There is just the image that my headset is showing me, and a different image that your headset is showing you, which together gives the illusion of a shared objective reality.

In this book, we will discover this through a deep dive into neuroscience, medicine, quantum physics, Buddhism, plant based medicine and many other such “portals.” As you will discover in these pages, our lives —yours and mine — are generously scattered with clues about the real nature of things. We just have to learn to pay attention.

The attempt to create a universal shared, empirical reality is incredibly limiting to our capacity to learn the powerful lessons available in every moment, when we pay close attention to the trail of breadcrumbs in the dream.

Since birth we have learned to override our subjective experience, in favor of what other people are telling us is real. You and I and all our friends were born into innocence and openness. Over time, we have been trained to distrust our experience, and to put faith in what others teach us is true. But the longing for innocence and truth remains. It is a visceral craving for the naturalness that animals or small babies display.

Deep down, a part of us knows that we have surrendered our sovereignty, and lost connection. Why do we feel so compelled to do this? Why do most of us so willingly participate as a small insignificant extra in a movie where someone else is the star, someone else wrote the script, and someone else is the director? Why do so many people choose to give away power to leaders who do not have their best interests at heart?

Let’s start with birth. We learn to exist — as animals with a body — through the mirror of others’ eyes. Immediately, a small baby begins to establish communication with the mother, through eye contact, sounds and gestures. The most pressing thing is to know that basic needs are going to be met. The child development psychologist Jean Piaget determined that the movements of a newborn baby suggest that they have no sense of localized self. A baby can grab a rattle and bring it towards their face, and then be surprised when the rattle hits into a solid object.

It is once we develop language that the belief in “otherness,” intensifies. Your mother will tell you “you are Joey, this is your hand, this is your foot, this is Joey’s food. No No, here is mom’s food.” The entire world begins to be differentiated according to a sense of personal identity. Because of survival needs, you have no choice but to go along with the story. We stick with it despite our better understanding and instinct. I can still remember, as a child, sensing that most of what my family was telling me was not true. I was so afraid of being abandoned, of being without love or nurturing that I fell in line with the shared reality, even if it ultimately caused me suffering. We learn to completely define ourselves through our relationship to others. When faced with the prospect of going on a silent retreat, most people panic. We have lost the ability to exist except through the reflection of the shared narrative.

But language does not only teach us about identity. It teaches us to believe in things that would not otherwise be real. Language is not just a way to be able to make an appropriate noise to indicate “leaf,” or “kneecap,” or “sun,” or “lips.” You also learn words for things like “money,” “government,” “America,” and “religion.” You learn to develop a relationship to the vague undefined force of “they,” who invent things, and solve things, and cause the world to operate the way that it does. (They are increasing taxes, they are monitoring our phone calls, maybe soon they will find a cure for cancer. Has anyone ever met “them?”) Piaget pointed out that the word for “I,” and “me,” are not actually labeling things that already existed. They are creating ideas that were not previously there.

As we get older, this sense of cooperating with an externally defined reality becomes intensified. It is how human beings get trained to participate in a shared social system. Almost every child has heard their mother say “Clean your room.” If the child asks “Why?” (as most children do at one time or another) the answer comes back “Because I told you to.” If you ask too many questions, you are told “Don’t you answer me back young man/woman.” You are conditioned to believe that it is not necessary for you to understand why you are doing things, that is just not part of the deal. It is much more convenient for your parents (especially if there are several kids around), to train you to do what you were told. You don’t need meaning and coherence, you just need to wash your hands and go to bed when you are told to. Once again, at this early age cooperation is the necessary ticket for physical survival.

Later, at school we learn by rote. Two times two is four, Two times three is six… You don’t necessarily need to understand why you are learning this, you just need to remember it and be able to repeat it later in a test. Of course, there are some rare exceptions to this way of learning, like the Waldorf Education System developed by Rudolph Steiner, but generally the culture is still oriented towards indoctrination with previously established external norms. Later, a bribery system is established to make sure you go up through all the grades, one after another, always measured against standardized testing. At every step of the way, you are tested on being able to repeat the rules of the external reality you have been fed.

During this book, we will frequently refer to the analogy of a rabbit hole. Your sense of identity can be wedged all the way down the rabbit hole, where there is very little wiggle room, and you are fully identified with being a conditioned entity, controlled by predefined rules. You have relatively few creative choices. The further down the rabbit hole you go, the more believable the story becomes. You experience stronger emotions, greater anxiety, as well as greater motivation and urgency to change things, to survive. The apparent constraints of time bind you more tightly. In those moments, you take things very seriously. If you managed to wiggle your way up the rabbit hole just a little bit, you may feel more empowered, with more of a sense of freedom. You can continue to inch your way up like this, through different layers of restriction, each time experiencing more creativity, more freedom, and more humor. By continuing to expand the idea of who you think you are in this way, it is theoretically possible to return to being fully identified with being the limitless space out of which all limits are created.

To some degree, it is necessary and inevitable to get lost down the rabbit hole for a while. If you don’t get somewhat lost in the story, you remain cold and detached, feeling no passion or fun. But if you get wedged down the rabbit hole, too lost in stories, you will create needless suffering for yourself, and lose the freedom to live creatively.

To be continued………….

Table of Contents

  • Chapter One — Follow the Breadcrumbs
    The Portal of Everyday Experience · 1
  • Chapter Two — The Dream is What is Real
    The Portal of Psychoanalysis · 17
  • Chapter Three — Up and Down the Rabbit Hole
    The Portal of Medicine · 33
  • Chapter Four — The Cobra that Came out of my Mouth
    The Portal of Shamanism · 63
  • Chapter Five — Why I fed my Raw Flesh to a Nurse
    The Portal of Buddhism · 84
  • Chapter Six — How I Tamed the Monster in my Bedroom
    The Portal of Lucid Dreaming · 97
  • Chapter Seven — The Switch in My Brain
    The Portal of Neuroscience · 111
  • Chapter Eight — What the Mad Hatter Knows about Alice
    The Portal of Quantum Physics · 127
  • Chapter Nine — The God’s Eye View
    The Portal of Art · 136
  • Chapter Ten — How to Make Reality Appear Real
    The Portal of Virtual Reality · 149
  • Chapter Eleven — Putting it All Together
    The Portal of Understanding · 166