Is life real or just an illusion?

Hi everyone,after posting in some of the user threads I decided to make my very first thread on here. So I hope this is the right board for it and if it's not then the administrators can move it to it's proper place.

What I have here is something I got from a teen site. There was a person who came up with the idea that life could be an illusion.Here's what the person came up with and remember that this didn't come from me,I'm just "borrowing" it.

Imagine that a human being has been subjected to an operation by an evil scientist the persons brain has been removed from the body and placed into a vat of nutrients which keeps the brain alive the nerve endings have been connected to a super scientific computer which causes the person to believe the illusion that everything is perfectly normal there seem to be people, objects the sky, etc, but really all the person is experiencing is the result of electronic impulses traveling from the computer to the nerve endings.

Here's the question that is being asked: Is life just an illusion for us too?

I believe reality is a false one, and either that there are individual consciousnesses (you and I), or a single, multiple-personality consciousness that is simply bored with itself.


[edit on 12/14/2008 by prototism]

I think in a way life could be an illusion. My reason for thinking this is because sometimes things don't seem real. Sometimes I feel like our universe is inside a box on top of a desk and it's being manipulated by something that is neither human or alien. It sounds weird, but it sounded better in my head.

Technically life is just the brain's interpretation of our atmosphere, and not necessarily the atmosphere itself. We can therefor refer to it as an illusion if you wish.

Well if life is an illusion and were all brains in a tub of nutrients, connected to wires. how can people talk together and have there own thoughts on what has been said.
its a good idea and i love conspiracy theory's but this ones a lil far fetched for me.

Have a Good one

Sound's a lot like the movie trilogy 'The Matrix', some of my favorite movies

There are plenty of philosophical theories that many famous philosophers have discussed throughout the centuries many of which include the idea that reality is merely an illusion.

Take René Descartes for example, stated as the 'Father of Modern Philosophy' his most famous quote 'I think, therefore I am; OR I am thinking, therefore I exist' is a response to his own ponderings of finding proof of his own existence. Not being able to rely on any of his own physical senses, because they are also embedded in this reality, the only true proof he could determine was the very fact that he questions his existence within himself, therefore inferring the fact that he must exist.

If you are interested in this area of study, I would suggest taking classes, or course in philosophy. It can really open up your mind.


My own personal beliefs are that we are creatures of 'matter' made up of the illusionary substances of atoms. It is a scientific fact that 99% of matter is just empty space governed by forces and it has been recently postulated that all matter is just a special configuration of energy and space. As far as we are concerned, reality for us is what we see, however on the quantum scale, we are all just a bunch of energy and space. Our thoughts however may not be so defined by the 3D limits of our observed reality.

reply to post by Nox789


Can you prove that everyone around you and the conversations you have with them are not just an illusion created by a super power computer just for yourself alone? Maybe that very scenario has been created just for you, (or anyone with thought) just to give the illusion of the reality you experience.

No i cant prove that its not true, but can anyone prove that it is at all???
And if you can prove it then i will believe it but for now its just a lil far fetched.

i have the same thoughts on religion too, unless you can give me hard facts of it then i will remain skeptical.

Originally posted by Nox789
No i cant prove that its not true, but can anyone prove that it is at all???
And if you can prove it then i will believe it but for now its just a lil far fetched.

i have the same thoughts on religion too, unless you can give me hard facts of it then i will remain skeptical.

That's the kicker, you can't prove anything other than the fact that you (or I from my own point of view) are real because you doubt it in your own thoughts. Reality is an interpretation of our senses and brain. Can you trust your input without relying on your senses?

Originally posted by theresult
If i kick ur face in its very real..

go away..

Ok, you just keep telling yourself that buddy... Who are you requesting to 'go away?' exactly anyway?

Perhaps how we are living is an illusion, and not the atoms that make up us.

I believe the universe is so complex or so miraculous we may believe it to be an illusion, our collective reality a product of a vast super intelligence of a supercomputer to end all supercomputers.

Life as an illusion could refer to the fact we are kidding ourselves if we believe most politicians or corporate leaders have the desire to improve the condition of mankind and that no secrets are hidden.

The 'Illusion' could be that the average John and Jane Q. Public believes that they are masters of their own destinies and that they are truly free, and not that this world is a weird Matrix like world where our own robotic successors have hijacked our bodies, leeching our energy,feeding our own dead back to us in the process.

I think the Matrix draws on interesting real-to-life parallels but in our real reality, the future robots are replaced with the PTB, and they work the same way. They leech our energy, our souls, and our money to make them bigger.

The Matrix should be put in the nonfiction section, just as George Orwell's 1984 in some public libraries in recent years.

Life is as real as a dream. Dreams are just more personal.

Even if it's all an illusion, it still requires thought, and that is quite real.

Originally posted by Kruel
Life is as real as a dream. Dreams are just more personal.

Even if it's all an illusion, it still requires thought, and that is quite real.

Exactly, those are my 'thoughts' too. No matter what level of reality we experience our existence, thought is the only thing we can rely on. No matter, if this is reality or not, it is what we experience (or what I experience anyway)

reply to post by Toasty


All I can think of is a quote by David Duchovny from an episode of Dr. Katz:

"Sometimes I wonder if dreams are the reality and life is the simulacrum."

I think it's something worth pondering anyhow.

The real illusion, Maya is that you are asking this question on a forum instead of looking deeply within.

Everything outside your inner being is illusion. The only place you can truly deny ignorance is within, never on on the outside will this question be answered.

This is a most intriguing topic. I would suggest reading the many articles that Dr. Nick Bostrom of Oxford has written on this very subject. Here's his website where you can download a lot of info: www.simulation-argument.com...

I won't go into detail about his conclusions and mathmatical proofs for his theory, but he does make a strong case for our lives being a simulation. The whole idea revolves around a post-human civilization having the technology to make an ancestor simulation, which would be what we are experiencing right now. It's all very thought provoking.

Good thread topic!

reply to post by yadda333


Thanks heaps yadda333, i remember that paper from a while back. It looks like it has gain quite a lot of attention. It great to see when different aspects of academia come together such as mathematics and philosophy.

Looks like ill be doing some refresher readings.

i LOVE these "life is an illusion" type theories, i've been reading a lot on the holographic universe theory which states that:

OUR BRAINS MATHEMATICALLY CONSTRUCT OBJECTIVE REALITY BY INTERPRETING FREQUENCIES THAT ARE ULTIMATELY PROJECTIONS FROM ANOTHER DIMENSION, A DEEPER ORDER OF EXISTENCE THAT IS BEYOND BOTH SPACE AND TIME: THE BRAIN IS A HOLOGRAM ENFOLDED IN A HOLOGRAPHIC UNIVERSE.

i read this in another thread on this site which i found intricately insightful

All of this (physical life/ incarnation), is a very intricate and skillfully designed Game, whereby the One Infinite Creator, plays the game of forgetting who It is, si that It can learn to remember, and in doing so, experience and know Itself as Creator. All the way down to us tiny individuated sparks of the All That Is...

Using the Law of Free Will, each Universal Logos (Central Sun) designs and creates It's own version or perspective of "physical reality", in which to experience Itself as Creator. Stepping down again, It focuses It's Intelligent Energy and creates the unmanifest form of Galaxies within Itself, and splits Itself into yet further 'co-creator' portions ('Sub-Logos' or Suns) which in turn will then design and manifest their own ideas of physical reality in the form of points of Concious Awareness that we call Suns Stars and Planets.

I truly think that this world isn't as it seems and that our thoughts play a larger role in the creation of our realities than we could realise.

The planet is the way it is, because of your collective thoughts about it. You are complicit in your inaction, every time you 'look the other way' when you see an injustice. Your thought at the sub-concious level of creation to the Creator, is your allowance of these things to occur.

Window of Opportunity

[edit on 15/12/08 by pretty_vacant]

reply to post by Rocketgirl
Both!