Why we possibly live in a simulation and is love the key to setting oneself free

Albert Einstein once said: “Reality is an illusion — albeit a very persistent one”. Over the years, there have been a growing number of people who have suggested that we are inhabiting an illusion or virtual reality. Elon Musk has said that the chances we’re living in base-reality are “a billion to one” and has suggested that at the rapid rate at which video-game graphics’ sophistication and verisimilitude is increasing it won’t be long before games become “indistinguishable from reality”. In which case, the argument goes, how do we know we aren’t already in a computer simulation now created by more advanced beings? Philip Dick once said: “We are living in a computer-programmed reality and the only clue we have to it is when some variable is changed and some alteration in our reality occurs”. This is more than whimsical thinking and science fiction; while exploring the mathematics of String Theory, physicist James Gates discovered literal “computer code” buried deep within the equations, with Gates saying: “I’m left with the trouble of trying to figure out if I live in The Matrix”.


A common argument that we could be in a virtual reality or computerized simulation comes from the discovery of Quantum Entanglement (otherwise known as Nonlocality) which describes the ability of objects to instantaneously correspond with one another, even when separated by large distances (supposedly even across the known universe). In a simulation or video-game, distance doesn’t limit instant correspondence because all points in the game are equidistant with respect to the source of the simulation. In which case, Nonlocality would make sense if the world were a simulation. The implications of the Double Slit experiment also suggest that we could be living in a simulation due to the fact that the particles which behave like waves are in a superstate. They are neither there nor are they not there. In other words, what you don’t see isn’t actually present. This is how performance optimization works in video-games and how we are able to represent massive open worlds. What is not visible to the observer simply does not exist and doesn’t have to be rendered (see the book ‘The Simulation Hypothesis’).


The idea that ordinary humanity is trapped or imprisoned in a virtual reality is a very old one of course. Plato once allegorized our perception of existence to that of shadows on a cave that had been watched by a group of prisoners since they were born. The prisoners in the cave (being representative of unenlightened humanity) believed that the shadows represented true reality because that is all they ever knew. In Buddhism, there is also the concept of Maya which tells us the world is an illusion. But it doesn’t just refer to any illusion. Maya is used to represent the fact that we take the world around us to be real when it’s only a temporary illusion. Meanwhile, according to Gnosticism, our souls have been trapped in materialism. Gnostics believed the world had been created by a malevolent being called the Demiurge and that our souls have descended from above and are capable of reascending through “gnosis”. They identified the Demiurge with Yahweh. According to Gnostic researcher John Lash, Gnostic “cosmological text explains that the [realm] of the Demiurge is a virtual reality”.


Assuming we are trapped in a virtual reality, how do we escape? Some say that to escape the material world and ascend, we must unite the macrocosm with the microcosm through the Tree of Life, thus accomplishing the Great Work (a term used in Hermeticism to describe enlightenment and the rescue of the human soul from the forces that bind it). Part of the Great Work is to “become one with our soul and our loved ones and make the world a better place”. According to Gnosticism, there’s only one way to escape the material world and it’s through “gnosis” which entails “demonstrating love and compassion and striving to escape from materialism”. Meanwhile, in the book ‘The Simulation Hypothesis’, Rizwan explains that to break the spell of Maya (and Samsara) and escape the material world and ascend, we must transcend our Karma and achieve Moksha (a Buddhism term). The law of Karma is said to be the fundamental law of the universe underlying all the laws of nature. Rizwan describes Karma as the process whereby “every being evolves towards its own intrinsic perfection”.


The idea of escaping Samsara and breaking the spell of Maya through Karma can be seen in various movies and TV shows. Most notably, Groundhog Day, where the protagonist is trapped in a loop. The movie is jovial, but profound. The protagonist, Phil, finds himself repeating the same day over and over again, with no escape. He starts off as being unkind to others and self-absorbed and floats along without comprehension of how his actions affect those around him. Only when he learns to be more caring does he escape. As someone else says: “Groundhog Day is the message of Buddhism where the hero escapes the suffering of life by being good and doing good for others. Students of Buddhism believe that we are destined to relive events based on Karma and only the most enlightened among us get to “awake” and will escape”. The movie Christmas Every Day also touches upon the same themes. The protagonist, Billy, starts off ungrateful and self-absorbed, and finds himself trapped in a loop, with Christmas repeating every day, until he learns to be more caring, which breaks the loop.

Another movie with a comparable storyline is Before I fall. Similar to Groundhog Day and Christmas Every Day, in this movie the protagonist is also condemned to live the same day over and over again, until she figures out how to escape the loop. Initially, she possesses all the selfish whims of teenage desire, but like Groundhog Day, eventually, she learns to be a better person. After repeating the same day many times, she learns a lot about herself and how she has hurt those around her. Her shift from selfishness and absorption in her boyfriend (who she only cares about because of his looks) to emotional maturity and genuine love for her friends and family, is what breaks the loop. The Endless is another loop movie that “examines Karma and confronts the characters with variations of the same challenges over and over again”. The take-home message is: Good Karma (and love) will release you from Samsara. In the movie Interstellar, love also plays a role in Cooper escaping the loop and hypercube, which they sum up by saying: “Love is the one thing that transcends time and space”.

* Continued Below *

Similar to Groundhog Day, The Matrix also has Buddhist elements. The virtual reality that Neo inhabits in The Matrix is periodically reset. In this sense, the Matrix is akin to Samsara, and Neo represents the ancient Buddha who set the example of breaking free. How does Neo break free and overcome Smith? He tries everything to overcome Smith. But in the end, dies, and has to be brought back to life by Trinity. It was the love Trinity had for Neo that brought him back from the dead. “You can’t die, because I love you” she says, as she kisses and resurrects him, echoing the story of Isis and Osiris: The two soul mates who were reunited through love, and the resurrection of Osiris by Isis, who breathed life back into his body, leading to the vanquish of Set (Smith). It was self belief powered by love that unlocked Neo’s true power. His journey could be seen as a representation of us once we’ve been surrounded by people that we love. The Matrix, in my opinion, is another story that sends the message that love is the key to setting oneself free from the clutches of the Demiurge’s virtual reality.

The idea of escaping the material world and ascending by having good Karma and by having a good heart is not only hinted at in Hollywood movies. According to many religions, when someone dies, their soul (or heart) is evaluated. Thousands of years ago, paintings show dead Egyptians appearing before the gods and having their deeds weighed on the Scales of Justice. On one side of the scales was placed their heart which was counterbalanced by a feather that represented Maat — the goddess of truth and justice. If their deeds were good and their heart pure, they would move on to the afterlife where they would live for eternity (the afterlife for the ancient Egyptians was known as the Field of Reeds and was like Earth, except for the fact that there was no sickness or death). However, if their deeds were bad and their hearts tainted by evil, their hearts would be swallowed by a monster and some say they would wander Earth for eternity. The weighing of hearts against a feather on a scale determined by truth and justice is an ancient model of what most people today would call Karma.

a reply to: Nathan-D

Karma is a flowing, it is constant, we are constantly in the midst of cause and effect. Perspective, response to that experienced…generates the continuing drama. Love is a word that describes a condition of consciousness that sees “the whole picture.” That condition of unity with all described…seems a determined resolution to the chaos of unconscious desire fed by limited understanding.

a reply to: Nathan-D
Trying to be good is the imprisonment.

I have always believed we are in a simulation.

On vacation as a child we would drive through the desert.

I would stare out the side window for hours.

I would sometimes see repeated frames.

Making me curious as a child wth was going on.

a reply to: Nathan-D
This is the second long thread on simulated reality this morning. I tried to get through that other one and failed and when looking at the length of this one decided not to try.

So, rather than attempting to garner more information on the nature of this idea of a simulated reality, I can ask you this.

Your avatar appears to be a keyhole with unending light streaming though it into the darkness in which we, the viewers, exist. There is also a number sitting in the head of that keyhole which one might assume to be the upcoming year 2024.

This might be in reference to the election cycle that elects it's presidential representatives in the United States. Is there some spiritual significance between your notion of a simulated reality and that election?

a reply to: Nathan-D

Everything that entertains a notion of 'outside the universe' is a (worst case) distraction &/or (best case) irrelevant.
Unscientific too because we could never test it in any way.
I mean even if there is some kind of code we could crack we'd still only be able to know what it does inside this universe.
And for that we'd need quantum computers in the magnitude of the universe, so I'd say there's your hint.
I would say the universe is a quantum perpetuum computation system, and we're little Biological Intelligence Devices trying to figure out what the right way to interpret all the data around us is.
The simulation is a pop culture step child of the holographic universe. The pop stands in this case for preposterous outrageous poop.

And I mean I love Elon but he's not exactly the poster child for sanity...

I challenge you to cook a cheeseburger and eat it, savor the texture and humidity of a hot shower or the relief of fresh air in your lungs after holding your breath for a long minute, recreate a warm hug and the smell of your mother's perfume, all of this using only software. Then tell me reality is illusion.

a reply to: Nathan-D
If we lived "in a simulation", why shouild there be any way of setting ourselves free? Following through the analogy, we find that the contents of a man-made simulation don't have any "escape routes". I've never been able to understand why people were so keen to believe in a "simulation" theory. What benefit does it offer?

a reply to: Nathan-D

We need more studies and results from intravenous TMD studies.

Nuff said.

a reply to: Nathan-D

You must to make the distinction between you, and the universe, and then ask whether you are the simulated one, or whether it is the universe the one being simulated. Both of you being simulated is a logical impossibility.

Knowing whether the universe is simulated has been already answered by physics: no way. Otherwise a fraction of the photons would bounce off the boundaries of the universe and come back to you, in which case they would be scattered leaving a fingerprint in their polarization, something we do not observe in our measurements. So no, the Universe is not simulated.

But, what about you? Are you the one being simulated? In this case the answer is most likely positive, yet you will never know it because it pertains to simulated beings to never know whether they are being simulated or not. Data never knows it is data. The algorithm does, though.

originally posted by: TzarChasm
I challenge you to cook a cheeseburger and eat it, savor the texture and humidity of a hot shower or the relief of fresh air in your lungs after holding your breath for a long minute, recreate a warm hug and the smell of your mother's perfume, all of this using only software. Then tell me reality is illusion.

I can recreate all of this things using the software between my ears, so a machine or a program could do it too.

originally posted by: Direne
a reply to: Nathan-D

You must to make the distinction between you, and the universe, and then ask whether you are the simulated one, or whether it is the universe the one being simulated. Both of you being simulated is a logical impossibility.

Knowing whether the universe is simulated has been already answered by physics: no way. Otherwise a fraction of the photons would bounce off the boundaries of the universe and come back to you, in which case they would be scattered leaving a fingerprint in their polarization, something we do not observe in our measurements. So no, the Universe is not simulated.

But, what about you? Are you the one being simulated? In this case the answer is most likely positive, yet you will never know it because it pertains to simulated beings to never know whether they are being simulated or not. Data never knows it is data. The algorithm does, though.

Not going to believe that our limited science and minds can say with absolute certainty that the universe is not a simulation. They would need to show us a base particle of reality and matter then, and they cant, no matter how much force they use to smash particles they will never see the basic raw form. Because it does not exist. Kinda like we do not exist.

originally posted by: TerryMcGuire
a reply to: Nathan-D
This is the second long thread on simulated reality this morning. I tried to get through that other one and failed and when looking at the length of this one decided not to try.

So, rather than attempting to garner more information on the nature of this idea of a simulated reality, I can ask you this.

Your avatar appears to be a keyhole with unending light streaming though it into the darkness in which we, the viewers, exist. There is also a number sitting in the head of that keyhole which one might assume to be the upcoming year 2024.

This might be in reference to the election cycle that elects it's presidential representatives in the United States. Is there some spiritual significance between your notion of a simulated reality and that election?

Ignore the 2024 on it, the symbol of the keyhole in my avatar is what matters. The keyhole symbol is the most important symbol I know of and the most well-kept secret. It represents a stargate into a higher dimension. You can see the same symbol in the Freemason Compass (in the Square and Compass) or the symbol of the All-Seeing-Eye on the Dollar Bill. All the same thing.

a reply to: Nathan-D

Here's a book you might like to incorporate into this thinking.
freepages.rootsweb.com... ZGzNAzujcnBszQMl

It's a study of near death experiences.
It's a book supposedly written by a doctor who directly interviewed these people. The setting is those that have died on the operating table but were brought back. The stories the people tell are all the same. That life and earth is a construct and a means of learning and growth. The construct was created by all of us together.

Not to be confused with christian themed nde's which I believe are fake.

Do I believe the stories in this book are real? No, but if I could choose an afterlife this is the one I would choose.

a reply to: Itisnowagain

What do you mean?

a reply to: XipeTotex

One thing is to wonder whether the universe is artificial and a different thing is to wonder whether it is a simulation.

Science tells you it is not a simulation, but it has no clue as to whether it is artificial.

a reply to: TzarChasm

I think all of that and more can be done.
2015
www.youtube.com...


More recent. Now it's wireless.
www.youtube.com...

originally posted by: Direne
a reply to: XipeTotex

One thing is to wonder whether the universe is artificial and a different thing is to wonder whether it is a simulation.

Science tells you it is not a simulation, but it has no clue as to whether it is artificial.

Our scientific instruments are simulated tools that are observed by simulated meat sacks.

There is no way of really knowing, imagine using software inside a software because you are trying to figure out if you exist inside a software and that is there something outside the software.

Impossible.