“You entirely create your reality. It is only by complicit agreement that the world as you understand it exists, your shared human beliefs giving it shape and substance. It is not that the tree falling in the forest makes no noise if nobody is there to hear it; it is that without a hearer, the tree itself cannot be.”
The woman’s transformation was astonishing. While in the trance, her cadence changed. Her closed eyes twitched and fluttered, her voice abnormally deep. She had a strange accent and seemed to stare through closed eyelids as she raised a crooked finger.
“You question the reality your dreams, but I tell you the world you create in them is just as real as the one you now see around you. Because a dream is yours alone, its world requires no outside reinforcement. You create a wholly separate reality.”
I had the curious feeling we’d had this conversation before.
Note: Depersonalization disorder, also known as depersonalization-derealization syndrome, is a DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th ed.) diagnosis assigned to individuals who persistently experience feelings of detachment, either bodily or cognitively, from themselves or from their environment. Depersonalization disorder falls under the dissociative disorders group of conditions, which are characterized by feelings of disconnection from reality. Sufferers of derealization may experience:
-Feeling detached from their surroundings
-Feeling that general life events are unreal
-Perceiving objects as changing in shape, size or color
-Feeling that people they know are strangers
-Feeling that environments they know are unfamiliar
Other cultures consider psychic events and perceptions differently. One person’s mental illness is another’s divinely gifted vision.