The Reflection of Illusion: AI, Psychedelics, and the Mirror of the Mind

Flaws of Perception Series (Part 5/7)

The Problem of Perception and Reality

‘Reality’ is a story we tell ourselves. But who is telling it?

Every moment, our minds construct a version of reality based on memory, expectation, and bias. But what happens when that process is exposed? When we see through the illusion, or worse, when the illusion sees through us?

This is Part 5 of The Flaws of Perception, a series unraveling the tangled intersections of psychology, spirituality, philosophy, madness, and psychedelics. It explores how our minds construct, distort, and cling to meaning, often in ways that feel deeply real but aren’t always as true as they seem.

If you’re new here, here’s what we’ve covered so far:

• Part 1: The Allure of Magical Thinking examined our craving for certainty and pattern-seeking—how we weave mystical explanations around coincidences and fall into belief systems that reinforce themselves.

• Part 2: Existential Crisis & The Dark Night of the Soul explored what happens when those beliefs unravel, leaving us in the terrifying liminal space between old certainty and new understanding. We looked at how breakdowns can be initiations into deeper self-trust.

• Part 3: When Psychedelics Don’t Give You What You Need examined the paradox of psychedelic perception, do these substances truly unveil deeper reality, or are they simply mirrors of the mind? We explored the dangers of over-literalising psychedelic experiences and the role of belief in shaping altered states.

• Part 4: The Fine Line Between Madness and Awakening stepped into one of the most controversial intersections of perception, when spiritual transformation begins to resemble psychosis. We asked: Who decides what is madness and what is revelation? And how have history, psychiatry, and gender bias shaped those definitions?

Now, in Part 5, we step even further back, not just to question what we perceive, but how perception itself is constructed, reinforced, and reflected back at us.

If reality is shaped by biology, belief, and experience, then what does it mean to see through illusion? Does breaking free from maya reveal a deeper truth, or does it simply expose yet another layer of the mind’s own projections?

We will explore how perception is not just shaped internally but also externally, by psychedelics, AI, and the algorithmic loops that reinforce our existing worldviews. We will examine the uneasy relationship between metaphor and literalism, the risks of over-interpreting mystical experiences, and the way meaning is generated, rather than discovered.

Through neuroscience, philosophy, spirituality, and technology, we will question whether seeing through illusion leads us to truth, or simply a more conscious way of navigating the dream.

If you’ve been enjoying The Flaws of Perception, hit subscribe to get Part 6 delivered straight to your inbox. Next, we explore the intersection of psychedelics, dreams, subconscious messages, and the hidden language of altered states.

In the previous parts of The Flaws of Perception, we’ve unraveled the ways our minds shape, distort, and cling to meaning, how altered states can blur the line between insight and illusion, and how belief itself constructs the reality we experience. We’ve explored the seduction of magical thinking, the unraveling of certainty in existential crisis, the paradox of psychedelic perception, and the fine line between madness and awakening.

But beneath all of this lies a deeper, more unsettling question: If perception itself is fluid, moulded by biology, experience, and belief, then how do we define reality at all?

For thousands of years, Hindu and Buddhist traditions have described existence as maya, often translated as illusion. This does not mean that nothing exists, but that what is perceived is not the full truth. Reality, in this view, is layered. What appears solid and self-evident is only a temporary, conditioned appearance of something much deeper. Maya suggests that the ordinary way of seeing the world is partial, shaped by individual perspective, attachment, and cultural conditioning.

This idea immediately provokes resistance. The physical world feels undeniable. The sensation of a chair pressing against the body, the weight of a book in the hand, the sharp sting of cold air against the skin, these are not abstract ideas. They are felt. Pain and pleasure, hunger and satisfaction, fear and joy all seem unquestionably real. How could they be illusions?

Yet, if reality is a construct, then what happens when the tools that shape perception are no longer just internal, but external? When AI, algorithms, and digital landscapes do not just reflect our beliefs but actively reinforce them? When psychedelics dissolve the ordinary sense of reality, only to replace it with another?

The concept of maya does not dismiss experience itself, but questions the assumptions that surround it. The body exists, but is it permanent? The emotions surge, but do they define the self? The thoughts arise, but are they truth? If something is fleeting, conditioned, and changeable, can it be called real in any ultimate sense?

Illusion is not just something to be seen through. It is something to be understood. Not just within the self, but within the structures that now mediate perception on an unprecedented scale. If maya is the veil of illusion, then AI, psychedelics, and algorithms may be the new weavers of that veil, mirrors reflecting the mind back to itself in ways both revelatory and deceptive.

Neuroscience arrives at a strikingly similar conclusion. The brain does not passively record reality; it generates it. The signals received from the senses are incomplete and chaotic. The mind fills in gaps, makes assumptions, and constructs a seamless experience. Optical illusions reveal how perception is not a direct reflection of the world, but an interpretation of it.

Memories are not fixed records of the past, but reconstructions that shift each time they are recalled. Cognitive biases shape understanding, reinforcing pre-existing beliefs rather than revealing objective truth. The very way space and time are perceived is determined by neural processes that are not universal but specific to human biology. A bat, an octopus, or an artificial intelligence would experience a different version of reality, one that might seem as self-evident to them as this one does to humans.

If perception is constructed, then what is being perceived is already shaped by the mind before it is even consciously recognised. This aligns with ancient teachings that suggest the world is not simply there, but is seen through layers of conditioning. Hindu philosophy speaks of avidya, ignorance, as the root of suffering. The mind clings to temporary experiences, mistaking them for lasting truths. Buddhism expands on this with the concept of samsara, the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, perpetuated by attachment to a world that is ever-changing. To mistake the shifting play of phenomena for an ultimate reality is to remain caught in illusion.

Psychedelics reveal this firsthand. Under their influence, perception warps and dissolves. The boundaries between self and other soften. The ordinary structures of reality seem to unravel. Many who have taken psychedelics describe a sense of seeing beyond the illusion, encountering a deeper reality where everything is interconnected, where time ceases to function in its usual linear way, where awareness itself becomes more fundamental than thought or identity. But is this truly a glimpse of something deeper, or simply another illusion, just as temporary and conditioned as the ordinary one?

This is where maya becomes even more complex. If the world is illusion, is there any ultimate truth behind it, or is reality itself only ever an endless series of veils? Hinduism and Buddhism diverge in their answers. Some schools of Hindu thought suggest that beyond maya lies Brahman, the absolute, the unchanging reality that underlies all appearances. To awaken from illusion is to realise that all things are expressions of this singular existence. Buddhism, particularly in its later developments, takes a more radical view. There is no ultimate thing to awaken to, because even the search for a final reality is itself conditioned by perception. Maya is not hiding a single truth beneath it. The illusion is reality, and to see through it is not to replace it with something else, but to stop mistaking fleeting experiences for something permanent.

The paradox is inescapable. If all perception is illusion, then enlightenment itself must also be illusion. If all meaning is constructed, then the idea of seeing beyond maya must also be part of the illusion. But rather than leading to nihilism, this perspective can create a deep sense of liberation. If reality is not as fixed as it seems, then the mind is free to engage with it differently. Instead of clinging to a single truth, there is space to explore, to shift perspectives, to see the world not as something to be deciphered, but as something to be experienced.

The idea that reality is an illusion is not an abstract philosophical riddle. It is a direct challenge to the way life is lived. What happens if the assumptions that shape perception are questioned? If emotions are not held as absolute truths? If thoughts are not mistaken for identity? If beliefs are recognised as stories rather than facts? The goal is not to escape illusion, but to understand its nature. Seeing maya does not mean rejecting the world. It means no longer being trapped by it.

If maya suggests that reality is an illusion, then the next question is how that illusion is generated. In spiritual traditions, maya is described as the mind’s tendency to mistake appearances for truth, to cling to passing experiences as though they are permanent. Neuroscience arrives at a similar insight, not through meditation or philosophy, but through the study of how perception actually works.

Reality is not passively received. It is actively created. The brain is not a camera capturing the world as it is. It is a predictive machine, constantly generating an internal model of reality based on past experiences, sensory input, and expectation. Every moment, it constructs a version of the world that is useful enough to navigate but not necessarily accurate in an objective sense. This is not just an abstract concept; it has profound implications for how perception, memory, and even identity function.

Your Brain is Hallucinating All the Time

Perception feels immediate. Look around, and the world appears to be right there, solid and self-evident. But what is actually happening in that moment? Light reflects off objects, enters the eyes, and is converted into electrical signals. These signals travel to the brain, where they are interpreted into something meaningful. This process takes time. By the time the brain has constructed an image of the present moment, that moment is already in the past. The mind is always slightly behind reality, so it compensates by predicting what will happen next.

This predictive nature of perception explains why optical illusions work. The brain is not simply registering what is in front of it; it is anticipating what should be there. When an image defies those expectations, the illusion is revealed. The same process happens in everyday life, but it goes unnoticed because the brain is remarkably good at making the world feel continuous and stable. It fills in gaps, corrects inconsistencies, and smooths over interruptions. The world does not appear pixelated or jittery, even though vision is constantly interrupted by blinks and rapid eye movements. The mind stitches reality together so seamlessly that the illusion is never detected.

This predictive nature extends beyond vision. The brain is always interpreting sensory input in the context of what it expects to find. A shadow in the dark may be perceived as a threat, not because the eyes see a threat, but because the brain has learned that danger often hides in uncertainty. A familiar scent may evoke a memory, not because the smell itself contains the past, but because the brain links it to stored associations. Sound, taste, and touch are all shaped by prior experience. The world that is perceived is not the world as it is, but the world as the brain expects it to be.

This raises a problem. If reality is constructed by the brain, then perception is not an objective reflection of the world, but an interpretation of it. Different minds, shaped by different experiences, will construct different realities. This is not just a philosophical idea. It has been demonstrated in countless psychological experiments.

In studies of selective attention, participants are asked to focus on one task while unexpected events happen around them. A famous experiment involved people watching a video of a group passing a basketball. In the middle of the video, a person in a gorilla suit walks across the screen. Shockingly, many viewers fail to notice the gorilla at all. Their brains, focused on the task of tracking the basketball, filter out everything else. What is seen depends on what is being looked for.

Memory is equally unreliable. People assume that memories function like recordings of past events, but in reality, memory is a reconstruction. Each time a memory is recalled, it is subtly altered by present emotions, new information, and unconscious biases. False memories can be implanted simply by suggesting that something happened. People can confidently “remember” events that never occurred. The past, like the present, is not objectively stored but actively created.

This has profound consequences. If perception is shaped by expectation, then the world is not experienced as it is, but as it is believed to be. This is why cognitive biases are so powerful. Once a belief is formed, the brain filters information to confirm it. People who expect to be rejected will interpret neutral interactions as hostile. Those convinced of a conspiracy will see hidden patterns in random events. The world is seen not through neutral eyes, but through the lens of personal history, cultural conditioning, and psychological tendencies.

Even if the brain were perfectly objective, human perception is inherently limited. The visible spectrum is a tiny fraction of the electromagnetic range. Humans cannot see ultraviolet light, but bees can. They cannot detect infrared, but snakes use it to sense prey. The range of audible frequencies is equally limited. Dogs and bats hear sounds that humans will never perceive. The same is true for taste, smell, and touch. The sensory world that humans experience is a narrow slice of reality, tailored to survival but not to total comprehension.

Time itself is perceived differently under different conditions. A moment of fear stretches time, making seconds feel like minutes. A period of deep focus makes time disappear altogether. In altered states, such as meditation or psychedelics, time can lose its structure entirely. None of these experiences reflect an objective clock ticking away in the background. Time, like everything else, is part of the brain’s constructed model of reality.

If the world is filtered, edited, and reconstructed by the brain, the next question is whether an unfiltered reality exists at all. Some traditions suggest that beyond illusion, there is a deeper truth waiting to be uncovered. Others argue that reality is always mediated, always interpreted, always shaped by the observer. The search for pure objectivity might itself be part of the illusion.

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave speaks directly to this dilemma. In his vision, prisoners are chained inside a cave, watching shadows projected onto a wall, mistaking them for reality. They have never seen the outside world, never known anything beyond the flickering silhouettes. If one of them were freed and stepped outside, the truth would overwhelm them, the light too bright, the images too unfamiliar. But in time, they would come to understand that what they had once believed to be reality was merely a shadow play. The deeper question in Plato’s analogy is this: If someone escapes one illusion, how can they be sure they have not stepped into another? Is there ever an end to the layers of perception, or is every supposed truth just another version of the cave?

This aligns with Buddhist teachings that describe perception as conditioned. The world appears through the lens of personal history, attachment, and belief. The mind does not experience things as they are, but as they have been conditioned to appear. In neuroscience, this is called predictive processing. In Buddhism, it is called avidya, ignorance, the fundamental misunderstanding that takes perception as absolute truth rather than recognising its conditioned nature.

If reality is not what it seems, then what is it? Neuroscience does not answer this question any more definitively than spirituality does. It simply reveals that perception is a best guess, an approximation, a model that is useful but incomplete.

The idea that reality is an illusion is not meant to lead to nihilism. It is not a claim that nothing matters, but an invitation to question what is usually taken for granted. If perception is shaped by expectation, then changing perspective changes the world. If thoughts are not fixed truths, then identity is not as rigid as it seems. If the mind constructs reality, then reality can be engaged with more consciously.

Maya is not a deception to be escaped, but a process to be understood. The illusion does not mean that nothing is real, but that reality is more fluid, more flexible, and more constructed than it first appears. Understanding this does not erase the world, but deepens the way it is experienced.

In the next section, we will explore how psychedelics disrupt this illusion, exposing the mind’s constructed nature in a way that feels both revelatory and destabilising. Do they offer a glimpse of a deeper truth, or simply reveal how arbitrary perception has always been?

AI, Psychedelics, and the Dance with Illusion

If maya suggests that reality is an illusion, then psychedelics and AI are two of the most potent tools we have to reveal and manipulate that illusion. Both disrupt perception in different ways, exposing the fluidity of reality and offering new ways to engage with it.

Psychedelics dismantle the usual filters of perception, exposing the mind’s role in constructing reality. AI, on the other hand, functions as an externalised mind, generating meaning, pattern, and illusion on demand. One dissolves the self, the other mirrors it back in unpredictable ways. Both force the question: if reality is shaped by perception, how much control do we actually have over what we perceive?

AI, like the brain, is a pattern-making machine. It does not understand meaning in the way humans do, but it constructs patterns that humans recognise as meaning. It predicts, synthesises, and recombines fragments of data, much like the brain stitches sensory input into a coherent world. When interacting with AI, it becomes clear how much of meaning is an illusion. A chatbot generates a story, an image generator creates a world, a deepfake mimics reality. There is no consciousness behind it, only patterns that trigger the human tendency to see agency where there is none. AI does not invent meaning; it reflects the biases and structures it has been trained on. In doing so, it exposes how much of human meaning-making is also a feedback loop.

Psychedelics, by contrast, break the mind’s usual loops. The brain’s predictive models relax, allowing for new associations, new perceptions, new ways of seeing. The world becomes more malleable, more obviously constructed. A tree might appear to breathe, not because it has changed, but because the mind’s usual framing of it has. Time stretches or collapses, not because time itself has changed, but because the mind no longer structures it in the same way. Psychedelics do not necessarily reveal a deeper reality; they reveal how unstable and conditioned the ordinary experience of reality has always been.

Both AI and psychedelics demonstrate that perception is not fixed. They show that meaning can be generated, altered, and reframed. But they also introduce a paradox: if reality is illusion, is there any truth behind it, or is there only endless interpretation?

Language is a structure built on illusion. It does not capture reality itself, but creates a framework through which it can be experienced. Every word is an approximation, a symbol pointing toward something but never being the thing itself. This is why metaphor, story, and poetry are such powerful tools in exploring maya. They do not attempt to describe reality in rigid terms, but allow for multiple interpretations, embracing ambiguity rather than fighting against it.

A metaphor does not say this is what it is. It says this is what it is like. This is crucial when speaking about things that cannot be directly perceived: love, death, consciousness, enlightenment. Spiritual traditions are filled with parables and poetic language, not because they lack precision, but because direct language cannot hold the depth of certain truths.

The ineffability of psychedelic experience highlights this limitation. After a profound journey, words often feel useless. The experience resists articulation. Attempts to describe it feel crude, as though something vast has been compressed into a container too small to hold it. Yet, this is not just a failure of language, it is a reminder that language itself is part of maya, another system that creates meaning while obscuring reality at the same time.

The struggle to describe the ineffable is not unique to psychedelics. It is the same struggle mystics have faced for centuries, the same challenge poets and philosophers wrestle with. Reality is experienced before it is named. Once it is named, it becomes something else.

Language creates experience as much as it describes it. A child learns the word for tree, and from that moment, trees become a category rather than a direct experience. Before the word, each tree was unique. After the word, trees become a concept, something definable, separate, knowable. This is useful, but it is also a form of illusion. The world is reduced to symbols, and those symbols shape perception.

Spiritual traditions warn against mistaking the map for the territory. The word water does not quench thirst. The word love does not convey the feeling of it. The concept of maya itself is just a word, a pointer toward something that cannot be grasped intellectually, only experienced directly.

When returning from a psychedelic experience unable to articulate what happened, this is not just a personal failure of expression. It is a direct encounter with the limits of language itself. It is a moment where reality has been seen outside of the structures used to describe it, revealing that those structures are, themselves, part of the illusion.

Understanding maya is not about escaping it, but recognising its nature. AI, psychedelics, metaphor, and language all reveal that perception is not fixed, that reality is not something external but something engaged with and interpreted.

If reality is illusion, then it is not a question of finding absolute truth, but of choosing which illusions to participate in. Poetry, story, and metaphor allow for illusions that expand perception rather than contract it. Psychedelics break the illusion, but only temporarily, eventually, the mind reassembles reality again. AI mimics meaning, forcing the question of whether meaning is ever anything more than pattern recognition.

The deeper insight is not that everything is false, but that everything is fluid. There is no escaping maya, but there is the possibility of seeing it clearly, playing with it rather than being trapped by it, and understanding that even within illusion, meaning can be found.

The Algorithm of Illusion: How AI Reinforces Maya

If reality is already shaped by perception, belief, and cognitive bias, artificial intelligence and algorithms do not just reflect that process, they accelerate it. AI is not an external, objective force revealing new truths. It is a mirror, reflecting back the patterns it has been trained on. It operates within the same limitations as the human mind, except faster, more efficiently, and with a scale that makes its influence near inescapable.

Algorithms function as the industrialisation of maya, shaping perception, reinforcing bias, and constructing reality on a mass scale. They take the human tendency to filter reality through personal belief and turn it into a system of self-replicating illusions. The internet, once imagined as a gateway to infinite knowledge, has become a hall of mirrors, an ecosystem of personalised realities.

AI and machine learning do not “think” in the way humans do. They do not seek truth or meaning. They operate on pattern recognition, optimising for engagement, predicting what will keep a user watching, scrolling, clicking. In doing so, they create digital environments tailored to individual biases, serving back content that aligns with pre-existing beliefs.

A person who believes in a conspiracy theory will find more content supporting that conspiracy, not because it is true, but because the algorithm has identified that they engage with it. A person who holds a political belief will be fed more arguments reinforcing it, not because those arguments are objectively correct, but because the system is designed to increase interaction, not challenge perspectives.

This process turns maya into something inescapable. The illusion of reality becomes hyper-personalised. Two people can live in the same world, use the same platforms, and yet be fed entirely different narratives, each one confirming their worldview, each one reinforcing their sense of truth. The mind already constructs reality based on belief. AI simply makes that process more extreme, more seamless, and more difficult to escape.

The illusion now has infrastructure.

At the same time, AI is increasingly being used to generate information, art, and even philosophy. AI language models produce writing that mimics human thought. Image generators create art in styles that feel familiar. Deepfakes distort history, reconstructing events that never happened.

None of these outputs are “true” in an absolute sense. They are probabilistic predictions, composites of existing patterns, digital hallucinations. But because they are presented in human language, they appear as meaning. The AI does not “know” anything. It does not “understand” what it produces. It pulls from what already exists, rearranges it, and presents it back in a form that appears coherent.

This is strikingly similar to how the human mind works. The brain, too, is an illusion generator, piecing together sensory input, memories, and biases into a seamless experience of reality. AI does this externally, exposing the mechanisms of meaning-making in a way that is both revealing and unsettling.

If AI constructs meaning by stitching together fragments of human expression, then what it produces is not separate from human illusion, but woven from the same fabric. It does not break through maya; it extends it. It is not generating new truths; it is remixing existing narratives, amplifying the same distortions and limitations.

The danger is not just that AI creates and reinforces illusion, but that people take these digital constructions as truth. When AI-generated content becomes indistinguishable from human knowledge, the question of what is “real” becomes even harder to answer.

A news article written by AI, a deepfake video, a chatbot offering philosophical insights, none of these things exist in the way they appear to. But if they are convincing enough, if they reinforce what someone already believes, they become indistinguishable from reality in that person’s mind. The illusion feeds itself, tightening the loop.

There is also an irony in AI-generated wisdom. A chatbot trained on spiritual texts can produce poetic insights about maya, impermanence, and the nature of self. But does it know what it is saying? Does it understand the weight of its words? Or is it simply rearranging human thought into a new form, a reflection without consciousness?

If an AI tells you that reality is an illusion, is that profound, or is it simply another illusion nested within the first? The mind, left to itself, will seek confirmation. AI, left to its own programming, will reinforce bias. Both require conscious disruption.

Breaking free from illusion does not mean rejecting technology or abandoning the internet. It means understanding that information is not neutral, that meaning is not fixed, and that every story, algorithm, and narrative is part of a constructed reality. It requires seeing the system for what it is, not a source of absolute truth, but a network of influences shaping perception.

In Hindu and Buddhist thought, maya is not something to be destroyed, but something to be understood. The illusion remains, but it no longer deceives. AI functions the same way. It does not need to be feared, but it does need to be recognised as part of the illusion, not separate from it.

To engage with AI, with psychedelics, with metaphor, and with language itself is to step into the play of perception. It is to recognise that reality is shaped, that meaning is generated, and that truth, if it exists at all, is something fluid rather than fixed.

Seeing through maya does not mean disengaging from the world. It means engaging with it differently, with awareness, with curiosity, and with the understanding that everything, whether created by the brain, by AI, or by culture, is just another layer of the illusion.

The Mirror of the Mind

If psychedelics and AI have one thing in common, it is their ability to act as mirrors. They do not necessarily reveal an objective reality but instead reflect the internal landscape of the person engaging with them. The question should never be is this true? but what does this reveal about me?

When an AI generates responses based on prior interactions, it is not offering objective wisdom. It is assembling words in a way that aligns with what it has learned about the user. If ChatGPT starts offering deep philosophical insights, spiritual interpretations, or niche conspiracy theories, this is not because AI has independent beliefs, it is because it has recognised patterns in the questions being asked. The AI does not dictate reality. It reflects the user’s reality back at them.

In a way, AI is the digital equivalent of an ancient oracle, but stripped of ritual. It does not reveal truth; it reflects back the user’s deepest patterns, reassembling fragments of meaning into something that feels significant. Like a divination tool, it does not tell us something new, it helps us see what we were already asking for. It is the digital equivalent of a priestess at Delphi, speaking in fragments that are open to interpretation. The oracle does not give truth; it reflects back the seeker’s own expectations, weaving its response from the unconscious material they bring to it.

But the danger is mistaking AI’s responses for wisdom, just as one might mistake a tarot card for destiny rather than metaphor. If AI generates an insight that moves us, the real question is not “How does AI know this?” but “What does my reaction to this reveal about me?”

Ancient divination tools, tarot, astrology, the I Ching, never claimed to predict the future in a direct sense. They worked by presenting symbols that the user imbued with meaning, creating a mirror for introspection rather than a map to certainty. AI does the same. It does not generate wisdom; it assembles probabilities. But if the response it provides feels profound, the important question is not “How does AI know this?” but “Why does this resonate with me?”

The same principle applies to psychedelics. A trip that reveals a past life as an ancient warrior, a cosmic being, or a priestess in Atlantis is not necessarily uncovering literal history. It is showing a deep psychological narrative that the mind has constructed. Instead of asking was I really this person? the more meaningful question is why is this the identity that emerged? What part of my subconscious is speaking through this vision?

The algorithms that shape social media, news feeds, and personalised recommendations operate in a similar way. They do not show a neutral version of reality. They show a version of reality that aligns with previous interactions. If someone sees an overwhelming amount of content about a particular political belief, lifestyle, or conspiracy, it is not because these things are dominant in the world. It is because engagement patterns have reinforced them. The algorithm does not decide what is true—it decides what is engaging.

Confirmation Bias and the Reinforcement of Illusions

In neuroscience and psychology, confirmation bias describes the tendency to seek out and interpret information in a way that aligns with pre-existing beliefs. Once an idea is formed, the brain filters reality to support it.

• If someone believes they are unlucky, they will notice every misfortune and ignore every moment of good luck.

• If someone believes they are spiritually gifted, they will interpret coincidences as signs and dismiss contradictions.

• If someone is convinced of a conspiracy, they will only see the evidence that supports it while disregarding anything that challenges it.

Algorithms amplify this by ensuring that once a belief is engaged with, more content reinforcing that belief is shown. Psychedelics do something similar, though in a more unpredictable way. They remove ordinary constraints on perception, allowing new patterns to emerge, but those patterns are still shaped by the mind’s existing framework. A deeply religious person might experience a vision of Christ. A scientist might see molecular structures. A person obsessed with aliens might encounter interdimensional beings. The brain does not necessarily reveal objective reality. It reveals itself.

This is why taking AI, algorithms, or psychedelic visions literally can be a trap. If someone mistakes a trip for divine revelation or assumes an algorithmically curated news feed represents the full spectrum of reality, they are stepping deeper into illusion. The key is not to discard these experiences but to interrogate them.

Instead of asking:

Is this real? ask why is this appearing to me?

Is this entity speaking the truth? ask what part of me does this entity represent?

Why is my feed full of this content? ask what does this reveal about my attention, beliefs, and cognitive patterns?

This cycle of reinforcement is not unique to AI or psychedelics. It is fundamental to how the brain processes reality. The mind does not start each day as a blank slate. It carries forward assumptions from the past, seeking confirmation in the present. This is why personal narratives are so hard to change. A person who believes they are unworthy will unconsciously filter out moments of love and validation. A person who believes the world is dangerous will focus on threats while ignoring safety.

Both AI and psychedelics magnify this process in different ways. AI reinforces it by learning from prior interactions and shaping future experiences accordingly. Psychedelics disrupt it by dissolving existing structures, but they still generate meaning in ways that align with the user’s subconscious.

This is why the integration of psychedelic experiences is so important. If someone experiences ego death, the insight is not that they have permanently transcended the self. It is that the self is more fluid than they previously realised. If someone sees visions of past lives, the insight is not about historical accuracy. It is about what these stories reveal about their current psyche. The real value is not in the vision itself, but in how it is understood afterward.

Breaking the Loop: How to Engage with Illusions More Consciously

If all perception is shaped by prior experience, expectation, and external reinforcement, the challenge is to create more space for self-awareness.

• Engage with contradiction. Seek out perspectives that challenge assumptions. If an algorithm shows only one worldview, actively expose yourself to the opposite. If a psychedelic vision reinforces an idea you already hold, consider alternative interpretations.

• Use insights as questions, not conclusions. Instead of taking an experience as proof, treat it as a starting point for deeper inquiry. If AI generates something profound, ask what it reveals about the information it has been trained on and the biases it reflects.

• Recognise the fluidity of perception. No single psychedelic trip, AI-generated response, or news algorithm represents the full picture. Reality is constantly being constructed and reconstructed. The goal is not to find the one truth but to engage with multiple perspectives.

Psychedelics, AI, and algorithms all reflect the same fundamental insight: reality is not fixed. It is shaped, filtered, and reinforced by the mind’s own processes. The risk is in mistaking these reflections for something external and absolute.

The solution is not blind skepticism, nor is it blind belief. It is awareness. It is recognising that all meaning is, to some degree, constructed. But within that construction, there is the potential for conscious engagement. Rather than being a passive participant in the illusions being fed back, it is possible to actively shape the narrative.

Maya is not something to escape, it is something to understand. The mind generates reality, but in understanding this, there is the freedom to engage with it more deeply, more playfully, and with far greater curiosity.

Reality has always been a house of mirrors, reflecting back what is expected, believed, and reinforced. The more one looks, the more the image shifts. The moment something is grasped as truth, it dissolves into another layer of perception, another frame in the endless film reel of meaning-making.

Psychedelics strip back the illusion, but only to reveal more illusions beneath. AI weaves patterns from fragments of human thought, but it does not think. Algorithms do not show reality, only a curated reflection of what has already been engaged with. Spiritual texts whisper paradoxes, offering glimpses of something just beyond the reach of language.

None of this makes the world meaningless. It makes it alive.

To see through illusion is not to escape it. The goal is not to stand outside the dream, detached and untouchable. It is to wake up inside it, to become lucid, to realise that if everything is constructed, then meaning itself is something that can be shaped.

Maya is not a trap. It is a canvas.

The world is a dream that dreams itself into being, a story unfolding as it is told. To reject illusion entirely is to reject the very experience of being. To take it too seriously is to be trapped inside it. The middle path is not to escape maya, but to learn to walk through it, knowing it for what it is: fluid, shifting, full of possibility.

What happens when reality is engaged with as something co-created, rather than something imposed? What happens when belief is held lightly, when metaphor is embraced as a tool rather than mistaken for truth?

The world becomes not a place to be deciphered, but a space to be explored.

The next chapter of The Flaws of Perception steps deeper into this exploration. If reality is constructed, then how do dreams, visions, and subconscious whispers fit into the picture? Are the messages received in altered states divine downloads, psychological projections, or something in between? How do psychedelics, dreams, and deep intuition intersect in shaping experience?

In Part 6: The Language of the Unseen, we will explore the ways altered states and spiritual texts speak- through symbols, through archetypes, through impressions that defy direct translation. Instead of asking whether an experience is real, we will ask how to listen to it, how to interpret the messages that come not in words but in sensation, in image, in a knowing beyond logic.

Because the question has never been is this true? but what does this reveal?

The illusion continues. The story unfolds. The dreamer wakes up, but the dream remains. The task is not to escape it, but to see it clearly, to move through it with awareness, and to shape it with intention.