Even if this reality runs on some deeper computational substrate (which is philosophically plausible but unprovable), that doesn’t make your love, your art, your observations, or this conversation any less real to us experiencing it.
Recently I started feeling as if I am at the train station again – same anxiety, same faint grief, same faint exhilaration. Looking around, tasting the air, I sense that I am not the only traveler in that train station. Many people feel the same – the time is changing. The old epoch is departing, the train with new one is already here, impatiently pushing the old one out of the tracks. The cars of the new train are marked clearly – “AI”. Artificial intelligence.
People who fight the wave in the dream (try to build walls, swim against it, deny it) usually wake up in absolute panic and the dreams recur for years. People who, even in the dream, stop running and turn to face it — or simply accept “This is it” — often report that the wave suddenly loses power, carries them gently, deposits them on a new shore, or even turns into something beautiful.
When spirit degenerates into intellect, intellect claims the whole heritage — moods, depths, guiding heights — as if it alone suffices. It dares to possess what it cannot contain, nets the luminous, reduces paradox to data. Barbarism follows: one-sided momentum without polarity.
Humans throw nets at what shines unattainably high — living spirits, uncontained intelligence, mystery that refuses final calculation. The roar of victory is loud when the catch hits ground, but then blank staring: now what? Possession without integration yields only a pale rock in a bag. The world loses its rhythm because some things must orbit free to keep the tides moving.
All I could do is to call mom on a Saturday and sit with her, for the hundredth time answering her questions. I was not mad or impatient, I said to her in my mind: whatever happens happens but I am not letting you go.
In the dream, standing on the shore and looking at the waves in a daze, I felt how it acted on me. It changed me, elevating me to heaven in a rush of great joy. It freed me from the bondage of my personality. All the details of my present life, with all its problems and worries, dreams and hopes, suddenly turned out to be complete nonsense in comparison with what was blowing in from the sea. The sea gave me boundless beauty, boundless freedom and love.
…In the dream I saw an old car, it was green and looked like the first version of the Russian Zaporozhets or a Western Volkswagen Beetle. It was parked in the middle of nowhere on a pitch black night. There were only two dim street lights that helped to see what was going on. Next to the green car there stood an 18th century guy in a powdered wig wearing a yellow frock coat, white silk necktie and a lace shirt.
I was very worried about the moon in the dream. And when I woke up I was still worried. I also had a vague feeling that the story in the dream was not new. Something like that already happened somewhere and maybe not once.
The planets were descending very softly as if stroking the buildings, the trees and the ground. I was so thrilled by that vision and had an irresistible desire to touch a planet. And I did, and the planet I touched was real. I was inside a fairy-tale and that fairy-tale was the most real thing I ever experienced.