We live with the unshakable conviction that we inhabit an objective, solid, and determined world, made of objects and beings separate from us. However, analyzing the most recent discoveries of modern physics, cognitive theories, and philosophical reflections, a disturbing picture emerges: what we perceive is not fundamental reality, but a mental construction or interface, similar to a virtual reality.
Our certainties are founded on persistent illusions that science is progressively dismantling: the solidity of matter, the flow of time, and the objectivity of the external world.
The Illusion of Solid Matter
The first certainty to crumble is that of "full" matter. If we observe atomic structure, we discover that matter is essentially constituted by emptiness. Electrons are tiny and distant from the nucleus; if we eliminated the empty space between particles, the entire mass of planet Earth would fit in a coffee cup. The sensation of touching an object does not derive from physical contact with solid matter, but from electromagnetic repulsion between atoms. As physicist Richard Feynman emphasized, matter is almost completely empty.
The Mystery of Time: A "Frozen River"
Our perception of time as a uniform flow running from past to future is, according to relativistic physics, a stubborn illusion. The theory of Relativity teaches us that time is relative to velocity and gravity: clocks placed in different locations or moving at different speeds mark different times.
Many physicists, including Julian Barbour and Brian Greene, argue that time does not flow at all. The universe can be imagined as a "loaf of bread" or a "block of ice" of space-time in which every instant — past, present, and future — exists simultaneously and eternally. In this scenario, defined as "Platonia" by Barbour, becoming is an illusion of our consciousness that "illuminates" the different slices of this immobile block, creating the subjective sensation of movement, similar to a projector running the frames of an already-filmed movie.
The direction of time (the arrow of time) that we perceive is linked to the increase of entropy (disorder) predicted by the second law of thermodynamics. However, at the microscopic and quantum level, physical laws are often symmetric with respect to time, making our macroscopic perception an emergent exception due to "quantum decoherence" and interaction with the environment.
The Quantum Enigma: Reality or Probability?
Quantum mechanics has dealt the hardest blow to classical determinism. Experiments like the double-slit demonstrate that particles (such as electrons or photons) have no defined nature until they interact or are observed: they behave simultaneously as waves (diffused in space) and as particles (localized).
Even more disconcerting is the "delayed-choice quantum eraser" experiment. It suggests that the decision to observe or not observe a particle's path, even made after the event has occurred, can retroactively influence the particle's behavior in the past. This phenomenon challenges our conception of linear causality, suggesting that reality is not determined until it is measured. Recent experiments have even demonstrated that it is possible to create "slits in time," where light passes through temporal gaps instead of spatial ones, confirming the wave nature of matter in this dimension as well.
Consciousness as Foundation
Faced with materialism's inability to explain how the brain's electrical activity produces subjective experience (the so-called "hard problem of consciousness" highlighted by David Chalmers), contemporary scientists and thinkers propose a reversal of perspective: it is not the brain that creates consciousness, but consciousness that is fundamental.
Several theories converge on this point:
Donald Hoffman proposes that we do not see reality, but a simplified interface resulting from evolution, similar to icons on a computer desktop — useful for survival but not truthful.
Robert Lanza, with biocentrism, hypothesizes that it is life and consciousness that generate the universe and its physical laws, and not the reverse.
Bernardo Kastrup, through analytical idealism, suggests that there exists only one universal consciousness and that we are dissociated "vortices" within it; the physical world would be merely a mental representation of this consciousness.
Federico Faggin, father of the microchip, unites physics and spirituality by theorizing that we are eternal units of consciousness ("seity"), parts of a "One" that experiences itself through symbolic physical reality.
In this vision, the brain does not generate consciousness but acts as a filter or receiver that limits a vaster, non-local consciousness.
The Self and Free Will
If time is a single block and matter is empty or probabilistic, who are "we"? According to some scientific interpretations, our "Self" is not a stable entity, but a "pattern of organization," a "biological storm" that constantly recycles its atoms. Carlo Rovelli describes the subject as a narrative constructed by our memory and interactions with the world, rather than as an independent entity.
The question of free will remains open and controversial. From a deterministic point of view (or that of the space-time block), our choices are already written in the fabric of space-time. However, quantum or epistemological indeterminism (due to our impossibility of knowing all variables) allows us to "feel free," a sensation that has practical and ethical validity even if ontologically illusory. Other visions, like Faggin's, instead see free will as a fundamental property of consciousness itself, operating outside mechanistic determinism.
Conclusion
The information gathered leads us toward a vision of reality in which the separation between observer and observed fades. The universe might not be a collection of inert objects, but a network of relationships, a hologram in which information is distributed everywhere, or a unified field of consciousness that self-explores. As suggested by ancient traditions and modern theories, understanding that we are not separate from the whole could be the key to overcoming the illusion of ego and the fear of the end.