What is real and what is not real?

I just watched the movie Shutter Island which is about a criminally insane hospital on an Island.

Teddy Daniels a US Marshal played by Leonardo Di Caprio has gone to investigate a patient called Rachel Solando who went missing from a locked room at the hospital on Shutter island.

Rachel was admitted after she had killed her three children, she was hallucinating that the hospital was her house and her children were still alive.

In the middle of the movie she is found, and when Teddy goes to question her she asks him what he is doing in her house.

As the movie progress Teddy starts to dream and have hallucinations of his wife who was killed in a fire by man called Andrew Laeddis.

Towards the end of the movie you start to find out that Teddy might actually be Andrew Laeddis and Andrew Laeddis has invented Teddy and the whole story of investigating Rachel.

The other side of the story is that Teddy thinks he has been drugged, which is causing his hallucinations. He believes there is a conspiracy against him to stop him finding out the truth and the staffs at the hospital are all in it together to convince him he is insane and he really is Andrew Laddis.

Even at the end of the movie you are left guessing who he really is, Andrew or Teddy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutter_Island

The movie is a mind bender for sure, just asked my son James. After watching it he could not get it out of his mind and asked me to go watch it to see if I could figure it out. The answer for me was a question, what is real and what is not real.

So what is insanity? It is a neurological disorder and disease, in other words the brain is not firing and producing the same chemicals as a normal person, causing the person to perceive their reality different from the norm.

What about LSD, magic mushrooms, ayahuasca , and other psychedelic and hallucinogenic substances.

LSD also affects the ego - and for want of a better phrase can temporarily dissolve parts of it and you see what is beyond; this combined with the effects on the neuro transmitters causes the hallucinations.

Ayahuasca - The leaves from the plant Psychotria Viridis contain the psychoactive drug Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) that has a structural resemblance with Serotonin, which is a chemical transmitter substance naturally found in the brain. When DMT binds to the nerve receptors in the brain, a change in the state of consciousness takes place.

What happens when we change our thoughts and emotion? Our brain rewires and fires differently, producing new chemicals resulting in a different perception of the world.

So in all these cases what determines what we see to be real is how our brain is structured to decode our environment through our five senses.

Let’s go back to Rachel in the movie who thought she was in her house and not the hospital. Let’s say I had a psychedelic and hallucinogenic substance called “Rachel Perception” and this drug would rewire the brain and produce the exact same chemicals as Rachel.

If I had another 5 people in the room with Rachel and gave the drug to only 4 of the 5 people so thier brain would rewire and produce the same chemicals as Rachel.

All 4 people and Rachel would now believe they were in Rachel’s house and the other person who did not take the drug would still believe and perceive that they were in the hospital.

Which one is insane now?

The one who did not take the drug.

So what is real? Nothing is real; everything is our own perception of what we believe to be real.

The brain is merely a biological computer that decodes the information it receives through the five senses.

Seeing is believing; is a back to front statement like everything else in this reality, believe and you will see or may I rather say create.

What a relief because I have been questioning my own insanity over the last few months LOL!!!

All that is wrong with me is that I am decoding and perceiving this reality differently from the norm, I believe that is a good thing, what do you think?