What is reality? Simply put, it’s what we perceive in our day to day life, through our visual medium. Whatever we see, whatever we create inside our mind, based on everyday observation of the world and the conclusion that we project is what we call as reality. Right?
Let me tell you something about myself. I am a huge ass procrastinator. I don't deny it. It's not cool, I know it. I am trying to be a better version of myself. And you know what? I am. I am better than yesterday. But how do I know it? No one is acknowledging me on this regard. I mean the growth is not that significant for people to notice. Or is it?
I mean are you looking close enough? No, you are not. Because we have just started interacting, so how would you know me? Let alone, noticing my growth. But I am checking my growth, day in and day out, and it is there. It’s that apparent for me. I’m not talking about the physical growth, but the psychological growth, of course. And I do sound confident about it as if I have some kind of an instrument to measure my growth. Obviously, I don’t. It’s not like I have a special mirror which pops out flattering words for me when I ask it to.
There’s a way to see the inner growth, a way to see within yourself. It’s the inner eye, or more famously known as the “Third eye”. The same third eye Lord Shiva has on his forehead.
But here’s a question, if I can see what’s within me, with this third eye, why can’t I see what’s without me? Let me rephrase the question for better understanding. Why can’t we peek upon someone else’s inner selves? Wouldn’t it be easier for us to communicate that way? I say, it would. It would change everything. I believe, we’ll have the capacity to know how to approach any random person to talk. It’s something that I find myself getting frustrated upon all the time. It won’t be necessary to put on our masks, to hide our true self. We will be naked in all sense. However, it’s not a perfect world and we can’t be naked all the time unfortunately, and we can’t see the deepest part of anyone else with our third eye. Well, to be fair, we can’t even see what’s within us, most of the time. Now, why is that?
Let’s put a bookmark on that serious stuff. Let’s talk something about technology. Specifically, let’s dive ourselves in the gaming pool. I am not a gamer. But even then I can say that the last decade has seen an exponential hike in the gaming world, in terms of consoles, graphics, designs and all sorts of stuff. Things are getting very close to real situations. Virtual Reality or VR glasses is one of those technological achievement that has contributed for the gamers to experience the simulation, by making them feel more involved in that programmed world. At certain games, it feels more real than that of others. One of the top notch games is Boneworks. I’ve seen the walkthrough in Youtube. It gets pretty realistic. It wouldn’t take much to predict that one day those graphics will look as real as it does in the real world. I’m sure the developers are working on it as I’m writing about it. But that will be just a start.
VR glasses are an amazing experience. There’s enough bad stuff happening around us. People tend to find solace in alcohol or drugs. Gaming with VR can be also considered an escape. If I had one, I’d probably wear it all the time and play lots of games. But we all know it’s not that cheap. I mean, for a guy like me who is struggling every month to pay his rent in Mumbai, VR glasses does not count as a necessity.
But for the sake of this topic let’s consider a situation. Let’s consider a time period where all of us are forced to wear. Let’s say we all go through a lockdown for indefinite period (We are going through one, actually!), and some manufacturers provide VR glasses for all those travelers and adventure seekers to make them feel like there was never any lockdown at all. Thanks to brilliant graphics designing, people will soon adapt the way the world looks without even going out. Maybe the software developers would make it more interesting by adding interactive features. Soon long distance date nights would work out. Later, even if situation drives the people to go out, they might at first try to see the world as it is, but then their escape would inevitably turn into a necessity. It won’t be easy for them to take in the post apocalyptic world and then VR would take over all. If you don’t agree, just go outside and see how many stick their head down to their smart phones instead of communicating with each other, which was a thing of the past. Extrapolate that in terms of VR. Now you would ask, what about the less privileged who can’t own VR. Yes! There would be those people too. Do you know over 5 billion people in the world own a mobile device? Obviously, if you extrapolate that too for the VR era, you will get an equivalent percentage of VR users. Since, the majority would adapt the VR lifestyle, pretty soon others will succumb as well. Yes, it would take time, and it seems far-fetched, but it is inevitable. Mark my words with your highlighter. Take a snap with your smart device and post it in social media. I dare you!
Now as the market for VR will grow, the system would get more user friendly, more customizable and much lighter to carry around for your ease. As we saw the evolution of computers, shrinking down from a room sized machine to a small portable pocket device, VR glasses would also find its way to become VR contact lenses. The escape finally transformed into a necessity and it gave birth to a revolutionizing invention. But that’s not all. Soon, there will be techniques to implant the VR lenses in a newborn baby’s eyes, which will make them view things from the perspective of all the data, pre-installed by the developers and/or customized by the parents. The first new born baby with implanted VR lenses, will be celebrated across the globe and it will be treated like Laika, the first space dog. The baby will come to believe the reality that it is being fed. There will be no other versions of realities for them, because they will be born with the one. It will be the start of a whole new generation of newly perceived reality. Soon the concept of looking through the original eyes will fade away and so will the version of reality we all know. Something to look forward to, right? Only thing is, there is a strong possibility of history repeating itself. This might have happened once, millennials ago. Yes! Let’s bring the Third eye in the picture once more.
I like to believe that people used to have third eye. You can take it literally or figuratively, I leave that upon you. Moving on, people, not only were enlightened before and knew their inner self, but also were able to pay attention and observe others’ inner self as well. Moreover, people didn’t feel it necessary to hide themselves, their true self. They were honest and transparent. Things must have been simpler. The third eye made them look at things as it is. But eventually, due to some cataclysmic event, I theorize, we started using the these eyes. I’m talking about the present ones. It gets kind of confusing around here, while mentioning the eyes. We started looking at things with a new perspective. The version of reality evolved from the third eye’s version. We got dependent on these two skull showing eyes and it became a necessity.
Thus, forever shutting down the third eye to view the world. Since history has a weird habit of repeating itself, in the VR era, these human eyes will be forgotten and it will shut down, in a manner of speaking. A new perspective with the VR contact lens will open itself. Hence, reality shall evolve.
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