So much here to respond to, and much of it reflects a lot of what I've considered over the years. In short, yes, whatever concept we have of reality is false in that it is not entirely true. 'Reality' is an all or nothing word. You can't have 'sort of real'. So our perception of reality, in that it is inherently flawed*, is false; therefore, we are living in a state of unreality.
*Inherently flawed for any number of reasons, but the first obvious one is that our perception is limited. I would extend that to include our perception of self is flawed, in fact I would say we don't actually exists as individuals. We dont'. How can an individual exist? Can an individual leaf exist? A tree? Of course not. We're part of everything we observe. When I look at a tree or a dump truck, I'm observing myself, but I experience them as something other than such.

In the aftermath of the recent Aus floods i was feeling pretty flat. Trudging through the sludge to repair the fences i'd repaired a little over a year ago after the Dec 2020 flood, the access road to my land cut-off, the power off and on, no internet to communicate with people, and no explanation from the provider as to when it would come back on (it ended up being down for 10 days). There was a strong sense of powerlessness.

Very interesting. So the floods gave you a jolt and shook you out of whatever previous framework of reality you had created.

As such i was reduced to slumping on the sofa and watching TV in the evenings (if the power was on) - something i never do unless the North Melbourne Kangaroos are playing - it's too vacuous and the ads drive me nuts. Whilst channel surfing to avoid ads, i came across a documentary about quantum mechanics - on the Aboriginal station for some reason. I'm interested in quantum mechanics so i was happy enough with that. It was narrated by Morgan Freeman - in fact i'd seen it before - but quantum mechanics is something i can watch a dozen times in order for the message to sink in.

I'll look for it.

Towards the end of the show, one of the 'leading experts' puts forward the hypothesis that everything we experience as reality, isn't real. It's all a game simulation. I've heard this theory before but maybe because of the state i was in, it all made sense.

And it does make sense, and it could be real, but of course they wouldn't call them games. Or we (as we experience ourselves as individuals) could be the imagination of something else, a construct. I've always been amazed by how we experience dreams as real when we're in them, but discount them as unreal when we're awake. Is there an analogy there?

It wasn't a Eureka! moment, no light bulb going off - nothing like that - i was in a kinda semi-depressed stupor - so the realization settled on me in a dull, but overwhelming way. None of this is even real.

I've had moments, quite often and regularly actually, where I experience the moment as something unreal, or not what I think it is. I believe there are psychological explanations for this, but they never worked for me. What is more real than experience? Is an explanation for my experience more real than my experience? Well, perhaps, maybe, but I'll hold off on making that decision. For now, I trust my experience EDIT (That is, I trust my own take on my experience, not that my experience is 'reality'. Another way to look at this is that experience is one take on reality, albeit an imperfect one.)

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