When I was 11, I had a “flash” insight after wondering: “What would the Universe be like without color?”
For a few minutes I saw/imagined colors gone, even black and white, and just ‘felt” differential pressures superimposed on everthing. Then the everything went away.
In my minds’ eye it was like refractions of light but with no whiteness, blackness, greyness or color. I was able to zoom through the Universe, thorugh my feet, through the earth and know what everything was without having to see it.
It only lasted a few minutes. It was 1983. Kind of a “Matrix” moment but they didn’t make that movie yet.
Anyway it was influential on how I see on the world. Also made me mad at Pauli’s Exclusion Principle when I learned it. Still pisses me off. But then again, this chair wouldn’t hold me up, and “me” would simply pass through and _possibly_ be subject to gravity and end up as the earth’s core, unless I was neutrino… in which case I’d just keep going, barely interacting with anything.
But yeah. Reality is real just the same. I just let myself think things.