Being a virtual self inside a virtual reality

According to Thomas Metzinger, we live in a sort of virtual reality. Everything that we experience is ''a virtual self in a virtual reality''......

Our brains are effectively onboard computers creating a ''transparent'' real time virtual reality of it's environment... In Metzingers words: ''Our brains create a world simulation, so perfect that we do not recognize it as an image in our minds.''

The colors of the setting sun is not a property of the evening sky. It is a property of the internal model for the evening sky, a model created by the brain. And it gets worse:
We are not even in direct contact with our own bodies...What we feel is an illusion....not reality, but virtual reality. Strictly speaking, and on the level of conscious experience alone, you live live in a virtual body and not in a real one...

And certainly, in the future, understanding our minds in this light might lead to whole new experiences:
Metzingers envisions a future where people goes a little further with technology that just playing video games and experiment with virtual reality for fun. Indeed, in the future, some might use new technology to explore the universes of altered states of consciousness in a quest for meaning. E.g. Have their temporal lobes ticled by advanced technology etc., leading to all sorts of new experiences.

Exciting times ahead !
Read more here.

-Simon