It´s a well known scenario to all Star Trek fans. Some crew members are on the holodeck for recreation or training. The program is running, but suddenly there is a malfunction of some sort and all kinds of unexpected things start to happen. They try to end the program but the computer is not responding. They can´t get off the holodeck, they find themselves trapped inside, with both dramatic and dangerous things going on around them, unable to stop what is happening to them. They have lost control.

Some time ago, when I was going through a challenging and painful time in my life, I started to have some strange experiences. My perception of reality was changing, it seemed and I became aware of some large, invisible part of it, which was previously hidden from me. Waves of a strong and most unusual feeling would wash over me and leave me wondering, what it was that I was experiencing. Sometimes, when I was alone, I would suddenly stop what I was doing and stare at my surroundings with astonishment.


What was that strange thing, that had found its way to my consciousness? There seemed to be a reality behind reality. Everything looked the same as it always does, and yet there was something behind. On some occasions that awareness would become so strong, that it felt like the veil between me and whatever was on the other side became alarmingly thin. It felt as if any moment it would start to disappear in one place or another, creating a growing hole in the fabric of reality and revealing whatever was hidden behind.

Month after month went and the feeling would not go away. One day, as I was wondering what was that strange thing, that I had been experiencing, I came to think of my last trip abroad – a trip to the USA, a few years earlier. So far away, in a different part of the world – I had to spend 8 hours on the plane to get there. Some questions started to arise. How could I know that it really was far away? Because everybody knew that. But how could I know that what everybody knew was true? I could check how many miles I had travelled. I could read about it or hear it from someone. But how could I know that what I read or heard was true? I believed it was true. But how could I know that what I believed was true? It took all that time to get there. But how could I be certain, that using time means going a distance? How could I know for sure, that I went anywhere at all? What was it, that I really knew about it – for certain? The only thing, that I knew for certain, was that as time was passing, the scenery around me was changing.

First I saw the changing landscape as we were driving to the airport. Then I walked a few steps, went through what looked like a door and saw what looked like an airport all around me. I walked a bit again and found myself inside of what looked like a plane. Then came another airport and I boarded another plane. I spent the next 8 hours surrounded by the scenery of the inside of a plane. Then I was told, that I had “arrived” and after a few steps, the scenery changed again. That new scenery was called “the USA”. How could I be sure, that the distance I had travelled wasn´t an illusion?

How can I know for sure, that a new scenery means “another place”? Is it really so, or are we walking, driving and flying in circles on some sort of gigantic holodeck? And how have I become this way, that once I am told “this is so” or “everybody knows” or “everybody says”, I accept it without questioning and without thinking about it? When and how did I stop thinking for myself? Why did I make that “everybody” an authority over me on how everything is supposed to be in this world? Almost as if I myself was running a program… Why is it so scary to simply question things?

In Star Trek TNG all the holocharacters run their programs blindly, in accordance with the story they are part of. They do only what they have been programmed to do and believe in what they have been programmed to believe in. Nobody questions the story. Nobody knows who he really is (a fictional character in a story), they are all certain, that they are those people the story tells them they are and that their fictional reality is real – unless something goes wrong and unexpected things start to happen.

Such unexpected “thing” is professor Moriarty from the “Sherlock Holmes” program in Star Trek, The Next Generation. They program him to be brilliant, but an error occurs and he becomes too brilliant. He “wakes up” and becomes self-aware – something a holodeck character is not supposed to do. He starts to question his own identity and the nature of reality as he knows it. Or as he himself says: “But they made me too well, and I became more than a character in a story. I became self-aware. I am alive.” This leads to a great desire to leave the story, which has been his home his entire life, to get off the holodeck and into the real world, so he can experience how it is to live a real life, as a real man.

Are we all such fictional characters in the story of this world? Is it true, what we´ve been taught about this reality or do we live our lives in a world, which is an illusion and as people, who don´t really exist? Do I really know myself or is there somebody else hidden behind that person I´ve always known as me? Why do we make the same mistakes over and over again? Why do we keep repeating the same patterns for decades, even though we see, that they don´t work? How is it, that we so often miss the obvious, that is staring us in the face and later wonder how we could miss something, that even a child would see? How is it that – for all our intelligence – we have those big blind spots, where we can´t see the forest for all the trees? Why do we so often sound like an old gramophone record, repeating the same things every day, for years? Why do so many of us tell the same, old stories over and over again, even though the others beg us to stop it? Why do we cling to our old rutines, why are we so resistant to change? Why is the tendency not to question things? Why do we so often behave like some shallow characters in a story – always saying the same things, always acting in the same manner, seemingly unable to change, almost as if we´ve been programmed to be one way, but not another?

After the first several months, the new awareness faded, then it came back for a while, only to disappear again. It keeps coming and going and when it is not with me, I miss it. Without it, I feel disabled now - as if I´ve lost my sight or hearing. When it´s here, it varies in intensity, but on general it´s getting stronger and more complex. Sometimes the veil is so thin, that it feels like I could stretch out my arm and with my fingertips make a hole in the fabric of reality. As this perception intensifies, it is also accompanied by foggy and most unusual memories – of existence seemingly outside of space and time. Puzzling realities – so strange, but at the same time there is a strong feeling of recognition present – a lovely feel of … home.

With time, these experiences have become more intense and complex. Their accumulative effect makes the consensus reality appear more and more like an illusion and not as solid, as it used to be many years ago. Time is not what it used to be, either. In recent years it has been galloping with a ridiculous speed, making one hour feel like only 5–10 minutes long. When I hear, that we are discovering new planets, which apparently have been around for billions of years, I have a strong feeling, that this is an illusion and that, instead, we create these planets at the very moment we discover them. The awareness is now, that time itself is an illusion, as is space and gravity and many other things, which we take for granted. Even death. Most of our reality, if not all of it, seems to be a lie – a lie, which, for several years now, has been apparently gradually losing its grip. Something appears to be changing.

Some years ago, when I first started to notice it, I thought, that it was just me. Then, after a while, I would start to have a reoccurring feeling, that I was like a small fish in a big river. The fish thinks, that something strange is happening to it, but then it discovers, that the whole river is changing its course. There is, of course, a possibility, that instead, there is something wrong with my perception, but it doesn´t feel like this is the case and it looks like some of the experiences in my life, as well as my own observation, confirm, what my perception says. Something seems to be happening with reality – some kind of gradual transformation of the very fabric of it. It´s becoming less dense, less solid, less firm, less resistant, less definitive, more transparent, more penetrateable and liquid-like. It almost feels like it is… dissolving. More and more is coming through it, from the reality apparently behind this one and what is coming through is unheard of. It´s so different from anything from this world, that I doubt, I will ever have enough courage to write about it. It also looks like this transformation is somehow linked to consciousness and as strange as it sounds, the individual consciousness appears to be at least equal to the collective one in this matter.

As time goes by, the consensus reality feels more and more false and the strange one behind becomes more and more real. At times, I have to exert myself to readapt to the “normal” world. Everything here is such a strenuous struggle, it takes so much time and effort to accomplish the simplest things and lying is the way of being.

When we come to this world, we learn, that truth can be found in objectivity and that subjectivity is something negative and false. It has taken me a long time to discover, that there was a hidden message in those teachings. The message was: “Your own perception is nonsense and cannot be trusted. The only true perception is the one, that originates from the outside of you. If your perception isn´t identical to the one from the outside, it means, that you are crazy.” The greatest wisdom and the highest good was to get as far away as possible from all subjectivity. I did. And then, one day, I finally realized, that the most subjective part of me, the one, which I was supposed to get rid of – was my true self.

It looks like the separation of everything from everything else is dissolving. People seem to infect each other and even animals with not only diseases and all kinds of mysterious symptoms, but also with all sorts of things, experiences and states, which are not supposed to be contagious. In one family of four, within one year, every member falls down and breaks some bones, one after another. In another family, both the husband and the wife get Bell´s palsy (facial paralysis) and their doctor is stupefied (“I don´t understand. Both of you? This is a rare condition”). I hear about a suicide town on TV, where people apparently infect each other with suicide, as if it was an influenza. How can suicide be contagious? In my aquarium, when one fish dies, its mate always follows it in short time. This happened also when one barb died as a result of an accident (sucked into the pump). Its mate died some 3 weeks later. Both of them were in perfect health. I can see and recognise some people and myself in other people and even in animals, seeing right through the apparent difference on the surface. I don´t see, that they have something in common, what I see is, that somehow, however it can be – they are the same.

Nothing of what I´ve described here is a belief. I don´t have any religious beliefs. I don´t know what it all means.

I´ve searched the Internet, books and magazines for similar reports, but I´ve found nothing. There was all the fiction there of course, as well as all the theories, opinions and beliefs on the subject – but these were not what I was looking for. I hoped to find others, who actually had experienced some of the same and who would take a chance and tell.

My astrology research seem to point in the similar, strange direction. I have written about some of my findings in some of the articles on the Astrology, Symbolism, Mythology page (f.e. in “Odysseus, Penelope and Ithaca – our journey home”).

What is this puzzling awareness of, what are these nebulous memories, which would be too strange for Star Trek? What is this reality behind reality? Different worlds, multiple realities – somewhere inside eternity… So alien and yet … so familiar… The persistent feeling of home… So close sometimes…

Which side is the real one?

What is behind the veil – the truth or psychosis?

Copyright © 2008 Aida Gundersen
5 May 2008

Parts of the horoscope active:

Aida in Aquarius in the 11th house, conjunct the housecusp, Retrograde
The handle of the bucket Saturn in Aquarius in the 11th house, in the Anaretic Degree, Retrograde
Aida conjunct Veritas in Aquarius, in the 11th house
Memoria conjunct the Descendant
Moon opposite Mnemosyne
Aida quincunx Uranus and Pluto
Mercury conjunct Uranus and Pluto
Moon square Uranus and Pluto
The South Node conjunct the Galactic Center
Sun conjunct the Super Galactic Center, conjunct Roentgen
MC conjunct Roddenbery
Aida opposite Interkosmos
The North Node conjunct Athanasia