I imagine ‘reality’ and ‘illusion’ are positions on a continuum rather than binary choices.
Prior to 1895 ‘visible light’ was real and ‘x-rays’ were illusory. Now they are both real.
Visible light and x-rays have very different characteristics and interact with matter in profoundly distinct ways and yet they are the same thing; They just reside at different points on the map.
I do get the feelings that things are inverted, back to front and upside down though.
I ‘sense’ that we are ‘projected down’ into material. And naturally ‘the material’ seeks to explain itself and this is named science and it ‘reasons’ that it is explaining and observing ‘causes’, but ‘really’ it is just a story that is offering ‘sense’ after the fact; Like when we are dreaming and a noise intrudes from the waking world, waking us and then we realise that the whole dream had been leading up to that noise, which in the dream was symbolic of something momentous and world shattering.
Awareness is the arbiter of reality and appears to reside on just such a continuum; Any particular phase state it finds itself in is real and ‘verifiable’ (to itself). The boundary area on the continuum is weird and contentious and the neighbouring phase state is illusory.
