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There we go again. Another of those unsettling encounters which stops me in my tracks and causes me to ponder for minutes on end: is my life really just a simulation? And am I being fed inputs from outside of the simulated container?

Yes, I know I must not entertain this perturbing rumination too loudly, lest I be carried away to the asylum by force. But still… there I was upstairs having an earnest discussion with my beloved, open and frank. Moments later, I return to my desk to discover words on my screen addressing the very topic we were discussing.

Mere coincidence? My mind reading meaning where there is none? A hidden friend intent on encouraging me, worried about my divergence from the path of humility? The intervention of one of those angels who whisper good thoughts into the ears of old acquaintances? A small measure of cosmic guidance — or rebuke — gifted from above?

I wish I could speak to somebody about this without being treated as some kind of loony tune. Can anyone at all assuage me of this vexatious disquiet? Is all we experience an illusion, or is this delusion? I suppose there is an easy response to these encounters: that I both have a hyperactive imagination and misunderstand the nature of probability.

Perhaps that is so: my way of dealing with the mysterious peculiarity of consciousness is to find meaning in all manner of superficial encounters. Am I an over-thinker, forever reading significance into the completely mundane? Undoubtedly, the interested psychologist would have a field day analysing my cognitive profile, identifying paranoid ideation, circumstantiality, delusion, illusion and hallucination.

But rhymes aside, I think I am erring more towards the explanation of the wise sages of old: that all of these experiences provide startling confirmation that the life of the world is all an illusion. That, after all, is the position of the faithful. As says our book, “The life of this world is no more than an illusion.” (3:185, 6:32, 57:20) It is the hereafter alone that is real.

And this worldly life is not but diversion and amusement. And indeed, the home of the hereafter: that is the real life, if only they knew.

Quran 29:64

A better explanation, to my mind, than any other.