Yet all the things you had forgotten, still condition your perception of the game. Your brain, which transcends the game itself, living outside of the computer, conditions your volitions in the game, your skill at the game, etc. After all you're still sitting right there in a dark room.
There are many people playing this game, you're playing it over the internet. Some players are very good and learn very quickly how to use new weapons, can jump around, find secret passageways, and even build their own parts on the map. Other players are very new, still getting the hang of just walking and jumping. They die often, and live uneventful lives, though this may be required to learn the game. Sometimes they may find large weapons laying on the ground, too big for them to use so they blast themselves to death. Other players use the same weapon to blast everybody but themselves.
But suddenly the game crashes, or you die, and you find yourself sitting there in a dark room, quickly remembering what you're life is about. You feel you are hungry, so you stand up and get something to eat. Though while you were playing, for all you knew sitting in a dark room with all your fingers interacting seamlessly through the computer interface, when the game is over, you're dead.
Now consider that this game is very immersive, very loud, and very real. You are wearing goggles and gloves so that it surrounds you entirely. Everywhere you look there is game. You turn your head to the right, and the goggles stay strapped to your head. The game is to your right. You turn your head left, and there is the game on your left. Behind, on top and above you, the game is all around. Now the show starts, and you feel what you have to do. You have to go shoot everything that moves. You find large weapons lying perfectly placed around the map, all the tools are there, and the game is so well designed, it seems almost formless. Though this game starts to seem ridiculous, and you want to get to the bottom of it, so you dig around through the menus and quit the game, and now you're in the operating system, just a prompt. The screen flashes with a little cursor, and through long experimentation, you figure out some commands.
If you poke around deep enough through the file systems, you might find fragments of the programming code that makes the game. Like DNA, it is imbedded in this digital realm. This is not the causal-code, like the C++, this code has already been parsed, so changing too much will destroy the game. So you edit some little variables, and then re-start the game. The color of the sky has changed, but it still feels the same.
So comes a question:
What form of consciousness creates the game, and from what plane does it project?
Nothing in the digital realm, let alone the game, could imply that your body is plugged into a computer, yet you are playing the computer with your body. There is no tool or program that you could run inside the game that could possibly prove the existence of your body, or extract any sort of information about it that you could share with others in the gaming matrix. There is no scientific data, or proof that a physical world exists outside of the game and ignorance might imply that there is nothing outside the game, yet magnificent forms seem to mysteriously materialize inside of it, as if from nothing. The whole thing continues to somehow arise in your awareness- so on what transcending plane do the computer ciruits processing the game exist?
If you are quiet and still enough, and the game stops sending you gross perceptions, you may start feeling your hands sweating inside of the VR glove- a slight rash developing behind your head where the goggles have been attached for so long. Naturally, you start to remember about your body as these parts of the brain become activated by your awareness.
You start feeling your body's stomach is hungry, and you are sitting in an uncomfortable position in your chair. There is nothing religious about these perceptions; they've very direct, yet perhaps the only place you could feel this quietness was in a temple erected inside the game, sheltered from the gross bustle of the other players. These things you could not feel until the game became very quiet and dark, yet nothing inside the game would imply the rash behind your goggles, the hunger in your belly- yet these bodily perceptions still conditioned your perceptions of the game, since they're all flowing through your brain in the end. Perhaps this hunger made your game playing more anxious, so you kept messing up certain moves inside the game.
Whatever it is, the game is running on a different plane than your physical body, yet you are still able to project your body's awareness into it entirely, and forget the body existed. There is no way to prove your body to others, all you can do is feel it. These direct perceptions of the body transcending the game world directly support a faith you carry inside than game that makes the game feel so much easier. You stop worrying about things in the game, even when it gets tough, because you remember through the perceptions of your body, that it's just a game.
How do you prove with the tools inside the game that it is just a game?
Though it is not just a game, it is also the circuits which process the game, and the universe where the circuits operate. The only way to know it is a game is through conscious perceptions on a contrasting plane, and then even the concept of it being a game is your creation, your faith. Really, the electricity flowing through the circuits making the game operate is one with the universe that your body lives in.
All proof must come scientifically. Scientific proof is based on the Scientific Method, which requires that you demonstrate the same phenomenon to react consistently within the aims you intend to 'prove' at least three times, and have other parties witnessing the same phenomenon repeatedly, then provide instruction so they can prove it too. Now how are you going to prove to other avatars in the gaming matrix that you have a rash developing on the ass of your physical body? What program are you going to use to measure the feeling of the itch it is causing you?
In the west we are very proficient in the external science-proving and measuring things so that we can build concepts upon concepts, and share symbols implying proofs and communicate in those terms. It allows us to manifest creations on a mass scale, through the systematic conditioning and coordination of millions of people's efforts.
Meanwhile, there is an internal science which has developed in the east, encapsulating traditions such as Raja Yoga, Buddhism, Tantra, etc, which outline in very specific terms, physical and mental practices you can do if you so choose to transform your consciousness to perceive awareness reflecting off of planes that transcend the game. You will find these techniques in writing, propagated by the masters of them inside the gaming world. They will outline particular ancient techniques which have been proven to work by everybody who has passed them on since they were first practiced. You can prove them to yourself through rigorous practice.
These practices are for people who, having played the game many times, still find it interesting, and don't necessarily want to quit just yet, though they prefer playing so that they're not hopelessly identified with the inevitable suffering in the game, or shit themselves in their physical pants every time they die in the virtual world.
Often these people sit in dark corners of the game, where it is quiet. Casual gamers say they are just sitting or meditating, but the sitting meditators know that they are opening up a whole new plane of consciousness and playing in that realm the whole time, quite occupied with whatever states arise. Here they may be finding a more comfortable sitting position, or applying some lotion to the rash that had been developing behind the goggles. Or they may just be feeling their physical bodies to realize through the contrasting perceptions, that they are just in a game at the moment and so not to worry. Perhaps this makes their gaming experience more enjoyable and more fantastic, being able to perceive multiple planes projecting at once.
So to invert the analogy, no matter how hard we look inside the physical universe, no body will ever find scientific proof of our subtle most forms which transcend and ultimately project these gross manifestations. These dimensions cannot be proven with scientific method, measured with tools or known with measurements- they must be perceived directly. And once direct perception is attained, no longer are there confusing issues of beleif- the root of faith becomes somthing which is known, something which is seen- and so acting in harmony with it is most natural.
There will never be proof of what all this is, and to the very end it will have us guessing, which is why it is so immersive, why we are still here, eternally playing this game of life. There will never be anything implying what is real. And really, if awareness is the only thing that is real as it is fundamental to all things, even this fragmented analogy of a game is as real as anything.