https://iai.tv/articles/the-mysterious-disappearance-of-consciousness-auid-1296

I’m generally unfriendly to assertions that, for example ‘everything is an illusion’, or ‘it’s just your imagination’ for a simple reason: if you cannot validate the processes with which you make assertions, no assertion can be validated… ever. So if someone says ‘you’re not actually conscious’ then they are saying something like ‘the thing I used to determine that you’re not conscious doesn’t exist’, which is nonsensical.

Similarly, people who want to denigrate the imagination are apparently unaware that they are using their imagination to entertain thoughts… and to validate or invalidate ideas… such as the idea that the imagination is important.

Postscript: The universe isn’t ‘a simulation’ or ‘a hologram’. These ideas are absurd simplifications of very complex models in physics… in fact, whatever ‘the great everything’ should be thought ‘to be’ is something we should be extremely careful asserting; and a goodly portion of the assertion should be reserved for things we don’t know as well as things that humans will never know (are incapable of knowing).