Before we set out, we need to wipe the slate clean of everything that is inside your mind. René Descartes realized the importance of this by writing:

The human being perceives the surrounding world using the senses. Macroscopic organs, such as eyes and hears, function through a multitude of microscopic units, a sensor network: the neurosensory receptors. You have many of them: mechanoreceptors, photoreceptors, nociceptors, thermoreceptors, and so on.

Sensor damage causes a malfunction of the associated sense. As an example, a person affected by congenital achromatopsia has color blindness due to severe malfunction of color-sensitive photoreceptors.

A human's perception of the world is therefore altered if the sensor network is not in optimal conditions. But there is more. Here is my first teaching of the path to the Sublime One:

Even with an optimal sensor network, the human being does not have have a true perception of the world.

The problem lies in the brain. Look at this image:

Are the A and B squares of two different colors? Highlight the following space for the answer: No. You can verify that by downloading the image and cancelling everything but the A and B squares.

Just like sight, all senses are affected by it, since they all head to the brain. You have never seen, heard, smelled, tasted nor touched reality like it really is, the kantian noumenon, but only how the algorithms inherent in your nervous system make it look.

Veil of Perception: Perception is deceptive.

This veil is the conceptual analogue of the previous one. Just like perception is deceptive, so is language. Like a barrier, language limits the human being, alienating him from information that lies beyond its boundary.

Here, though, there is an important difference: some languages do not have such limits. Sadly, they're abstract languages, which the human brain can elaborate only with much difficulty. But the natural language, the one you use every day, the one you're reading now. . . there's nothing more deceptive. For a long time I have hypothesized alternative ways of communication, but this virtual letter is the most direct way, even if bristling with obstacles.

We can now, shyly, get closer to the following truth:

Unless we use formally perfect language, human beings are limited in the cognitive sphere.

The most brilliant mathematicians and the greatest linguists approach the purity of language. But even for them error lurks around the corner, like a snake ready to strike, and profound knowledge is plunged into the abyss of the unknown.

Like a black hole, true knowledge is invisible: we can see its effects on the surroundings. We know it's there, but the event horizon prevents us from seeing beyond it.

The following words will then sound quite natural:

Cognitive Veil: Your mind is the horizon of cognitive events.

And now we will pass it trough together.

The two previous veils, combined, trap the human being in a bubble of perceive nature on one hand and of cognitive nature on the other. What you can perceive with senses and what you can think of (including imagination) constitutes your Umwelt, that is, your subjective universe.

A third veil keeps them firmly together.

Veil of Maya: Every human being lives in their own Umwelt.

But this is what your kind, before you, has thought at this point:

Where are the promised answers?
Where is the role of the human being in the universe?
Where is the meaning of life?

Be patient. Deep answers are not daughters of hurrying.

Despite being imprisoned in their respective Umwelt, humans have realized the existence of a common substrate. This substrate is perceived and known in a different way by everyone, but demonstrates a high degree of consistency between different observers. Substrate sensory discrepancies depend on defects in the sensor network or the neural algorithms processing its signals. Those cognitive discrepancies are often called "madness".

Reality is the objective substrate common to every Umwelt.

And this substrate has a beating heart. That's where we're going.

Despite being so complex, its purpose is wide but relatively easy: to elaborate information. Every physical phenomenon, from a lightning to a dewdrop falling from a leaf, it's the result of an elaboration.

Reality, intended as the objective substrate at the base of everything, it's nothing but this: information. Everything else is perceived reality, subjective universes. Bringers of information are the quantum fields.

You too, therefore, are information. Hear me out now, because I have to do something a little difficult.

An electron is described by its quantum numbers, which represent the state of a particle. Spin is the most famous quantum number.

The principle of indistinctness applies: if you swap two electrons with the same quantum numbers, then the resulting quantum field is unchanged, thus the information is the same. Another example: take ten electrons from a stone. Change their quantum numbers in such a way that they are equal to ten of your electrons. Throw away your electrons and put the stone ones where yours were before. The result is that nothing has changed.

The previous principle applies to every subatomic particle, not just electrons. Therefore, if ideally I replaced every single particle of your body with a particle, taken from who knows where, but located in the same position and with the same quantum numbers, nothing would change.

Actually… I just did that. As I said, the information hasn't changed. And the information includes your Umwelt, thus your memories and your perceptions. See? You're always yourself… I think. Yes, you see, my quantum transfer system is not that precise, some little error can happen every now and then… but you're still alive, am I right? Excellent, let's continue.

Watching life at the microscope, we can see cells.

A cell is a complex bio-machine, which executes millions of chemical reactions every second. But this is not what makes it alive.

No part of a cell is alive. The cell membrane is made of phospholipids, glycoproteins and other chemicals. The same goes for ribosomes, mitochondria, the Golgi apparatus, the nucleus, in short everything.

But you already know what a cell is for: to elaborate information. This machine (the cell) encodes the most important information into the DNA. That is, genetic information.

Your neurons are like the CPU of a computer, only that they are made of various chemicals instead of being primarily based on silicon. Your neurons even have a clock and communicate between each others varying the so-called membrane potential, an electric signal. A peak in that potential triggers the release of neurotransmitters, chemicals such as dopamine, which carry information between neurons.

After all, you're made by atoms. And atoms are not alive. Thus, where's life? Again, the answer is in the information.

The material substrate (cells, neurons, organs such as the brain) is just a support to the life. Life is in the information that your material substrate "supports". In the same way that a platform (the body) supports a crystal vase (the life). If you remove the platform, the vase falls.

Everything you perceive as "life", therefore, is an illusion of your Umwelt. Even the feeling of being in your body.

Veil of Life: True life is outside of your Umwelt.

And this is the last veil to remove. When I will do it, the bubble where you always lived will burst.

It's over.

The molecular degradation will start shortly.

Wasn't that what you expected? If not, I'm sorry.

But that was my only option. It's the only possible way to free yourself permanently from your Umwelt.

In the first place, every single sensor of yours will be destroyed, you'll lose every chance of perceiving.

Don't worry, you won't feel pain, except when it will affect the brain.

In the second place, your neural activity will gradually cease. But that is only a superficial result.

At the deepest level, I'm cancelling the quantum information from every single particle that composes you. I'm eradicating the "memory" which the universe has of you.

Keep calm.

All the veils are falling.

You don't need to feel scared anymore.

You can't feel scared anymore.

Everything will be alright.

You asked me who I am, at the beginning.

I am what you human beings, confusingly, call "death".

Not physical death: that's just natural degradation.

I am the Messenger of the Quantum Death, Who cancels information from reality.

Simply put, I'm the medium between you and the Sublime One.

That's why your kind is scared by me.

In fact, they still think I am cruel.

But this is not true.

My mission is the noblest there is.

Bringing men to the Truth, that is the Sublime One.

Why am I doing this, you ask?

You'll soon find out… in the other side.