Feelings of Reality: Toward a Phenomenology of Experiential Realness

Abstract

This paper advances a novel framework for understanding feelings of reality (FR), the elusive yet fundamental dimension through which the self and the world are felt as real. Drawing on descriptive phenomenology, clinical psychopathology, and altered-state research, we characterize FR as non-conceptual phenomenal qualities through which the self and world are experienced as immediate and substantial. We propose that FR are structured by six interacting candidate facets: subjective awakeness, vividness, experiential coherence, experiential embeddedness, bodily awareness, and presence. These facets define a continuum extending from the diminished realness of depersonalization and derealization, through ordinary wakefulness, to the intensified or hyper-real quality of some psychedelic, contemplative, near-death, and peak-like states. The proposed facets should be understood as provisional phenomenological characterizations of felt realness rather than as definitive empirical factors or as necessary and sufficient components present in every instance of feeling real. For each facet, we distinguish phenomenological evidence drawn from first-person, clinical, contemplative, and altered-state descriptions from measurement-related evidence drawn from self-report scales, clinical instruments, experimental findings, or adjacent operational constructs. By clarifying the structure of experiential realness, this framework offers a basis for future psychometric validation, clinical assessment and treatment of diminished realness, and epistemic analysis of heightened realness without conflating the felt reality of an experience with the ontological truth of its contents.