Pure Projection ...
lobster
Crusty Veteran
The Purelands ...
Buddhist Tushita Heaven, where the Maitriya sits on his enlightened tush and other perfected higher realms, are mind projections of idealisations. Well that is one story ...
In another sense, experiencing the world as an outer projection of our mind filter, explains in part how samsara and nirvana are on the same shore. We might say nirvana is the cessation of projection, whilst samsara is the clinging to the shadows in Plato's cave.
As someone used to 'spirit possession' by Medicine Buddha, Wise Manjushri, Rainbow Tara and other Tantric deities, I know reality is just a consensus projection.
Is the world a reflective projection? For me it is. The things that irk or inspire are all about me. The things that calm or agitate; me again.
That does not mean we are the centre of the universe, generating its very being, as some deluded yogacara advocate. That is just projected Trump style dharma megalomania. 
Solution? Ahem, maybe turn off projector and enjoy the popcorn ... ?
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Alternatively you could say that we fabricate an idea of the world in our minds, but the idea is not really accurate. On the other hand we still need to recognise "cars", "buses" and "trucks" when crossing a busy road.....
Or perhaps these things exist as an entirely separate cosmic spiritual realm of tremendous breadth and scope, as explored by Emanuel Swedenborg back in the 17th century with his advanced visionary techniques.
^^. Good luck with that fantasy.
Next you will be telling me pokemon go is based on real shinto gods/realities ...
... and now back to the Purelands ...
Oh I'm not so sure. There are many people who hear voices and see things that are not part of this world, the only thing is nowadays they are classified as suffering from a mental health problem. A few hundred years ago, people would have said you are talking to the gods, fairies, wrathful demons and so on.
Except, who is to say which is right? Certainly the recurrence of religious subjects, the strangeness of it and the intransigence to analysis of those experiences suggests something is going on. Perhaps it is a mix, some of it touching a spiritual realm, and some of it internal to the brain. Certainly Jung thought we all have a shared section of subconscious.
Anyway there has to be a place for Buddha's to go after they are enlightened and leave the body, for Maitreya to wait for his incarnations.
On a gut level I'd say that you are creating a duality here. "Nirvana" in my beginner's understanding is not the cessasion of anything in particular but being at peace with everything - even with the illusions the shadows create and the narrow field of experience they imply.
Everything we see, feel, hear is a projection -- that's just physics and an "understanding" we have developed of the phenomena we have experienced over the past millions of years.
This quote bears repeating. Substitute "questioning" with "interpreting" for this thread.
That doesn't ring entirely true to me. Our perception of what we see, feel, hear is a projection, but there is an objective reality. This reality is subject to investigation by instruments, and we are still discovering new things about what it is exactly that we are perceiving and how our perceptions work, but that there is a reality to investigate seems a fact.
Indeed.
In that sense, Samsara is speech and Nirvana the Non-dual, is silent.
To be 'at peace with everything' we have to cease the noise and clamour for answers, questions, fantastic conjectures, useless opinions and our sense of self esteem or confidence in the minds shadow boxing ... Most of us are not ready for that ...
Probably not the thousand Boddhisatvas (ready to take on an imaginary journey/picnic to the hell realms) I have locked in my closet ...
So you're saying some alternate plane must exist? Like the multiple (for every choice you make both the option you enact option you choose against are played out in separate universes, between which we can not travel) universes theory?
That would be my conclusion. This would be a place intrinsically linked to consciousness, a mental or supernatural series of realms perhaps related to where we go when we die. It wouldn't be physical, so not totally like multiple universes.
Based on a dream, a unicorns wish?
This is not part of dharma but a fantasy created for good Buddhist hordes, the gullible, the fantasists, the Tantric projectionists, the mad, the next life time shirkers ...
... or is that just my conclusion?
From a variety of sources - personal experience, the experience of family members, things I have encountered in meditation, and from what I have read that gels with that. I think that the idea that such a thing does not exist is a hold-over from scientific materialism, the idea that the mind is the brain.
A good antidote to that line of thinking starts with near death experiences. Once you read a few of these you realise these people have no reason to lie. There are a number of books which provide a pretty strong foundation for 'non local consciousness', the fact that consciousness persists beyond the body. For example Dr Pim van Lommel's Endless Consciousness.
Personally I had an experience around the death of my stepmother which changed my thinking about this. She was in hospital, the end was near and my father and me were waiting in the corridor outside her room. The door was closed. But suddenly I felt a kind of cloud of silence, a vastness, and a blossoming sensation like the most beautiful ethereal perfume. My dad said, "do you feel that?" We called the nurse, and she had passed on.
That was not the only incident, but to me it was the most significant. It eventually made me change my view from normal scientific materialism to something that is more open to other things.
I like that. Practically speaking we will only ever have a partial view of "reality", given the limitations of our senses and intellect.
There is something, our experiencing confirms this. As to the nature, totality, nuances, misperception, dreams, trees falling in empty woodlands of this 'objective reality' ... mmm ... just bits?
Just pass the chocolate shake down the table, please.
With enough dedication, can't the current moment be a type of "pureland?" Does that make everything in that state, then, a reflective projection? I like the idea of going in and out of nirvana; like it's not a destination, but a partner along the way that you either notice or not.
Uh oh, am I getting too loopy doopy??? It's the Ritalin.
Good questions @RuddyDuck9 My current understanding is that mindful attention, awareness if you like, is something we can practice and increase the being of. It would be a little like dreaming one is awake, the closer such a dream is to awakening the more real it might be ... until one is awake ...
Thus have I heard "Glimpses of Pureland can be liken to the music playing in the background (I think of feng shei music )... At times (when one is fully present) one is totally aware of the tune, whilst other times ones focus of attention is elsewhere, but the background music plays on and on and on-uninterrupted"
This is one of the earliest known images of the Buddha.
http://opcoa.st/0vLn5-946a4
Here is a more direct link for the above image source
http://www.exoticindiaart.com/article/lordbuddha/
The problem with 'I am not crazy/vision prone but partly living in an alternative reality' is very simple. Every hallucination, drug fuelled fantasy, crazy prophet, charismatic or self obsessed or ill loony tunes is legitimised. The realm/brane/universe we currently inhabit is usually a sufficient bewilderment/wonderment ...
We have to be critical of our faulty reasoning and tendency to legitamise our illness/insanity/impediments as karma or deeply meaningful ...
Personally I would not trust myself to think objectively and sanely even when accused or complimented on such an ability ... but I try ...