It's Reality, Or Is It?

My gosh these really cryptic questions are giving me a headache but nonetheless, what is reality for specific groups of people, why do they believe that is the real way things are and why is it so different? TOK is one of those classes where all you ever get is more and more questions, and never get a straight answer, or at least, not an answer you can be satisfied with, so I will try to explain as much as I can from an unbiased third party about the beliefs of some particular 'cultures'. Of course, if I misrepresent them, please by all means leave a comment for me to revise a statement, as I cannot truly know the belief systems of a 'society' which I am not a part of and therefore cannot give a proper perspective on the matter. But I will try...

Drugs -
What is the purpose of taking mind-altering and reality-changing drugs? Some people believe that doing such things can give them a heightened sense of reality or an escape from reality. Is what you see in a drug-haze what is really happening, or is it instead a distortion of your senses which changes your perspective so all you really see is the mind's altered look on things that you partially imagine as well as see. Although I have never taken drugs myself, I have been told that hallucinogenics can give strange visions and make reality into something totally different. Does that mean that those visions are the real deal? I guess no one really knows...

Spiritualism -
Beliefs such as karma, deja vu, in some cases reincarnation, and other such beliefs sometimes connected to religions, could be the reality, we just haven't realized it yet. How do you know that karma really doesn't exist? You really can never know whether something you cannot see, hear, smell, touch, taste, or feel can really be there. But some people do believe in such things, which is a different reality from what scientists and some religious leaders believe.

Esotericism -
The belief in spirits, ghosts, and mystical powers that can be transferred into objects may seem far-fetched to a level-headed realist, but there are those that believe that there is a lot more in the world than what we can just see and mystical forces are working all around us. Another unprovable belief (for the most part) but still a possibility as our senses limit how much we can actually notice and process in the world. Too much is slipping between the cracks of our minuscule knowledge.

Those are just three main relative beliefs but there are many more, each provided a different perspective on reality, mostly based on something we cannot use our senses to interact with. It really shows that if there was more in the world than what we can actually sense, we would remain oblivious. Who knows, perhaps something totally different than the illusion of reality we constantly grasp is hiding in the blanks we cannot look at. We may miss something really important if we focus on just what we can sense. But if we spend too much time looking for another reality which we cannot access with our human senses, we will just waste time that we should be living, if living is real at all. ;) Blows your mind doesn't it???