If logic, as Wittgenstein put it, defines what is possible, the irreal is the domain that lies beyond logic and possibility. The irreal can not be experienced and can never be brought into reality, as it is the negation of reality.

The irreal both undergirds reality and provides a transcendental point toward which all of reality heads (death and negation). It is the origin and destination of reality. The irreal contains everything that was and is no longer, will be but is not yet, and what never comes to pass. Reality is the inverse of irreality. Where irreality contains the potential for all things, reality gives that potential shape and linearity, drawing limits to give form to real things. In this way the true form of reality is not possibility, but impossibility. Only irreality contains what is possible.

Imagination interprets the irreal into the human mind where the irreal manifests as art and desire. Where art points to the irreal through fiction and representations of potential, desire and action pull potential out of the irreal and make that potential into something real. Everything that is real cascaded out of irreality, shaping everything else that is real. Likewise the transition from irreal to real and irreal again gives rise to change.

The closest a person can come to experiencing irreality is through the complete suspension of logic and limitation in dreams, and in the nothingness of meditation. The closer one gets to the irreal, the blurrier and weaker are the lines that give structure to being, until all potential returns to its primordial state of nothing. Artists, contemplatives and visionaries of all kinds inhabit the border of the irreal.

A person who feels the nature of the irreal experiences a dramatic shift in perspective in life, even temporarily. This may come as ego death, humility, ataraxy, memento mori, satori, or any number of other names.