This is from the book "Spiritual Enlightenment, The Damnedest Thing" by Jed McKenna.

There's this guy sitting in a movie theater, but he doesn't really know he is in a theater. He's seated in such a way that all he can see is the screen; no other movie goers, just the screen. What's more, he's shackled. He can't move around, can't look around. His head and body are held in place by chains. He has been there his entire life. It's the only reality he's ever known; sitting here, watching images on the screen and listening to the soundtrack. That's all he knows of reality. So the guy is sitting there, watching the film, completely absorded and believing that this is all there is to life.

  This is called 'willing suspension of disbelief '. It is the deal you make every time you go to a movie. You agree to relax your discrimination and let the movie in. You know the movie is not reality, but you will sit quietly for 2 hours and allow yourself to experience it as if it were. You suspend your disbelief in order to form an empathetic bond with the plight of the characters and the movie, in return, agrees not to over-strain credulity and make it too difficult for you to believe.

   So this guy has no disbelief. He is empathetically bound to the characters and events on the screen. After all, what else does he know? The images on the screen are reality and that's what life is.

  But one day, for whatever reason, he happens to look down and notice that his shackles aren't really locked. His captivity has been an unchallenged illusion. Being scared and excited he gets himself free of his bonds and, for the first time ever, stands up and looks around. In looking around, it begins to dawn on him that thers's another level of reality of which he has always been completely ignorant. That makes him wonder about the images on the screen that he had always unquestioningly accepted as reality, so he looks around and sees the flickering lights overhead and traces them back to source.

  He has freed himself from delusion and begun the process of awakening to the larger reality. He is looking around inside the theater, exploring this new, realer reality. In the dark theater, he has always been watching the light reflecting off the screen but now he sees the source of the light, the source of the images he mistook for reality before. So now he identifies the projectionist's booth as the true source of reality since that's where the light is coming from, the only light in the whole place.

  Now looking around the whole placeso it takes him awhile to adjust to this new far vaster, far richer reality. It takes time for his muscles and sense to adapt, not to mention dealing with the emotional impact of the fact that his life up until this point has been a sham. He might also see that aisle leads to a door, and that light is coming in beneath the door. Maybe he sees it, maybe he doesn't.

  Once over the initial shock and has adjusted to his new reality, he sees that the theater is actually quite large and full of other people like himself, engage in all sorts of different activities.

 So looking around some more to find the theater full of all the people he loves and cares for, held in place by the same unlocked chains, watching the same images on the screen like that's all there is. He tries to help them. Get them to snap out of it. Wake up. Undo their chains and look around. See what's really going on. After a while he gives up as they act as if he is threatening  to them,  as if he was goofy.