Introduction:
Humanity has always sought answers to all of their philosophic questions about life,
and now a new one rises; Is everything what it is told to be and what would happen, if we somehow found out that all we had ever known and everything we had ever fought for was a lie? Our world as it exist today is not what is combined with any of the spectrum's in humanity. Emotions, laws, the free expression; everything is just a cover to hide you from the truth.
We, today, live in a society with violence, science, emotions, - way to many aspects to be directly remembered but everything still has it's place, deep within our minds.
Therefore, everything we experience have a large impact on us and therefore it is the perfect place to feed our fears and curiosity. As our paranoia grows, how do we know that a higher power has not taken advantage of our mind?
Conspiracy of our world:
In 1999, the first movie from The Matrix trilogy was revealed. It became a highly philosophic movie about mankind living in an artificial dream world. A conspiracy of our entire world capturing mankind in a fake reality a so called prison for our mind.
Humans are according to this film trapped in a world, which is controlled by machines (artificial intelligence) while they are used as "feeding" to the machines through electricity. The possibilities of this story being partly true has been discussed by a lot of great philosophers, and the idea of us being hold in a prison or cage like we do with other animals (but maybe on a higher level) is to me not so hard to believe. Philosophers and scientist all over the world, have had theories that were close to the one revealed in the Matrix and a wide range of our society is in the belief that this theory is partly correct. The philosopher Descartes has, as far as we know, actually concluded from his side aspect that our contact with the society and the general world may not exist at all. All we can assure ourselves to be existing, is our inner life. All of our good and bad memories may not exist at all.
What influenced us as kids may not ever have existed at all.
Death may not exist at all. How do we know that this so called death is not a way of keeping us under control too? Maybe it is a threat for those who can or are causing trouble in any way? There are so many things in our world that we do not understand but so far the scientists and the technology has been answering all of our questions. Now when we think about our technology and solutions, how can we say that they are right? If we are under control by some superhuman or higher power then they could easily be controlling when we need a solution or not.
This theory is rejected by mankind due to it is a frightening and disturbing truth, although, it is possible true, even with a scientific view, as said in the Matrix;

"How do you define "real"? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then "real" is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain..."
The only thing left we can debate is whether or not there is someone who actually has managed to get out of our world. As we always say: "everything is possible these days". There might be a way to get out of our world, to configure it. A possibility could be within the religions; in some of them, it is believed to be trapped between life and death. If this happened then who knows what they could do in that situation? A place between death and life could easily be a place without any rules and therefore a lot of opportunity to reach some kind of higher power.
This theory about being trapped between the to worlds is build upon ancient beliefs within the Gnosticism, Buddhism, and Christianity and does not have to include the world being controlled by machines.
It is the concept that we as humans are not necessarily the most intelligent creature and that we might be kept in some kind of prison as we are keeping other animals in cages. As we once formed some kind of conspiracy when arriving to earth killing other animals for our own survival. Someone or something might have done the same to us. Without us knowing, that our mind and soul is reacting on a virtual reality and not even close to real.
Try to imagine us in a big cage, formed as our world where we are being fed, given activities and challenges, while we are watched by something or someone superhuman. The doubts in our mind about this being true is unfortunately never to get an answer. As said by a well-known philosopher it can be expressed like this:

"You do not know that you are not a brain, suspended in a vat full of liquid in a laboratory, and wired to a computer which is feeding you your current experiences under the control of some ingenious technician scientist (benevolent or malevolent).
For if you were such a brain, then, provided that the scientist is successful, nothing in your experience could possibly reveal that you were; for you have only your own experience to appeal to, and that experience is the same in either situation, nothing can reveal to you which situation is the actual one."
So if we cannot really be sure if we are held as prisoners, then how can we escape?
Our enemies is invisible, for they must be outside or above our world.
If they wanted to make a conspiracy upon the human race, they did not need anything else than to move outside our world, and start configure it. That is what is frightening. This world is fighting for civil rights, against terror but are we prepared for an attack from an unknown enemy from an unknown place?
These theories are never told in schools, and are never brought into the light of the media, so how are the normal citizen going to know and prepare for this truth?
As we are told of Christianity and other beliefs, we should be told of these theories too, so that we always have our eyes open when our enemy approaches.
Now that we have heard this theory the final question is: Do we want to believe in this theory, or put our trust in authorities and religion, in the belief that they are not imaginable?

Discussion & Conclusion
This essay was written out of knowledge and interest but unfortunately this theory and the debate about mankind somehow living in a dream world or being kept as slaves, are much bigger than four pages and goes way deeper into your mind. Therefore this essay is written very superficially.
I think, that people who are believing in this theory are people who find life ineffectual, and are looking for some higher power, or something extreme to believe in at times when the world seems almost unbelievable numb. I cannot personally say that I do not partly believe this theory is true but maybe that is also to believe in some kind of higher power? Religion, miracles: Isn't that a lot of things based on the need to depend on a higher power? In this world of so called make-believe what is it we want, or have to believe? Could it actually be a way of convincing ourselves that there is more than just this ordinary world? In this example, we believe in a conspiracy for then we have something extreme to fight for or just to believe in. Have our world really become so ineffectual? Or are we as humans just demanding more and more? A lot of philosophers and scientist are still arguing this theory and they probably always will, or at least until they find an answer.
I cannot conclude an answer to whether we are held in this prison for our mind or not but I can point out one final conclusion;

This theory is fiction or realistic, due to whatever you choose to believe and what your mind allows you to be aware of.