The past is a drama acted out on the stage-set of my imagination. The action, with all its emotional entanglement, is provided by my shifting memories of past encounters or those memories of someone else.
The only reality is my interaction with the memories of those encounters. Many people before me have written or told stories in order to pass on the memory of their experience. A select few of these that have survived are available to me in sacred writings. How well these sacred writings accurately represent the experience or intention of the original authors is always uncertain. Like a well used library book, all of them bear the marks of the hands of the scribes and translators, all of whom have added some of their own interaction with the spiritual content.
When I read these writings in any spiritual tradition, I try to listen for the voice of the many people who are trying to relate the fullness of their reality, their interaction. It seems I often hear many voices, and it is hard to distinguish any individual.
I would be in error if I somehow saw any of these eye-witness accounts as a true description of what took place, even if I had the exact description by the original writer. If I saw them as more than a good representation of what the eye-witness encountered, I would miss the point. Instead, they are the next morning memory of a critic who experienced some past drama and that moved them to write and describe their interaction. The drama takes on a new reality in the telling, and that becomes the substance of my own interaction.
The stage is set in my imagination. All else is an illusion.