According to Osho, an inner experience like feeling loved and accepted is real if you can consciously reproduce it exactly, again and again; then it’s not imagination but a doorway to meditation. If it happens once and cannot be managed to return, it’s a mind game, a dream. Reality endures and is testable; dreams are fleeting and uncontrollable.
If you can make that warm, loved feeling come back the same way on purpose many times, it’s real; if it only shows up once and you can’t bring it back, it was just a dream.