I saw a youtube vid the other night which talked about quantum physics, spirituality and self realization. That’s my late night tv fix…since I have no TV, I tune in youtube. Sometimes I get very kooky stuff, and sometimes I stumble onto very profound information.
One video dealt with perception. Let’s say we see a bird out there. But wait – a small portion of the inside of our brain is showing us a bird. The eye is a camera lens letting in photons. So the image of a bird is in our brain, not out there. Better said if I say “when you think you see a bird out there, you actually see the image of a bird inside your brain.”
Likewise, the words you are reading now are not out there, they are “in your brain.”
Just think, a flavor or odor is not out there. It is only when it hits your taste buds, it sends a signal “to your brain”. That’s more understandable than sight, in a way. But if 2 people smell perfume, or a fart, they think it is out there in the air. Really all they know about is what is in their 2 brains.
Isn’t there something comical about always saying “YOUR BRAIN” over and over ?:-) Hang in there, let’s see where this goes.
When you hear something molecules move in the air and hit your eardrum. The sound is in your brain. And, the sense of distance – like “I hear the bus outside” or “I see the bird 50 feet away” – the sense of distance is – yep, you guessed it – in your brain!
The point is this – we get signals as input – and then de-code them into sights, smells, sounds, flavors and more. Then from there we experience feelings and emotions based on what we experience.
We know that our senses are limited. Blow a dog whistle – and to us it is virtually silent, so we see our hearing is deficient. Examples for all the senses like this could be given. Just think of how many radio signals and wi-fi networks are going, and we do not have the perception to even know they are there, further proof that there is more out there than “meets the eye”, ear, smell, taste or touch.
WE HUMANS ARE LIKE “WEB BROWSERS”
Then the thought occurred to me – as a person who has worked with coding for the web, if you look at “the source” of a web page it looks like total gobbledy gook. Please, do this as an experiment, go to View>Source in your browser menu. Look at the code. Then notice how the browser turns “information” into colors, fonts, images and more.
Yet, a web browser is a magical little program that “interprets” or makes sense of this gobbledy gook.
So, if we humans look out there and see shapes, colors, people, hear sounds, etc – that is akin to viewing a web page through a browser. (By the way, colors exist in our brain – they are not really there)
Just imagine this unbelievable electrical “matrix” out there – and we make sense of it, just the way a web browser makes a page of code intelligible.
You are like a web browser looking out into this unbelievable “field” of energy (code) and in your brain you are able to separate, identify and sense things. For the sake of total redundance – what you see is interpreted, just like a page of code is interpreted by a web browser.
WHAT’S THE POINT?
To see profound truth always sets us a little more free, and to see through the eyes of the creator always makes us more and more blissful. So, I sit in wonder and awe as I think about this. And then I sip more coffee….my brain likes that.
Don’t think there is a creator? Well just think about the incredible engineering it has taken to come up with a MAC G5 computer that can surf the nt and have a web browser. That was no accident, right? Can you really say that we are a random accident? Just as we created computers and are greater than them, something or someone greater than us must have created us.
As well….can a computer know the human? No. Imagine, a G5 as complex and unbelievable a piece of machinery as it is, cannot know love. I believe there are many things we can’t know much in the same way. However, through quiet and meditation we can know much more than what our senses tell us.
The point is this – can we look at our reactions to things and can start to take ownership, and know – beyond the shadow of a doubt that we are responsible for our life experience, out emotions and they are inside us, not outside?
Just like the bird image is in our brain, and sound is in our brain, so are the notions of success, happiness, spiritual connectedness…it’s all an inner game. Can we take responsibility for interpreting things the way we do and know it is not “out there” but inside us?
Have fun in your brain today.
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My yoga teacher says at the beginning of every class – surrender the intelligence of the head to the intelligence of the heart. I love what you’ve written, although I tend to think in terms of the the mind rather than just the brain. They’re different, No? While I feel certain I have a brain, I’ve never seen it; yet in every moment I see, hear, feel, taste and smell my mind. Being a musician is great because it puts you in direct contact with sensing the intelligence of the heart.
Leo Dale