The problem with
Newtonian era science is that it put the entire world into nice little labeled
compartments as observed. And dismissed anything that didn’t fit into those compartments
as being an isolated anomaly caused by something external; however with the
advancements in science and technology. Led to emergence of Quantum physics,
through which we now see Nature of Reality, in a different light. Where
anomalies aren’t dismissed, and the universe is looked upon as one complex
system.
If Quantum Physics is
to be believed, which it must be. Taking into consideration the thousands of
experiments conducted over the last 70 years that validated it. The picture it
paints is a very weird one, something that seems to make no sense and is
counter-intuitive.
While we see the world
as being logical; seamless; solid; based on action and reaction, Nature of
Reality is anything but!
Our senses are very
useful, they help us to navigate and interact with the world. We humans
perceive the world through our senses, these senses have been the only way we
could ever experience the world. However useful our senses fail completely,
when we start asking the fundamental questions regarding the nature of reality.
We have no notion of anything else
existing, especially since we have never been told not to trust our senses. Why
wouldn’t we trust our senses? It’s the only way we can perceive.
The world as it appears
to be through our senses Vs. The world as it is.
The world we see, feel,
hear, touch, smell is a figment of our imagination. The real world doesn’t look
or behave in the way; we experience it through our senses.
It is very important to
note that our brains are incredibly powerful, and can create things that don’t
really exist.
An example would be a person
with a psychological disorder that has an illusionary friend. He can talk to,
hear and touch his friend like he can with any other normal person. How can this
be? How can an illusion be touched? Well if you realize that it’s the mind that
touches and not the hand. It can be!
Psychology, Neurology
and philosophy have known about this for a very long time, that it is the brain
that sees and not the eyes. What this means is the fact that all our
experiences—all our perceptions, sensations, dreams, thoughts and feelings—are
forms appearing in consciousness (our mind). When we dream, we can see things,
but our eyes are closed. It’s the mind that sees.
When I see a tree it
seems as if I am seeing the tree directly, but science tells us something
completely different is happening. Light entering the eye triggers chemical
reactions in the retina; this produces electro-chemical impulses, which travel
along the optical nerve to the brain. The brain analyses the data it receives,
and then creates its own picture of what it thinks
is out there. I then have the experience of seeing a tree. It is very important
to note that, what I am actually experiencing is not the tree itself, only the
image that appears in the mind, as I perceive it to be. We have no idea what
the tree in reality looks like.
It also interesting to
note, that it takes the brain about 1/10 of second to process this data.
Meaning instead of seeing a live feed, what I am really seeing is a recorded
video, playing in my mind. This is true of everything I experience. Everything
we know and perceive. Every color, sound, sensation, every thought and every
feeling, is a form appearing in the mind (consciousness).
Neurons are nerve cells. Each of our brains has billions of neurons, which are inter-connected with each other, to form a Neuro-net. Its how all the information in our brains is connected and structured. This is what it would look like magnified.
As powerful as our
brains are there is a limit, to how information we can process in each second.
To overcome this limitation, an editing center was required, so that the
important information can be filtered out. Over millions of years of evolution;
our brains have come up with an editing center called Reticular Activating
System (RAS). Where our sub-conscious mind edits all incoming sensory information
(vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell) according to what it perceives to be
important and noteworthy. Whatever sensory information it believes to be
important, is passed to the conscious mind. What ever it believes to be not
important is edited and not experienced consciously. On an average a human
takes in 2 billion bits of information, but can only process 2,000 bits. That’s
means we are only aware .0000001 percent of all the incoming data. Reticular
Activating System (RAS) of the brain is responsible for what is included in this
.0000001. Just imagine what we are missing out on, due to this processing limit
and filtering process.
This is why our senses
can’t be relied upon to accurately understand the world, which the entire 100
percent.
For example you are
driving and see 200 people standing at a bus stop, among them is beautiful
woman, your brain quickly scans this data, the beautiful woman is flagged and
experienced by our conscious mind. At the end of day you’ll remember is the
beautiful woman, while the199 people will be filtered. The good news is that
RAS is reprogrammable, through neural plasticity.
Also known as neuroplasticity, is the changing of the
structure, function and organization of neurons, or nerve cells, in response to
new experiences. It specifically refers to strengthening or weakening nerve
connections or adding new nerve cells based on outside stimuli. It is
responsible for all learning.
The
golden rule by which Neuro-plasticity works is neurons that fire together wire
together. More they fire together, stronger the connections get.
While Neuro-nets that don’t fire
eventual grow weaker and die.
An example of neuroplasticity, let say you love
your neighbors’ dog (tommy). Which would mean that in your brain, “neurons
encoded with love” would have a direct connection to “neurons encoded with
memories of tommy”. If one day you saw you’re friend being savagely attacked by
tommy. You suddenly experience tremendous fear and hate towards tommy.
Neuroplasticity would get to work, and create connections between “Neurons
encoded with fear and hate” and neuron encoded with tommy”. Every time you see
tommy now, you fear going close to it. The connection between tommy neuron and
love neuron wouldn’t fire together anymore, hence degraded and eventually die.
While connection with hate, fear and tommy fire together and would grow
stronger.
Neuro-plasticity is at work every second, with
each thought, our brains are rewiring and creating new pathways. What ever we
pay attention to, whatever we want/desire, think about gets programmed into the
RAS, through neuro-plasticity.
Once we are aware of neuro-plasticity, we can
employ it. By controlling our emotions and thoughts we can re-wire our brains
completely. The brain doesn’t differentiate between good or bad. What ever you
do, it will re-wire to get better at. And change who we are. The more you do
it, the better you get!
So pay attention to what goes on inside our
head. Just imagine what we can achieve when we think the right thoughts based
on the right understanding. Sky is the limit!
Vision
Next we must realize
that our eyes can only see what we call the visible spectrum of light, which is
tiny portion of the entire spectrum of light. We see the world full of colors,
but in reality colors don’t exist. What we see as colors, are different
wavelengths of visible light. When light of certain wavelength hits the retina
in our eyes, cells that are sensitive to that specific wavelength send a
message to the brain. The brain then interprets these different wavelengths as
different colors.
If we could see the
rest of the spectrum, the world would look completely different than it looks
in visible light! Even just adding either x-ray or ultraviolent spectrum would
completely alter our view. Our bodies and things that we think as solids would
become see through.
We cannot only see
light, but also can feel light. When we step into the sun, we can instantly
feel the heat of sunlight. What we experience and think of as heat, is infrared
light/thermal radiation. Similarly when we touch another person, and feel their
warmth what we experience as warmth, is the thermal radiation being emitted
from their body. Yes, all matter can emit and absorb light. Including us
humans, we are emitting light just like the sun/ light bulb. Here is what I
look like when viewed from a thermal/infrared camera.
Blue means cool, green
cooler, red is warm/ hot. As you can see the world and people would look completely
different, if we could view in infrared spectrum.
Interestingly there are
been number of well-documented cases of blind people, that can see. They don’t
see the same picture as us, but can visually spot movement. You can search “Dr. V.S. Ramachandran and
Blindness” to know more about these cases.
Hearing
Similarly the ears can
only hear, 20 Hz and 20 kHz, hence most of the sounds that go into our ears, aren’t even registered.
Next time you hear nothing and your dog goes crazy it could be due to the
ultrasonic waves that we are unable to hear. If we could hear the subsonic
frequency, we could hear the earth constantly humming at 7.83 Hz. It is
estimated that about 2 percent of the population can hear this hum, due to
defects in ears, especially in old age.
How earth sounds from
the space- NASA Voyager.
Sound of the sun
Sonic frequencies are
infinite.
Touch and what we touch: Matter
While you are sitting and reading this, you
can feel the chair/bed/ground. It appears to be solid to us. But is it?
The solidity of matter is an illusion; there
is nothing solid about it. In fact it has been proven that physical matter is
99.999999% empty space!
I know what you guys are thinking, how can
this be? “I can feel the chair I’m sitting on and the ground beneath my feet.”
“I can touch and feel the textures.” I don’t doubt that you can’t feel it, I
feel it too. I doubt what is it “that” we are actually feeling.
Here is thought
experiment to better illustrate what I mean.
“Imagine a visit to a science city. One of
the rooms there has powerful magnets all over the floor, with south pole (or
negative charge) facing up. There are also special boots with magnetic soles
that have South Pole facing down.
Now a volunteer is first blind folded and
then asked to put on the special magnetic boots. He is then send on a walk in
the room, as he walks into the room the south pole of the shoes and south pole
of the floor start repelling each other. To everyone looking through the window
this person would appear to be walk on thin air. But the blindfolded person
with the magnetic boots, when asked would say that he has been walking on
either a normal floor or feels a cushiony carpet floor.”
What this person is feeling beneath his feet
is the magnetic repulsion, and experiences this repulsion as a solid.
Anyone who has ever played with magnets is
aware of this force.
Believe it or not but this actually what is
happening when we are walking around.
So how & why do we get the experience of
touching a solid object - when there is nothing solid about matter itself?
“The whole experience of the solidity of matter arises from the mutual
repulsion of negatively charged electron fields.”
What this means is that, nothing ever touches
anything, right now while you’re sitting in your chair/bed, you are actually
hovering over it. Just as in the thought experiment. The electrons (negatively
charged particles) in your body and the electrons in your bed are both pushing
away/repelling against each other. This repulsive electron field is what gives
us the experience/sensation of touch a solid.
What we are feeling/touching/rubbing against
isn’t really what we think it is. We can never really touch anything, just
glide over other matter. If this repulsive electron field was some how removed
we would just fall through the entire planet and drift into space.
When we add all of
these facts up, we realize what we believe to be reality is just a delusion. An
incomplete picture! There much more going on than what “appears to be” through
our sense.
You may question why
should you care and how does this apply/relate to you. What was the point of
you knowing all of this?
What is more important that
which appear to be or that which is?
The mistake we make is
to assume that what we see/experience is real. We suffer a delusion when we
believe the images in our minds are the external world. We deceive ourselves
when we think that the tree we see is the tree itself. The tree itself is a
physical object, made of physical matter—molecules, atoms, sub-atomic
particles. But from what is the image in the mind constructed? Clearly it is
not constructed from matter. A perceptual image is made up of the same
"stuff" as our dreams, thoughts, and feelings; it is made up of consciousness!
I can go on and on
about this, and dismiss each of our sense. However I am sure you get the idea.
If you want to learn more
about “what is”, as oppose to “what appears to be”. You need to rely on
unbiased data from science, and its implication. Introspect within your self.
There is much to learn from science and spirituality, it will shock and amaze
you. Science and spirituality are both saying the same thing, in their own
unique ways.
At the end of this
journey, a new understanding will dawn upon you. That will change you and your
world forever.
