Stubbornly Persistent Illusion: Part 2

In previous article we saw what is conciousness, how we perceive reality, the object(image) formation in our brain and how our perception affects the realities.  If you are new into this series I urge you to read previous part 1 before this.Now assuming you tighten the seat belt, let’s drive! There are, therefore two type of realities. First one is physical reality- whatever is actually “out there” stimulating our senses and the second is the personal reality that each one of us experience, the reconstruction of the world appears in our mind. And they both are very real.

Now you might think that what is illusion then? If both realities are real. Illusion comes when we confuse the reality we experience with the physical reality, the thing in itself. Maya, you may have heard this word in Ancient Indian philosophy. This confusion is nothing but maya. A false perception of the world. The delusion, a false belief about the world. I deceive myself when I think that phone I see is phone itself. When you believe that image in your mind are the external world, you suffer a delusion.
When you kick the football, your intention to move your foot is communicated to your body and your foot in the physical world moves to meet the physical football. But you don’t experience the reality directly. The brain receives the information sent by the eyes and body and then updates the information of your image of reality appropriately. Same thing happens with the computer also, when you move the mouse, it appears as if you’re moving the cursor but actually, the mouse is sending data to computer processor and then updates the image on screen. There is no visible delay but it is there.There is also a small delay between physical reality and our experience of that particular event. It takes our brain about 1/5th of a second to process the sensory information and construct the corresponding reality. So our awareness of reality is about fifth of the second behind physical reality. But we never notice this lag because our clever brain compensates for the delay, leaving us with impression that we are interacting directly with physical world.Is there any physical reality behind our perception? Do we ever construct that picture of reality when we are not perceiving it? Yes, but it’s just an assumption, nevertheless, the most plausible one. The image of the world that mind is very different from actual physical world. Take an example of color, say green. There may be the light of various frequencies, but the light itself is not green one. There is no colour there. The green we see is actually the quality created in conciousness. The subjective experience of the mind. Same with the sound. Whether the falling tree made a sound when no one was there to hear it? No, because we all know much more about the process how sound transmitted through air and how ear and brain functioned. There is no sound in the physical reality, pressure wave in the air, perhaps, but no sound. Sound exists only as an experience in the mind of perciever, whether that perceiver is human being, animal or bird, etc.Our eyes are sensitive only to light in the narrow frequency ranges from 430,000 to 750,000 gigahertz. At lower frequencies are infrared (below red) radiation. Micro waves and radio waves are lower than infrared. At higher frequencies we find ultraviolet (above violate) rays and beyond them are X rays and gamma rays. Our eyes can’t detect none of this other frequencies. We have different types of equipments to detect that radiation. So what we hear, smell, taste, see is but a limited sample of physical reality. Furthermore, there are other aspects such as magnetic fields, electric charges, that have little impact on our existence. We may not able to sense these other facets of reality but some creatures can like Dog. They detect much higher frequencies of sound than we do and their nose which million time more sensitive than ours. So reality for the dog is very different comparing to us. Other species experience the qualities which we know nothing. Make sense? Ultimately there are many different ways of perceiving the world as there are many species of life in the universe. What we take is just the particular way the human mind sees(by eyes) and interprets the physical world.Stay tuned for the next ride till then enjoy at station! And dont forget to see(reconstruction!) the physical reality all around.