Chapter 6: Inside our minds – our dreams

 

The sum and substance of our lives is that we live inside our minds and are essentially trapped inside our own creation. Since our lives are defined by our experiences and because our experiences are played inside our minds, let us now turn our attention inwards.

Dreams are possibly the most powerful tools to understand our minds and hence it is but natural that we investigate this phenomenon first in our quest to understanding the working of our minds.

We all know that dream is a process that happens only in the sleeping state. We also know that in the sleeping state, all our sensory systems are shut down. Hence, we can safely assume that in the dream state none of our sensory organs are working. We don’t interact with any of the external objects, yet we are able to feel many of the experiences associated with the waking state while dreaming.

The dream process involves activating some of the stored experiences (codes) without any external stimuli pouring in through the sensory organs. The process invokes many of the experience producing circuits without any external stimuli. If it happens during the waking state, then we call the phenomenon as hallucination but if it happens during the sleeping state then the word reserved for it is dream. Hallucinations happen due to the automatic triggering of the experience producing circuits in the waking state while dreams happen due to automatic triggering of the same circuits in the sleeping state.

The important point to note here is that it is the same experience producing circuits in our brains that gives us the experience associated with external objects in the waking state, the experience of hallucination without any interactions with external objects also in the waking state and the experience of dreams, where we don’t interact with any external objects. One will therefore not be wrong to club all the three scenarios under one heading. Modern neuroscience likes to club it into the heading of hallucination while Vedantic philosophy clubs it under the heading of dream. This is a shocking perspective and hence needs some pondering over in the next two paragraphs.

Let us conceive of a scenario wherein we can create an advanced virtual reality environment where one can not only visualise the 3D perspectives but also associate the sensations of smell, sound and touch to those perspectives through new age electronic interfaces. Such an environment is possible to create with today’s technology. If we immerse ourselves into such a virtual reality environment, it will be impossible to say whether we are in a real world interacting with real objects or in a VR world interacting with controlled stimuli. We will be both awake and dreaming simultaneously.

One can also induce hallucinations by injecting synthetic drugs or by consuming natural hallucinogens. The hallucinogens create an altered state of the mind where one may be awake but experience a dream like reality.

Thus, we see that the states of waking and sleeping can be clubbed into a single state called dream. Our lives are one continuous dream, interspersed with deep sleep which is also known as the dreamless sleep.

Now that we have a grip on our dream state, let us analyse the dreamless sleep. Let us start with the question of what we feel in our dreamless sleep.

We feel nothing during our dreamless sleep, no sensations, and no experiences, absolutely nothing. It is as if the world vanishes in front of our eyes. In the dreamless sleep, the experience producing circuits are not triggered, the stored codes of experiences are not invoked, and we settle down into a state of nothingness. Once we wake up from the dreamless sleep, we somehow seem to know that we had a dreamless sleep. We can remember the last set of experiences (while awake or dreaming) that we had before we drifted into the dreamless sleep and then after waking up, we record the fresh set of experiences felt again. Our minds can understand this gap in time when there was no experience, from the two sets of experience data separated over time. Whatever maybe the underlying mechanism, our brains have evolved a way to understand this state of no-experience. We experience this state of no-experience, every time we fall into a dreamless sleep. Deep sleep is not a void of experiences, but it is an experience of the void. It is also an experience in our arsenal of experiences.

Using the analogy of set theory, if we think of all our experiences as elements of a universal set, then what we experience in the dreamless sleep of no-experience is the null element of this set.

To conclude, our lives are a constant stream of experiences played in our minds. Our waking and dreaming states can be clubbed into a single state of dream, while the dreamless sleep is one where we get the experience of no-experience.

Chapter 5: What about our bodies

 

Our interactions with the external world are identified and stored as a collection of experiences (codes). The experiences do not show the true nature of the reality of the universe. Our sensory perceptions, which do not capture the true reality of the external objects are however, good enough for us to navigate in the world that we live in, survive and procreate. This is all that is there as far as the external world is concerned. But what about our bodies?

Like external objects the cells, tissues and organs in our bodies send stimulus to our brains which are also stored as specific experiences. Though we cannot experience vision, smell or taste for entities inside our bodies, yet we have other types of sensations that our peculiar to our bodies. The sensation of hunger is unique for our bodies. Same is true with the experience of thirst. The sensation of pain, however, is a common experience between the external universe and the internal world of our bodies. Though we could categorise the sensations and the corresponding experiences as that associated with external objects or those internal to our bodies, yet they all fall under the larger universe of our experiences. The process by which sensations gets created may differ between the outside world and our internal bodies but there is no difference in the structure of the sensory experiences whether originating outside our bodies or inside it. The same principal that holds true for external objects, also holds true for the sensory experiences originating from within our bodies, i.e., drive towards the good experiences (eat when feeling hungry) and avoid the bad experiences e.g., pain.

From the perspective of these experiences therefore there is no difference between our bodies and the external universe. Our brain perceives them as same though we have been able to identify and label each of the experiences and know whether they originate from within or outside our bodies. We can label different experiences based on their points of origin and the objects associated with them.

What about our brains? Surely the brain is a more complex piece of our biological system, but it too is same as any other parts of our bodies in the sense that it too sends sensory stimulus which are then stored as an experience in our memories. Don’t believe me … think of headaches. Hence, from the realm of our universe of experience, the body with all its parts, including the brain, together with every relevant object in the universe that our bodies interact with is one continuous entity. The definition of our outside world does not start from our skins outwards but from our internal organs outwards.

The pertinent question to ask now is where the external world starts and our internal world ends. A property of this demarcation would be the boundary that demarcates the place where our experiences are played with the place that sends sensations and stimulus for creating the experiences.

All our experiences are created and played in our minds. Hence, the boundary that we are thinking off will be between our minds and our bodies. Thus, our minds are a separate entity which hosts our world of experiences while the rest of our bodies and objects outside it forms a separate group.

It is quite heretical to think that there is no difference between our bodies and the objects in the external world. One obvious objection would be that our experience universe takes actions to preserve our bodies but not of external objects. How is it then that we don’t do anything to preserve our nails or hair. To the contrary we spend a lot of time getting our hair trimmed and our nails cut. We happily do the above activities because we don’t get any bad experience in letting go of unwanted body parts. Try doing that with some other part of the body and the associated pain will not allow us to do so. Our experience universe does not always take actions to preserve our bodies, in fact, many a times our experience universe takes actions contrary to preserving our bodies. Think of the scenario wherein a person has developed a tumour in his body which will be fatal. The person’s experience universe fights tooth and nail with the doctor to avoid surgery that will cure the disease. The fear of pain associated with surgery is so intense that as part of the medical procedure, one must be anaesthetised before the life saving surgery can be performed. In this example our experience universe was trying to avoid the bad experience of pain at the cost of our lives !

Our bodies move away from pain whether created internally or externally. The process of moving away from the pain producing experience may differ, taking us to a doctor for an internal injury or simply moving away from a path of a moving stone thrown at us. Our experience universe is only interested in avoiding the bad experience of pain.

Also, if we think deeper then we will realise that it is quite appropriate to think this way. The entities that create the external objects (like molecules, atoms, subatomic particles and so on) also creates our own bodies. They are subjected to the same laws of nature and behave the same way as any other material object in the universe. It is the mind, however, that is a strange place. It is here where the dance of experience is played out.

To conclude, from the point of view of our world of experiences, our bodies, through appearing to be a part of us (and often the only thing that we think as us) are a part of the external universe.

Chapter 4: Nature of our lives

 

We now understand that the world of experience that our brain creates is not the reality of the external universe. This world of experience is however good enough for us to navigate in the world that we live in, survive, and procreate.

Our lives, from birth to death, is a series of interactions with the external world synchronised with the rotation and revolution of the earth. We interact with the same type of objects from morning till evening with variations thrown in intermittently. For example, we wake up from the same type of bed in the morning, eat food for breakfast, do some work where we interact with other human beings and so on. In winter we wear woollen clothes followed by light clothes in summer and then again winter sets in when we get back to the woollen clothes. So, you see our behaviour predominantly has two sets of periodicities, one related to the day and night cycle of the earth and the other related to its yearly cycle around the sun. We call this the daily ritual and the yearly routine.

The point of emphasis here is that we interact with almost the same set of objects in our daily ritual and another set of objects characterising our yearly routine.

Our world is however defined by experiences. Our brain, in the initial phase of our lives, identifies and stores the code for each of these interactions in the form of sensations and experiences. It would have created a rich world of virtual reality where experience defines the game. For every interaction with an external object, we have a corresponding experience, a code. When we say that our lives are defined by two sets of interactions, one related to the day and night cycle and the other the yearly revolution of the earth, we mean two sequence of experiences, one corresponding to the day and night cycle of the earth and the other its yearly revolution. Since we understand only experience, our waking lives are a continuous series of experiences. You can think of them like the waves in the ocean. They come and go with every moment of our interacting lives.

Our experiences can be broadly classified into two categories, one that is good for us and the other which we want to avoid. Eating food when hungry, a mother nursing her new-born child and even getting up from bed once our sleep cycle is over are some of the examples of the good category. Getting eaten by a predator, a stone hitting us and getting slapped are some of the examples of the category that we want to avoid.

What drives our lives is the desire of good experiences and avoidance of the bad ones. We want to experience good food and once satiated, a good sleep, post which maybe a good conversation, and then perhaps a good music and so on. Nature however does not allow such a series of goodies and instead throws a series of bad experience to us like the experience of hunger which drives us to get food (hunt, collect, work, steal, …). We are not driven by the urge to interact with external objects but are driven by the experiences associated with those interactions.

Our game of life is played in this ocean of experiences, to seek some and avoid others. People are driven to the act of procreation to experience pleasure and not the fact that it will give rise to a new life nine months down the line. People eat food to experience taste and avoid the experience of hunger pangs. They don’t eat because it will allow their bodies to generate energy which will help them move or think. The twin experience of taste and hunger pangs hides the fact that eating allows the body to generate energy to move. They act as a façade to the reality of digestion, absorption and the energy producing Krebs cycle. Our brain creates a virtual reality of experiences, and our lives are driven by them.

In conclusion, the sum of all experiences is what defines our external facing lives. Every aspect of our external facing life has a corresponding experience playing its part inside our minds. Every act of ours, related to the external world, is done to enjoy good experiences and avoid the bad ones. The truth is that we live inside our minds and are trapped inside our own creation.

Chapter 3: Reality of the external world

 

We now know that sensations and experiences are nothing but codes that our brain creates to identify distinct and relevant interactions that our bodies have with external objects.

The brain thus creates a virtual reality environment with sensations and experiences as codes stored for all types of relevant interactions that we have with the outside world. So, what we perceive as reality is a façade that the brain creates for us to navigate in the world and survive in it with minimum efforts. Let us dwell on this point a bit more to sink in its import.

Consider a smartphone with different icons on its screen (e.g., the WhatsApp icon). The icon opens to an interactive environment where we can easily and intuitively message something important to a group of friends (staying with the WhatsApp application). We can easily do that because the user interface hides all the complexities of the world inside the software and the hardware of the device. Just imagine how difficult it would be for anyone to type a message by controlling the voltage and current parameters of the ICs inside the device. Reality of the system is not the user interface but voltage and current fluctuations across the VLSI circuits inside the hardware of the device.

Similarly, our brains give us a facade of sensations and experiences using which we go about doing our normal activities in this world. The façade of sensations and experience do not capture the reality of the external objects. Instead, they hide the complexities of the external world. The more we try to understand the reality of this universe through our sensory perceptions, the farther away we go from the true nature of that reality. Well, the above statement is not completely true because we are able to capture some aspects of that reality during our interactions with the external world, but a large part of that reality is designed to be hidden.

Pragmatists say that we will believe only what we see, but the truth is that at best what we see is only an anthropomorphic assessment of the reality. It is not the reality.

If what we perceive with our sensory apparatus is not the reality, then what is the reality of the external world that we dwell on?

We understood the motion of objects as we perceive them and interact with them. This is the realm of Newtonian physics. Once we look deeper into the reality of the objects in the Newtonian realm, we realise that these objects are a conglomeration of a vast number of molecules held together tightly and perceived as a single entity. Peek further in, and we understand that molecules themselves are build-up of atoms. The atoms are further constructed by subatomic particles using the laws of quantum physics, a realm so far away from our perception of reality that it is an alien world. We cannot relate to it with anything in our arsenal of sensory perceptions. The laws here are completely counter intuitive to our day-to-day experiences.

The question of the reality of objects does not however end here. One still asks what these subatomic particles are and how do they interact with each other to construct the atoms and the molecules. The answer is said to be given by the quantum field theory where everything is said to be a wave and particles are entities created by the interactions of these waves with each other. Is that the final answer to the question of what is the reality of an object? No and the quest goes on.

So, we don’t know the complete reality of the external world, at least not yet. Our sensory perceptions, which do not capture the true reality of the external objects are however good enough for us to navigate in the world that we live in, survive, and procreate. From the evolutionary perspective, this is all that matters but the fact remains that our experiences are hiding the truth and telling us only a story, a fantastic story but a story none the less.

Chapter 2: Why it is like this ?

 

Let me start with the conclusion of chapter 1, that sensations and experiences of external objects are nothing but codes that our brain creates to identify distinct interactions that our bodies have with them.

Question to ask now is why our brains are obsessed only with the interactions that our bodies have with the external world.

We know from our knowledge of high school science that as a first layer of approximation, solid objects are a collection of molecules, tightly held together and defining the shape of the object. The air that we breathe-in is also a collection of molecules that are free to move about in free space while water that we see in the rivers and oceans are a collection of molecules that are partially bound together so that they can move freely on the surface of the earth, but not in free space.

We cannot see these molecules, but they are what constitutes the nature of external objects. Now assume for a minute that we could somehow see all these molecules wriggling in solids, flowing in liquids, and moving freely in air. We would see so many molecules around us (  molecules in a mole of a substance). Our brains would be overwhelmed with this huge amount of information. How difficult it will be in navigating through this vast mess of molecules. To process any navigation through this reality would be almost impossible for our brains of current size.

Instead of focusing on the molecular reality of the external objects, our brain focuses on how our bodies interact with these external objects. It is only interested in knowing whether interacting with the object adds value to our survival (if it is a food item then go towards it but if it is a predator, then go away from it) or will the object cause harm to our bodies (avoid a moving stone coming towards us).

Not only are our brains interested in understanding the quality of our interactions with external objects, but they are only interested in understanding the interactions that we have with relevant external objects. As an example, if a bacterium hits our skin (unlike a moving stone hitting our skin) and does not enter our bodies, then it is of no consequence to us in terms of our navigation or survival on the earth. Or take the case of infrared light falling into our eyes, which does not have any evolutionary advantage for humans. It categorises all such interactions as irrelevant and does not create any code to identify and store such information in our memories. We therefore don’t experience bacterium sitting on our skins or infrared images in our visual experience.

It will be an interesting digression to understand why our brains have evolved to create visual sensations (code) only for the visible spectrum of the EM wave.

EM waves getting reflected from external objects and falling into our eyes, originates inside the Sun of our solar system. Frequency of the EM spectrum that carries maximum radiation energy depends on the internal temperature of a star, as defined by Plank’s distribution^[3]. In the case of our Sun, the maximum energy is radiated in the yellow-green portion of the EM spectrum.

Notes:

[3] Planks distribution law for electromagnetic radiation is modelled on black body radiation and is given by the formula   

Additionally, while travelling through the empty space and before reaching the earth, most of x-ray and gamma ray components of the EM spectrum gets deflected by the magnetic field of the earth. Majority of the ultraviolet component of the travelling spectrum gets absorbed by the ozone layer of the earth’s atmosphere (however, there is still enough in the UV spectrum that escapes the ozone layer that is sufficient to cause skin cancer among a multitude of people). Hence, the EM wave falling on the surface of the earth is primarily the visible spectrum with maximum energy coming in at the yellow-green portion of that spectrum.

All objects on the surface of the earth deals primarily with the visible spectrum of the EM wave originating inside the Sun, absorbing some part of the spectrum, and reflecting others at its surface. Hence it makes sense for the evolutionary forces to deal only with the visible part of the EM spectrum.

Many animals like snakes have created additional methods to capture the infrared part of the EM wave. The infrared part is associated with heat produced in living bodies. Evolutionary forces have enabled snakes to create the visual sensation (code) for the infrared part of the EM spectrum for identifying and targeting living bodies emanating heat from their surfaces, for food. They are therefore able to capture the infrared part of the EM spectrum reaching the surface of the earth and getting reflected across objects. Snakes thus have a visual experience that includes the infrared frequencies.

An important fact to point out here is that different species have evolved different colour codes for the same frequency of the EM wave reaching their eyes. For example a dog sees a red rose in shades of brown^[4].

In this chapter we modify the conclusion of chapter 1, by stating that not only are sensations and experiences of external objects, codes that our brain creates to identify distinct interactions but also the interactions must be relevant for the brain to associate a code for them.

 

Notes:

[4] While humans have 3 cones in their eyes, dogs have two cones corresponding to yellow and blue colours. Thus shades of red and green probably looks like browns and grey scale.

Chapter 1: Anatomy of an Experience

 

‘The task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about which everybody has seen.

ERWIN SCHRODINGER

 

Let me start with colour of a rose because that is where this whole thought process started.

It is now clear that colour of a rose, or for that matter any object, is an experience created in our minds. Objects don’t have colour. The proverbial red rose is colourless. Let us see why.

When we look at a non-luminous object, electromagnetic waves (EM) reflect from its outer surface and gets into our eyes, falling on our retinas. From the retinas, electrical impulses shoot through our optic nerves and reaches the occipital lobes of our brains where the experience of vision is created. Exactly how our brain creates the experience of vision is still not clear, though neuroscience research has reached the stage where one can start mapping this experience to the triggering of specific sets of neurons in our brains^[1].

Thus, seeing an object is nothing more than triggering of specific neurons inside our brains, initiated by the interactions between the EM waves and our eyes.

Our brain has been designed through the evolutionary process to focus only on how our bodies interact with external objects (for vision, it is interaction with EM waves). It is not designed to understand the reality of those external objects. It makes more survival sense to know how big and far away an object is from us than to know the number of molecules it is made up off. It is this relentless focus on the quality of our interactions with external objects that has helped us navigate in this world and survive as a species.

Our brain is thus programmed to identify different types of interactions that our bodies have with external objects. It stores these interactions in the form of experiences, which are nothing but codes that the brain creates to identify these interactions. All sensory experiences are essentially codes that the brain creates and stores in memory for future reference.

Continuing with our example of the experience of vision, during vision our brain creates and stores code for broadly two types of information associated with the EM wave 1) frequency of the EM wave 2) relative distance between the point of reflection and our eyes

 

Notes

[1] Vision creation is a very elaborate process. It involves thirty or more areas of the brain each focusing on a slightly different aspect of creation of the visual perception. For example, damage to an area called V4 makes a person colour blind while damage to the area called MT (mid temporal) makes a person motion blind

 

Frequency of the EM wave reaching our eyes is associated with the sensation of colour. Our brain has distinct colour codes (e.g. RED colour) for the visible spectrum of the EM Waves. Thus, colour is a code that our brain associates with the frequency of the EM wave reaching our eyes and since the EM wave originates from a point on the surface of an object, our brain associates that point on the object with this EM wave and its colour code. This is how we experience the colour of an object^[2].

Since the EM waves have very small wavelengths, compared to the external objects, our brain can resolve small differences in distance between different points on the surface of the objects being viewed from our eyes. It allows the brain to create a view of the shape of the object and its relative distance from other objects in the field of vision. Our brain stores this spatial view of the external objects as the code for sight (it is a complex combination of codes for object shapes, colour, and spatial distances between objects).

Like colour and shape, external objects don’t have the property of smell. Odour is also a sensation created inside our brains. The sensation of odour corresponds to specific olfactory codes that our brain creates to identify the chemicals that reaches our nose.

Similar process is adopted for the sensations of taste, touch, and sound.

The brain also creates the sensation of pain when an external object hits us causing damage to our skins. In the case of pain however, the brain is interested in the location of the body where the damage has occurred.

Our brains can create and store in memory a group of sensations (read codes) for a given event to form an experience. For example, we get the sensations of vision, sound, and pain when a stone hits us.  This complex array of sensations (codes) grouped together and stored in memory can tell us in future to avoid a moving stone coming our way. The multi-dimensional nature of our experience of an event is what has helped us navigate and survive on earth.

Since the sensation of pain is associated with damage in some form of our material body, it is not limited to damage due to external objects only, it can also be created if there is damage inside our bodies. Sensation of pain inside body is normally not associated with any other form of sensation (code) like vision, sound, or smell. Spatial location and intensity of the pain is all that the brain is interested in for internal damages and it has separate codes for each of these features of the experience.

To conclude, sensations or experiences are nothing but codes that our brain creates to identify distinct interactions that our bodies have with external objects.

 

Notes

[2] Perception of colour is an involved process in our brains, involving cones in retina to activation of an area in the brain called V4