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.