In the last chapter we came across the most bewildering questions of all times, who or what part of us is experiencing the experiences. This is a deep philosophical question that has no clear answer. The scientific quest of claiming that the constituent of our brain is experiencing our mind has also not given any satisfactory explanation. We therefore leave aside this question for some time and concentrate on the things that we seem to understand – the external universe.
What is our universe? We perceive
the universe through our sensory perceptions and is nothing more than what our
brain creates as experiences. We understand a stone as that what the reflected
EM wave brings into our sensory apparatus. Same is true with sound and so on.
Our brain creates a virtual reality environment of sensations and experiences that
we call as the external universe (our external universe starts from our body
outwards).
We have our thinking apparatus which
involves logic and calculations which are patterns observed in our experience
factory. We have created the language of mathematics that weaves in a logic derived
from the observed patterns. We also think pictographically, through sound and
other sensory perceptions with the help of pattern recognition in each of these
areas.
We have developed a mapping paradigm
of languages which labels sounds and pictographic symbols to different auditory
and visual sensations. We have defined labels for the way these objects
interact with each other and with us as perceived in our experience universe.
Finally, we have defined laws by which these labels can be strewn together to
explain our experiences to each other and to a larger group of population. The
paradigm of language has been able to integrate our efforts to collectively
address our common problems related to survival in this world. This feature has
been so successful in the evolutionary sense that it has become a part of our
genetic code. We are born with an innate ability to speak and comprehend sounds
which are further honed by our society to make us a contributing adult.
This then is our definition of the
external universe. A virtual reality of experiences, a paradigm of language to
label objects and their interactions to communicate our experiences with fellow
humans, and the world of logic that identifies patterns creating its own laws
of mathematics. However, this is not the reality of the external universe. We
are still grappling to understand its true nature with the help of quantum
physics, general relativity, molecular biology, philosophy, religion, and a
host of other interrelated areas. With every breakthrough in our understanding
of the universe and new series of contradictions and complexities gets
unfolded. It looks to be a never-ending saga. We have however been able to get
a great deal of information about the external universe (the molecular
environment, the bacteria’s, the quantum reality etc.) without any direct
experience, through the paradigms of logic, language, and patterns.
Logic, language, and patterns have greatly
enhanced our understanding of the Universe, yet what we believe as the external
universe is still our universe of experience. The universe experienced as an
individual or at a collective humanity level using the tool of communication is
not the true reality out there. How far away it is from the truth is also not
known and we believe there is a long way to go before we can truly bridge the
gap.
Whatever is experiencing this
virtual reality environment created as our minds is not experiencing the truth.
It cannot understand the true nature of the universe with the help of the
sensory perceptions created inside our minds and since this is the only way
available to it, it has no way out.
Thus, we now have two basic
entities, 1) a collection of experiences that we understand as the universe 2)
one who is experiencing these experiences.
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