Page 657 - Atlas of Creation Volume 4

Harun Yahya

Who Observes the Visual Images in the Brain?

After the light from an outside object falls onto the retina, signals are transmitted to up to 30 diffe-

rent visual centers in the brain for processing. The light passing through the lens at the front of the eye
leaves an upside-down and two-dimentional image on the layer of retinal cells at the back of the eye.
Following various chemical processes, the rod and cone cells there convert that image into electrical im-
pulses, which signals are transmitted by the optic nerve to the vision center at the rear of the brain. The

brain then assembles these into meaningful three-dimensional images.
In the words of Craig Hamilton:

How that happens is an example of what is known as “the binding problem” and is itself a mystery that no
one has yet solved convincingly. For the moment, though, what is important to understand is that each of yo-

ur eyes is seeing a different part of the picture, and your brain is piercing it together into a unified whole. 48
These accounts provide a general description of how the eye sees. The eyes represent the first stage
in the formation of an image, the original of which, in the world outside, we can never know. The world

existing outside us is replicated inside us in a very small area in the brain, thanks to the light passing
through our eyes and by way of electrical signals. When we look around us, any images we see, even if
it is one of the boundless heavens, actually forms in this tiny area of the brain. We can never know whet-

her or not the original of this boundless image actually corresponds to what we see.
Peter Russell sums up the position:

When I see a tree, it seems as if I am seeing the tree directly. But science tells us something completely dif-
ferent is happening. Light entering the eye triggers chemical reactions in the retina, [and] these produce
electro-chemical impulses which travel along nerve fibers to the brain. The brain analyses the data it recei-

ves, and then creates its own picture of what is out there. I then have the experience of seeing a tree. But what
I am actually experiencing is not the tree itself, only the image that appears in the mind. This is true of
everything I experience. Everything we know, perceive, and imagine, every color, sound, sensation, every
thought and every feeling, is a form appearing in the mind. It is all an in-forming of consciousness. 49

All this leads to an important realization, that throughout our lives we imagine that the world lies

outside us. The fact is, however, that we actually perceive the world that we imagine to be external to
us in a small region inside the brain.
Since we cannot directly see the original of the world outside us, and since everything is a percepti-
on arising in the brain, then is it actually the eye that sees?
Throughout our lives, we imagine that we

see the world that lies outside us with our
eyes. But the scientific description of
the visual functions perfor-

med by the brain shows that
it is not the eye that sees. The
eye and its millions of retinal
nerve cells serve to transmit
the message to the brain in

order for vision to take place.

There is no little man sitting in the brain observing what is going on. Research into
the brain can never answer the question of who really does the perceiving. Because
it is the “soul” that perceives, independently of any person’s physical identity.

Adnan Oktar 655