Page 662 - Atlas of Creation Volume 4

ceptions, or who witnesses the same world. Neither is what we see any part of our brain. The brain is

also within this same phantom image. Our perceptions constitute a world that is shown to and created
for us. There is indeed a reality outside, a material world, but human beings can never reach it.
As Erwin Schrödinger, one of the discoverers of quantum physics, stated, “Every man’s world pictu-

re is and always remains a construct of his mind, and cannot be proved to have any other existence.” 56
When we imagine the book in our mind’s eye, we have an experience very similar to when we ac-
tually see the book with our physical eyes. This is an important proof that we can obtain an image of an
object in the brain only by thinking about it—an object that does not really exist. The Washington
University psychologist Michael Posner and neurologist Marcus Raichle say this about the brain’s ext-

raordinary mechanism:

Open your eyes, and a scene fills your view effortlessly, close your eyes and think of that scene, and you can
summon an image of it, certainly not as vivid, solid, or complete as the scene you see with your eyes, but still
one that captures the scene’s essential characteristics. In both cases, an image of the scene is formed in the
mind. The image formed from actual visual experiences is called a “percept” to distinguish it from an ima-

gined image. The percept is formed as the result of light hitting the retina and sending signals that are furt-
her processed in the brain. But how are we able to create an image when no light is hitting the retina to send
such signals? 57

What creates an object in our minds, in the absence of the original of that object, is the same mecha-
nism that creates it in our minds when we imagine the original does exist. Therefore, the existence of the

images we see as the external world is merely an illusion, a phantom. Everything we see—the bright
world in front of us, our friends, the people around us and even our own bodies—are part of this dre-
am. What we imagine to be the source of all these, their originals in the external world, must always re-
main unknown to us.

This “shadow world” includes our workplaces, homes, the people around us, our cars, the food we
eat, the films we watch; in short, everything in our lives. When we return home, we feel that we are en-
tering our real abode. The fact is, however, that we are observing an identical
copy of our real home, one that we do not even consider could possibly be an

image. Again, everything we encounter in our homes, we observe in our
minds. All our lives take place inside a tiny area in the brain.
So far, most neurologists and psychologists who have investigated this
subject have easily come to this conclusion. Yet they generally avoid ans-

wering the question of “Who does the perceiving?” They look for tiny ima-
ginary figures inside the brain and seek a material entity that perceives all
these things. They debate these questions in books, articles and conferen-
ces, cite other scientists who have also been unable to resolve the issue and

claim that they too have been unable to find a solution. The fact is, howe-
ver, that all the technical and scientific facts indicate that human beings
possess a soul that perceives, sees and feels. What scientists look for in
the brain—the “seeing entity” in other words—is the soul. Everything

belonging to what we consider to be the “outside world” consists of ima-
ges displayed to the soul.
This insight totally does away with materialism, in which some sci-
entists have such a strong belief. For materialists, who claim that everyt-

hing consists of material entities, the existence of the soul is totally unac-

We are sure that we see the true state of the object we look at in the external world.
In fact, however, we can never have direct experience of the original of that object.
What we see is simply an illusion, as in the three-dimensional illustration made on
the ground in the illustration. It is something produced by the mind. However, we
never feel the slightest doubt that we are experiencing the original outside images.

660 Atlas of Creation Vol. 4