Page 58 - Timelessness and the Reality of Fate

56 TIMELESSNESS AND THE REALITY OF FATE

sleep, such people will similarly ask who has woken them up. As the verse
points out, the world around us is like a dream and everybody will be
woken up from this dream, and will begin to see images of the afterlife,
which is the real life.

Who Is The Perceiver?
As we have explained so far, we can never have experience of the orig-
inal of the material world we think we are inhabiting and that we call the
"external world." However, here arises the question of primary importance.
If we cannot reach the original of any of the material existence that we know
of, what about our brain? Since our brain is a part of the physical world just
like our arm, leg, or any other object, we cannot reach its original either.
When the brain is analysed, it is seen that there is nothing in it but lipid
and protein molecules, which also exist in other living organisms. This
means that within the piece of meat we call our
"brain", there is nothing to observe the images, to
constitute consciousness, or to form the being we
call "myself".
R.L. Gregory refers to a mistake people
make in relation to the perception of images in
the brain:
There is a temptation, which must be avoided,
to say that the eyes produce pictures in the
brain. A picture in the brain suggests the need of
some kind of internal eye to see it - but this
would need a further eye to see its picture…
The following question
and so on in an endless regress of eyes and pic- appears on the cover of
tures. This is absurd. 50 the American science
magazine New Scientist
This is the very point which puts the mate-
which dealt with this fact
rialists, who do not hold anything but matter as in its 30 January 1999
issue: "Beyond Reality:
real, in a quandary. To whom belongs "the eye
Is the Universe Really a
inside" that sees, that interprets what it sees and Frolic of Primal Informa-
reacts to it? tion and Matter Just a
Mirage?"
Karl Pribram also focused on this important
question in the world of science and philosophy