Page 130 - Miracle in the Eye

M MIRACLE IN THE EYE

What makes you perceive light in a location without light, odors in a
place without smell, sounds in total silence and the objects of all other
senses? Who created all of this for you?
In every moment of your life, a variety of miracles take place. As men-
tioned earlier, anything your senses can detect in this room you're in, are
sent as electrical signals to your brain, where they then combine. Your brain
interprets them as a view of a room. Put another way, while you assume that
you are sitting in this room, that room is actually inside you, in your brain.
The "place" where the room is assembled and perceived is small, dark, and
soundless. And yet a whole room or a whole landscape, regardless of its
size, can fit into it. Both a narrow closet and a wide vista of the sea are per-
ceived in the exact same place.
Our brains interpret and attribute meaning to the signals relating to the
"external world." As an example, consider the sense of hearing. It's our brain
that in fact interprets and transforms the sound waves into a symphony.
That is to say, music is yet another perception created by our brain. In the
same manner, when we perceive colors, what reaches our eyes is merely
light of different wavelengths. Again, it's our brain that transforms these
signals into colors. There are no colors in the "external world"; neither is an
apple red, nor the sky blue, nor the leaves green. They appear as they do
simply because we perceive them to be so.
Even a slight defect in the eye's retina can cause color blindness. Some
sufferers perceive blue and green as the same, some red as blue. At this
point, it does not matter whether or not the outside object is colored.
The prominent thinker George Berkeley also addresses this fact:
At the beginning, it was believed that colors, odors, etc., "really exist,"
but subsequently such views were renounced, and it was seen that they
only exist in dependence on our sensations. 52

In conclusion, the reason we see objects in colors is not because they are
actually colored or have a material existence in the outer world. The truth,
rather, is that the qualities we ascribe to objects are all inside us.
And this, perhaps, is a truth you have never considered before.

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