Page 182 - Matter: The Other Name for Illusion

are all manifestations of God, get more pleasure from them and live with a
deeper meaning. In brief it's a great and precious blessing. Yet, some people
who find it hard to understand the profoundness of faith may find it
unnerving that nothing exists but God. Yet they can never say that they see
what they do with their own eyes, or that what they see are the originals that

exist outside them. That is because there is no scientific evidence or
observation to show that that is the case, and neither can there ever be any. In
any case, even the most determined materialists accept that images are seen
inside the brain.
This chapter will mainly be devoted to replying to the objections of those
who cannot bring themselves to accept this fact. Reading these objections and
the replies to them, you will see that the replies are actually quite evident when

examined with honesty and without prejudice.

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R Reply: The point where those who ask such questions are mistaken is that
they think the concept of "perception" only applies to the sense of sight. In fact,
all sensations, such as touch, contact, hardness, pain, heat, cold and wetness
also form in the human brain, in precisely the same way that visual images are
formed. For instance, someone who feels the cold metal of the door as he gets
off a bus, actually "feels the cold metal" in his brain. This is a clear and well-
known truth. As we have already seen, the sense of touch forms in a particular
section of the brain, through nerve signals from the fingertips, for instance. It
is not your fingers that do the feeling. People accept this because it has been
demonstrated scientifically. However, when it comes to the bus hitting
someone, not just to his feeling the metal of the indoor—in other words when
the sensation of touch is more violent and painful—they think that this fact
somehow no longer applies. However, pain or heavy blows are also perceived
in the brain. Someone who is hit by a bus feels all the violence and pain of the
event in his brain.
In order to understand this better, it will be useful to consider our dreams.
A person may dream of being hit by a bus, of opening his eyes in hospital later,
being taken for an operation, the doctors talking, his family's anxious arrival at
the hospital, and that he is crippled or suffers terrible pain. In his dream, he
180 MATTER: THE OTHER NAME FOR ILLUSION