Page 196 - Matter: The Other Name for Illusion

book, this functioning is the same for every sensory organ. The signals coming
to our sensory organs from the outside world are turned into electrical signals
by our cells and forwarded to the perception centers in our brain by our nerves.
So man sees, hears, smells, tastes or touches the world in tiny perception
centers in his brain.

These scientific facts are now completely clear, and can be found in any
book on physiology or high school biology textbook. The way images and
perceptions form in the brain is now taught in a detailed manner in medical
schools. As our knowledge has advanced, sciences such as physics, quantum
physics, psychology, neurology, biology and medicine have clarified the
factual details of the process.
For instance, the theoretical physicist Dr. Fred Alan Wolf, who has

attracted considerable attention with his research and has written eight award-
winning books, explains that quantum physics in particular has revealed that
the world we see is composed of copy beings that we have experience of in our
brains:
…there is something beyond all materialism, beyond the physical world,
out of which all reality, the whole of existence, projects. This would
overwhelm traditional dualism – and I take this view not as a mystic but
as a quantum physicist. I think that our most modern understanding of
the physical world suggests that there may be an ineffable realm, a
mystical realm, an "imaginal" realm, out of which the physical world pops
into existence. Kind of like what [the German physicist and pioneer of
quantum mechanics] Werner Heisenberg suggested when he brought the
notion of consciousness into physics – when he said that it's the observer
who creates the observed simply by the act of observation… I see reality
differently. Reality to me is more like a dream – I see a dreaming reality. I
envision a dreamer, or a great spirit, of which we're all a part… And I
think that using this model we can achieve some real scientific
breakthroughs, rather than attempting to reduce everything down to the
simplest level. 49

This scientist has seen the fact that we perceive the material world in our
minds in the light of scientific discoveries, and is only one of the scientists who
have done so. Those who reject this evident scientific truth do so for ideological
reasons, not scientific ones. That is because these scientists do not wish to
accept this fact, knowing as they do that it will completely undermine the
materialism to which they are so stubbornly attached. In fact, Dr. Wolf makes

194 MATTER: THE OTHER NAME FOR ILLUSION