Page 255 - For Men of Understanding

pletely genuine. But they're all merely perceptions. There's no basic difference
between these dreams and the "real world"; both sets of perceptions are expe-
rienced in the brain.

Who Is the Perceiver?

The "external world" that we think we inhabit is no doubt created inside
our brain. Here, however, arises a question of primary importance: If all the
physical objects we know of are intrinsically perceptions, what about our brain
itself? Since our brain is a part of the material world just like our arms, our legs,
or any other object, it too should be a perception.
An example will help illustrate this point. Assume that we perceive a dream
in our brain. In our dream, we have an imaginary body, imaginary arms and
eyes, and an imaginary brain. If, during our dream, we were asked "Where do
you see?" we'd answer, "I see in my brain." Yet, actually there is no real brain
to talk about, only an imaginary body, along with an imaginary head and an
imaginary brain. The seer of the dream's various images is not the imaginary
dreaming brain, but a being who is far beyond it.
Since there is no physical distinction between the setting of a dream and
the setting we call real life, when in "real life" we are asked the same question
of "Where do you see?" it would be equally meaningless to answer, "In my
brain." Under either condition, the entity that sees and perceives is not the
brain, which is after all only a hunk of nerve tissue.
So far, we have kept referring to how we watch a copy of the external

world in our brains. An important result is that we can never know the exter-
nal world as it actually is.
A second, no less important fact is that the "self" in our brains who observes
this world cannot be the brain itself, which is like an integrated computer sys-
tem: It processes data reaching it, translates it into images, and projects them
on a screen. Yet a computer cannot watch itself; nor is it aware of its own exis-
tence.
When the brain is dissected to search for this awareness, nothing is found
in it but lipid and protein molecules, which exist in other organs of the body
as well. This means that within the tissue we call "our brain," there is nothing
to observe and interpret the images, constitute consciousness, or to create the
being we call "ourselves."
In relation to the perception of images in the brain, perceptual scientist R.L.
Gregory refers to a mistake people make:

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