Page 256 - For Men of Understanding

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 pic-
ture… and so on in an endless regress of eyes and pictures. This is absurd. 7
This problem puts materialists, who hold that nothing is real except matter,
in a quandary: Who is behind the eye that sees? What perceives what it sees,
and then reacts?
Renowned cognitive neuroscientist Karl Pribram focused on this important
question, relevant to the worlds of both science and philosophy, about who
the perceiver is:
Philosophers since the Greeks have speculated about the "ghost" in the
machine, the "little man inside the little man" and so on. Where is the I-the
entity that uses the brain? Who does the actual knowing? Or, as Saint Francis
of Assisi once put it, "What we are looking for is what is looking." 8
This book in your hand, the room you are in-in brief, all the images before
you-are perceived inside your brain. Is it the blind, deaf, unconscious compo-
nent atoms that view these images? Why did some atoms acquire this quality,
whereas most did not? Do our acts of thinking, comprehending, remembering,
being delighted, being unhappy, and everything else consist of chemical reac-
tions among these atoms' molecules?
There is no sense in looking for will in atoms. Clearly, the being who sees,
hears, and feels is a supra-material being, "alive," who is neither matter nor an
image. This being interacts with the perceptions before it by using the image
of our body.
This being is the soul.
The intelligent being reading these lines is not an assortment of atoms and
molecules and the chemical reactions between them, but a soul.

The Real Absolute Being
We are brought face to face with a very significant question: If the world
we confront is comprised of our soul's perceptions, then what is the source of
these perceptions?
For an answer, consider that we perceive matter only in our imaginations,
but can never directly experience of its counterparts outside. Since matter is

actually a perception to us, it is something "constructed." That is, it must have
been caused by another power-which means that in fact, it must have been cre-
ated. Moreover, this creation must be continuous. If not, then these perceptions
would quickly disappear and be lost. Similarly, a television picture is displayed
only as long as the signal continues to be broadcast.

254 For Men of Understanding