Page 880 - Atlas of Creation Volume 1

perceived in your centre of smell are those of outside objects. However, just as the image of a rose exists in
your visual centre, so its scent is located in your olfactory centre. You can never have direct contact with the
original sight or smell of that rose that exists outside.
To us, the "external world" is merely a collection of the electrical signals reaching our brains simultane-

ously. Our brains process these signals, and we live without recognizing our mistaken assumption that these
are the actual, original versions of matter existing in the "external world." We are misled, because by means
of our senses, we can never reach the matter itself.
Again, our brain interprets and attributes meanings to the signals that we assume to be "external."

Consider the sense of hearing, for example. In fact, our brain interprets and transforms sound waves reach-
ing our ear into symphonies. Music, too, is a perception formed by—and within—our brain. In the same
manner, when we see colours, different wavelengths of light are all that reaches our eyes, and our brain
transforms these wavelengths into colours. There are no colours in the "external world." Neither is the apple

red, nor is the sky blue, nor the trees green. They are as they are only because we perceive them to be so.
Even the slightest defect in the eye's retina can cause colour blindness. Some people perceive blue as
green, others red as blue, and still others see all colours as different tones of grey. At this point, it no longer
matters whether the outside object is coloured or not.

The prominent Irish thinker George Berkeley also addressed this point:
First, ...it was thought that colour, figure, motion, and the rest of the sensible qualities or accidents, did really exist
without the mind;.. But, it having been shewn that none even of these can possibly exist otherwise than in a Spirit
or Mind which perceives them it follows that we have no longer any reason to suppose the being of Matter... 194

In conclusion, we see colours not because objects are coloured or because they have a material existence
outside ourselves, but because all the qualities we ascribe to objects are inside us, not in the "external world."
In that case, how can we claim to have complete knowledge of "the external world?"

All we see in our lives

are formed in a part of
our brain called "vision
centre" at the back of our

brain, which makes up
only a few cubic centime-
tres. Both the book you
are now reading and the
boundless landscape

you see when you gaze
at the horizon fit into this
tiny space. Therefore, we

see objects not in their
actual size existing out-
side, but in the size per-
ceived by our brain.

878 Atlas of Creation