Page 151 - The Truth of the Life of This World

at a desk, you will assume that you're a businessman in his office. This
imaginary world will endure as long as the computer keeps sending stim-
uli. Never will it become possible for you to understand that you consist

of nothing but your brain. This is because all that's needed to form a world
within your brain is the availability of stimulations to the relevant centres.
It is perfectly possible for these stimulations (and hence, perceptions) to
originate from some artificial source.
Along these lines, the distinguished philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote:
As to the sense of touch when we press the table with our fingers, that is an
electric disturbance on the electrons and protons of our fingertips, produced,
according to modern physics, by the proximity of the electrons and protons
in the table. If the same disturbance in our finger-tips arose in any other way,
we should have the sensations, in spite of there being no table. 19

It's very easy indeed to be deceived into deeming perceptions without
any material correlates as real. Often we experience this illusion in dreams,
wherein we experience events and see people, objects and settings that
seem completely genuine. But they're all merely perceptions. There's no
basic difference between these dreams and the "real world"; both sets of
perceptions are experienced 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

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