Page 714 - Atlas of Creation Volume 3

All Tastes Occur In The Brain

The sense of taste can be explained in a manner similar to those

of the other sense organs. Tasting is caused by little buds in the
tongue and throat. The tongue can detect four different tastes, bit-
ter, sour, sweet and salty. Taste buds, after a chain of processes,
transform sensory information into electrical signals and then trans-

fer them to the brain. Subsequently, those signals are perceived by the
brain as tastes. The taste that you experience when you eat a cake, yo-
gurt, a lemon or a fruit is, in reality, a process that interprets electrical
signals in the brain.

An image of a cake will be linked with the taste of the sugar, all of
which occurs in the brain and everything sensed is related to the cake
which you like so much. The taste that you are conscious of
after you have eaten your cake, with a full appetite, is

nothing other than an effect generated in your brain
caused by electrical signals. You are only aware
of what your brain interprets from the exter-
nal stimuli. You can never reach the original

object; for example you cannot see, smell
or taste the actual chocolate itself. If the
taste nerves in your brain were cut off, it
would be impossible for the taste of any-

thing you eat to reach your brain, and
you would entirely lose your sense of
taste. The fact that the tastes of which you
are aware seem extraordinarily real should

certainly not deceive you. This is the scientific explanation of the matter.

The Sense Of Touch Also Occurs In The Brain

The sense of touch is one of the factors which prevents people from being convinced of the aforemen-
tioned truth that the senses of sight, hearing and taste occur within the brain. For example, if you told
someone that he sees a book within his brain, he would, if he didn't think carefully, reply "I can't be seeing

the book in my brain—look, I'm touching it with my hand". Or, if we said "we cannot know whether the
original of this book exists as a material object outside or not", again the same superficially minded person
might answer "no, look, I'm holding it with my hand and I feel the hardness of it – that isn't a perception but
an existence which has material reality".
However, there is a fact that such people cannot understand, or perhaps just ignore. The sense of touch

also occurs in the brain as much as do all the other senses. That is to say, when you touch a material ob-
ject, you sense whether it is hard, soft, wet, sticky or silky in the brain. The effects that come from your
fingertips are transmitted to the brain as an electrical signal and these signals are perceived in the brain as

the sense of touch. For instance, if you touch a rough surface, you can never know whether the surface is, in
reality, indeed a rough surface, or how a rough surface actually feels. That is because you can never touch
the original of a rough surface. The knowledge that you have about touching a surface is your brain's inter-
pretation of certain stimuli.
A person chatting to a close friend while drinking a cup of tea immediately lets go of the cup when he

burns his hand on the hot cup. However, in reality, that person feels the heat of the cup in his mind, not in
his hand. The same person visualizes the image of the cup of tea in his mind, and senses the smell and taste
of it in his mind. However, this man does not realize that the tea he enjoys is actually a sensation within his

712 Atlas of Creation Vol. 3