Lying Eyes
Sense or Non-Sense
Professor Kokichi Sugihara says that our brains decide what we see regardless of what is actually there. He demonstrates this through a series of videos that trick the brain into seeing things that you know cannot be happening.
The illusions are created because our brains make assumptions in order to keep the world real to us. In other words the brain makes up whatever it has to in order to fit our belief system of reality and to make sense of non-sense!
The following video is a powerful example of the brain being caught making it all up.
Non Existent Horizons
When you look at the horizon in the photograph below your eyes settle upon the line that separates sea and sky. But logically you know that such a line does not exist. If you travel in a boat to where you imagine you see the line or if you ask someone to go there and call you when they find it the result will always be the same. The line does not exist. So if there is no line, why do we see one?
Light Travels in Straight Lines
The reason is that the light entering our eyes travels in straight lines. This therefore limits the light that we can see. This is why we would first see the mast of a boat approaching us before we see the boat itself. The light from the boat is hidden behind the curve in the earth until it gets closer.
Our Judgements are Based on Non-Sense
As Professor Sugihara's videos very clearly demonstrate, our brains are designed to make sense of everything we see even though what we see obviously does not make sense. The judgements and choices we make daily are based on such flimsy evidence.
Our judgements of another person are based on what we imagine to be real. Most of what is real is hidden behind the curve we call the subconscious and is not available to us. The world we believe to be real is a dream and the horizon we see marks the separation between the dreamer and the dream.
How the Brain Tricks us into Missing the Present
The eyes are part of the body we use to interface with this physical world and like each of the other four senses of hearing, smell, touch and taste we are provided with narrow windows through which we view the word on the other side of the body interface. We have all learned from our experiences how to view the world we live in regardless of how it actually is. The way we have interpreted our experiences is also no accident and is a result of how we learn.
However, regardless of the truth our brains will always adapt our learning to fit our belief system of reality and we are consciously oblivious to this. In this way we have learned to connect past and future. Our past experiences determine our future thoughts and actions and in this way we construct the person we believe ourselves to be and we keep ourselves moving between past and future never lingering in the now.
The now is all there is but by making sense of the past in a way that dictates my future keeps me trapped in an illusory world of my own making.
The ego is that construct that keeps us from dwelling in the now for to do so would eventually lead to us realising the truth and that would be the beginning of the end for a construct that would no longer be necessary.
Meditation to Wake Up from The Dream
Meditation as a way to bring the mind to dwell in the present for extended periods of time has been used by the wise to undo the ego and wake us up from a dream we believe to be real. Simply finding time each day to sit quietly with mind focussed in the now will eventually lead you to a place within where you can will find a direction that you can trust to lead you back to truth.
Following is link to an article I wrote explaining how to meditate:
The Ship
The following poem, by Dr Pádraig de Brún 1889 -1960 called “An Long” in Irish Gaelic, which I first heard in a classroom in Dublin in 1975 by Mr Jack Wade my teacher, says it all so much more eloquently than I ever could...
More Examples
If you want to see more examples of Professor Sugihara's work then please watch the 13 minutes video below.
