You? We?

We are unquestionably the smartest species on the planet, thanks to the heavy grey mass we possess in our skulls. More often than not, we never stop to question let alone understand how we reach certain conclusions or experience certain things. We are so engrossed in the sensory information and the deeper and deeper layers of interpretation of that data that we don’t question its reality. Now one may ask why is it relevant to pose the question of reality. It is more than relevant because when we don’t question reality and accept it as it is presented to us(whoever we think that the ‘us’ is), we form anywhere from pointless to life-altering attachments to some random figments. Consider for a moment any visually pleasing object in your vicinity. Now if I ask you to describe that object to me, what would you describe it as? What, according to you, forms the identity of that object? Colour, shape may be on the first level. Then if I ask you to describe it more you may try and describe its surface by feeling it, or by its scent. Whatever might be the description, do you really think it ‘possesses’ all that characterization that ‘you’ assigned to it? Now close your eyes and try to imagine the exact features of your favorite food, its color, scent, taste, etc as vividly as you can as if you can feel it right now. So, now that you imagine these characteristics does it make the food real?

When we casually stroll in the evening and marvel at the beauty of nature, its splendid colors, what is actually happening is, our brain telling us a splendid lie. One that shakes up our beliefs about truth and reality. That lie is that everything we see is on the outside. When in fact every color, every pleasant breeze, every scent, every sound, all that we experience is a show put on for us by our brains seamlessly every second of our lives that we refuse to stop and detach those identities from those objects and see those objects for what they really are matter and energy or the living beings for what they are matter, energy, and consciousness. At first, we may ask why that detachment is even needed at all when the world is so full of color and joy as it is. It is important because we don’t interact with the world in isolation. As the author of the book, “The Brain”, Dr. David Eagleman,(from whose book I drew inspiration for this article) says we are a network of neurons living inside a much larger network. This is because though your neurons are not directly exchanging neurotransmitters with your neighbors’ neurons the effect of the interaction of ideas is the same. Put on your thinking hats for another thought experiment. Imagine a kid whose sight was slightly engineered to perceive our version of yellow (if there is one) as white and our version of white as yellow since birth. As the kid interacts with the environment, nothing interesting happens. As the kid grows, he/she will be exposed to a system of representation of knowledge and let us fast forward to the instant where the kid learns to name and identify colors. The external world shows a white object to the kid, which is seen as our yellow in the kid’s mind, and labels it white and does the same with a yellow object, which is seen as our white in the kid’s mind. Now, here’s the interesting part, since we have an inherent assumption that the perception is the same across all the minds in the room, we never face any contradiction regarding what the representation is because we only learn the mapping from perception (that exists solely in the mind) to some concept which we accept upon. So, no matter what the perception is, the framework of representation will be intact. Still with me? Now go one step further. You have a perception, the consciousness feels it and generates something associated with that perception. In the kid’s case, our white (which our consciousness may give feelings of serenity, maybe) which is our yellow in his mind might be associated with a very different emotion or feeling by his/her consciousness.

You might be tempted to dismiss this thought process as illogical or impossible. But, hold on for one moment, are you sure it’s impossible? We can’t verify it because we cannot perceive something as the other person perceives it. And just because we can’t verify it or imagine it to be plausible shouldn’t make it impossible, right? Now, if all this is possible, if not probable by a mere need for design consistency, then there is definitely room for us to go further and apply a similar approach to the deeper layers of perception that result from the numerous combinations of sensory information across different timelines and sources. This understanding frees us from the divisive nature of several ideas in the present world that I need not name. This thought experiment gives another frequently overlooked idea. We are not our intellect or our ego or our memories or our opinions. What we are is an unanswered question, the answer to which right now is just a term, which is not understood exactly either, consciousness. However, what you represent is an entirely different thing and depends highly on the question itself, in what form of representation - experiences, memories? Very often, highly misunderstood emotions arise because we fail to look beyond the representation and into the consciousness of the other person. It varies from being fooled by the easiest of illusions, like color, race, etc to the deepest of them like opinions, experiences, ideas. This is exactly why the detachment is so crucial, to allow you that flexibility and avoid disturbing the harmony(internal or external).

What absolutely baffles me is that though we take great pride in our free will, our choices or decisions, during most of our everyday lives, are dictated by the unaccessible sides of the brain where we store several decades of information, of past subjective experiences. So, considering that what makes us, us is something called consciousness(our ability to exercise free will, say) and the unconscious part(our experiences, memories, etc) then, before we have any of the experiences, what any one of us is, is just pure consciousness, right? (maybe with exceptions of subtle differences in genetic coding). Now, the question is without the biases that arise because of the experiences, do we have any differences in what we are or is that consciousness one and the same for all of us? Now, if the latter is true, it breaks all the barriers like hatred in this world because there is essentially no difference between two people because remember, the experiences, the memories, etc that come later are not part of a person’s identity but merely a representation in another’s and one’s own mind just like the first example with that object. Now this question has been answered in some of the theologies. One such idea is that there is only one consciousness and every living being is just sharing that consciousness. In fact, it emphasizes that there is no such thing as even sharing because essentially there is no distinction between the two. There is only one. You, we, are all one. I am not asking you to believe all of this. Instead, all I am asking is to look beyond the obvious because it’s the nature of a master illusion to never let you question the illusion itself so that the illusion stays on. And if overlooked our daily experience can become one such illusion. So, the question I want to leave you with is, after we add all those experiences and memories, do you think we can still be one and the same in some dimension? If it exists and we can find it then we will have established peace both on the inside and the outside. The possibilities for us as a species to move forward would be limitless and I’ll leave it to your creativity and imagination. 🙂