Continued from previous post #1.
In the series of articles “Reality is A Creation of the Mind”, we saw in the previous post how the human mind create an internal representation of reality, how this process happens outside of conscious awareness, and how because of this, we believe that the subjective internal representation that has been conjured up by our mind is in fact the true reality. The external world is a creation of the internal realm.
Albert Einstein used the analogy of a closed watch to explain this process.
“Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our endeavour to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility or the meaning of such a comparison. But he certainly believes that, as his knowledge increases, his picture of reality will become simpler and simpler and will explain a wider and wider range of his sensuous impressions. He may also believe in the existence of the ideal limit of knowledge and that it is approached by the human mind. He may call this ideal limit the objective truth.”
Albert Einstein – The Evolution of Physics (1938) (co-written with Leopold Infeld)
As stated above, you ‘may never be quite sure [your] picture is the only one which could explain [your] observations’. We may never be quite sure that our view is wide and large enough to encompass the whole system of cause and effect that brings about the reality we observe. There very well may be some pieces of the puzzle that we are missing. And this is what happens.
We saw in an earlier post that we take in bits of information through our 5 senses. This is called the process of ‘perceiving’. Have you ever thought about how this process works? Here is one possible map that you may want to explore.
Every second, we take in a HUGE number of bits of information. In fact, it is fair to say that the amount of information that come at us just through those 5 channels is astronomical, so vast that we cannot even process it through our conscious mind.
In his now classic book “Flow, the psychology of optimal experience“, the American-Hungarian psychology professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi mentions that we take in 2 Million bits of information per second through those senses (PER SECOND!).
Where am I going with this you will ask!
Every second, we are exposed to a vast amount of bits of information, but we are only aware of the most minute quantity of them. According to Csikszentmihalyi, out of the 2 million bits we take in every second, we can only be conscious of at most 134. All the rest is deleted, distorted and generalised.
How do we decide what to delete, distort and generalize? We obviously do not decide consciously. We don’t sit and ask ourselves: “so today what am I going to remember? What bits of information would I like to take in?” the same way we would ask ourselves: ‘what am I going to eat today?” A decision is made, but based on criteria that we have no idea are there. Those criteria are called our ‘deep filters”.
Personal Practice (read all paragraphs before you attempt to do this practice).
Stop for a minute and look. Focus your gaze on a point in front of you. You see what you are focusing on, but if you really pay attention, you can see much more than that. You probably see colors, shapes and more around that point, you can detect movement or stillness, changes. As you keep focusing on that point a whole world opens around it. Take your time to expand your visual awareness. Allow that expansion to take place freely, there is nothing to attain, nothing to will into existence, just allow the expansion to happen.
Now listen (you may close your eyes if easier). Focus on the most obvious sound that attracts your attention for a minute, and really, really hear it in its depth. Is there something that you have not yet heard in this specific sound that you can hear? And now, allow your awareness to expand to other sounds, less obvious ones, but present as well. Maybe the soft humming sound of the computer as you are reading this screen, maybe faint noises from the outside. Just allow your awareness to incorporate all the sounds that you can hear, and those you can’t hear yet as well.
And now feel. Feel the palm of your right hand, and the palm of your left hand, and the sole of your feet. Become aware of different spots in your body, focus in on each one, then allow your awareness to expand to include the spot right next to it, then keep expanding again. Feel your heart beat, the air going through your nostrils as you inhale and exhale. Feel your body expanding with each inhale. Feel it expand beyond the boundaries of your physical body, beyond the boundaries of space to become the universe and everything in it.
To be continued…