KNOWING

If anyone is reading this I apologise for the long delay between blogs: they will be much more frequent in future. Having done some very basic introduction to what is to follow, it's time to move on to the problem - and it is a huge problem - of perception, or how do we know what's going on in the world and how close to the truth it is. This all goes back to the earliest blogs and my statement that what matters most in the long run is what we actually do, and that this is an expression of how we think and what we believe, so it's vital that there is real truth in what we say.

There is no better example of this than the incredible series of
events of the past few weeks in which many lives have been lost in a number of countries for reasons that are confusing, contradictory, and are not matters of fact but of belief, of faith.
I do not intend to talk about the rights or wrongs of any particular belief: that is a matter for individuals to decide for themselves. What concerns me is how we all develop our convictions that what we each believe is right, and that any other conviction is therefore wrong. So let's begin with the general understanding of how we come to know what is happening in the world around us and in our bodies.

There is, however, something of the utmost importance to say before going on with this business of perception. I shall deal in more detail with this subject as we get further into things, but for now I want to say the following: The way we think in this 21st century is fundamentally flawed. In our interactions with the world we are using an attitude towards that external world which has in effect distorted our understanding both of the world and ourselves. Our use of language and symbols (a crucial factor in how we think) results in behaviour which is essentially destructive to us all and to our environment. Every day the 'news' (really its the 'olds' as a friend of mine is fond of saying) is full of examples of the destruction we are causing, but we don't question it enough because the source of it all is based on the kinds of thinking we are all taught early in life, and it is very difficult to stand back and take a good critical look at it. We are all parts of this misunderstanding of the reality in which we live but because of our training from infancy upwards we regard this as acceptable, though not necessarily approving of it. What I am doing is presenting the basic ways that thinking takes place, how to look at what we do in a different light, ways of judging if something said or done is valid, and eventually what we can do to change our misdirection. Before doing so I first will show you how mistaken are our belief systems so that you will recognise the need for a different view of reality though, as I have said, and will say again, I am not offering any particular theory or set of ideas: that is for you to decide. I simply want you to know what's gone wrong and how you can go about changing it, personally or as a member of a family, a group, an organisation or a state.

How, then, does the majority of humanity see the world? Briefly
it is something like this. We learn about the world through the information we get from our various senses so I shall take vision - what we see - as the most convenient example. Light is reflected from an object and enters our eyes through the lens and is thereby focused on the retina at the back of the eye where the light energy is transformed into nerve impulses. These are then sent to the posterior part of the brain where another transformation occurs resulting in the images of the objects which were being looked at. Thus what I see is an accurate movie or still picture of the world around me. Everyone has the same kind of brain and therefore we should all see exactly the same image and should react to it appropriately.

This sounds very plausible: the trouble is that it is 180 degrees wrong so I shall give a simple example that shows this clearly.

To do so I shall shift gears and refer to the subject of visual illusions which most people are well aware of and that can raise some serious questions about what is real and what is illusion. I won't go into detail about the the more startling ones: here I am focusing on the questions that illusions raise and the most important is also the simplest. Most people have seen the images above, from left to right:

- image of a woman, old hag or young brunette
- a cube which can shift in its orientation depending on which face is forward.
- a triangle that isn't there on the paper, but which is our brains 'fill in'.

The indisputable fact is that there are images, or marks on the page and that they can be interpreted in more than one way: some switch whilst you are watching them. The question therefore arises: where does the switch take place? There is only one set of lines etc and it is clear that they do not change: the only place they can change is in the visual nervous system. This firmly places the interpretation of external events within the nervous system and it raises a further question. If a person 'sees' one interpretation and someone else 'sees' a different interpretation, and each insists that their images are the right ones, who is right?
Remember that according to the common sense understanding about the process of seeing there is only one possible interpretation, and since I am sure that my image is a correct one, then anyone who has a different image is wrong, and since I know the process of seeing must be the same for both, the other person must be doing this for some ulterior motive. This insistence that we must all 'see' precisely the same image is universal and leads to an insistence that 'I am right and you are wrong' which is the most important cause of disagreement between individuals everywhere. The word 'see' in the above example refers to our visual sense lliterally, but it is also used in a more general sense because this process of misinterpretation applies to all the senses, and therefore to our total perception of the outside world.

The implications are startling, to say the least, at every level of human interaction, from the family relations to the United(?) Nations. We are all sure that our interpretation of events is correct, and I shall discuss this more deeply as other factors come into play, making even greater problems for our relationships.

To continue with the process of 'seeing.' If what I have said is correct - and there is no doubt it is! - it forces us to find out just what is actually going on with this process where it takes place: in the nervous system. The following is a simplified version of the mechanisms involved: the details are extremely complex but this should convey the essence whilst being consistent with the scientifically known facts.

This blog is fairly full so I shall continue in the next one.