Stranger still, how would you say you know an object when you see it?
It compares well with other similar objects. Perceptual metaphors? Ultimately, our memory of any perceived thing is an energy pattern present in a material substrate, and yet somehow this energy travelling along this specific material circuit can somehow tell us what a rock is. Isn’t that a bit strange?
How is it strange? Well, supposedly the energy and circuit it travels on has nothing at all in common with the rock, yes? So why would anything going on in our head ever resemble something in the environment around us?
Oh! Now I see what you mean. The map is not the territory. Our brains can somehow hold rock information, but is even the rock itself the territory? What is the difference really between the rock and our recognition of the rock?
Just a lower vibration of energy for the rock?
What if it is a radioactive rock?
Well, if you accept that light can interact with the rock in a meaningful way, and that same light can interact with our nervous system through our eye in a similarly meaningful way, then some very real and “material” principle must be conveyed between the rock and our brain that takes the stimuli and forms the perception of the rock. What is the real difference between the matter of the rock the light has bounced off of and the matter of our eye?
Not sure how “material” that principle would be, though. I Mean, it is information of some sort. Then perhaps it is energy, good point. The information has no resting mass we can detect and has no detectable volume of space it occupies except perhaps the virtual space it later occupies in our brains neural resources.
The eye physiology evolved because of the light in its environment. It could be argued that the brain evolved because of the material conditions in our environment. A subset of reputable scientists is saying that our brain evolved to permit us to move through space.
So let’s take it down to the particle level, or perhaps more easily the molecular level, as light reflects off our hypothetical rock. The behaviour of the light or photon particles is reshaped by its contact with the rock, and those same light particles keep the acquired qualities when they reach the retina of our eye, no? So why would those physical properties be lost when that light creates a perceptual trace in our brain?
Perhaps the physical properties are not really “lost” but our perception of objects is not the same thing as the objects themselves. I will get into that.
I’m watching two bright red male cardinals outside my window. Perhaps another vector… The light interacting with those birds takes on qualities that tell our sense of vision that the birds are there.
They say that gravity arises from the interaction of mass with the background of space. So how would the gravity acting on the mass of that bird be any different than the light acting on the presence of that bird? Both are energy and the bird retains its physical properties persistently. What would be the difference between the optical footprint of the bird and its gravitic footprint?
The gravity also bends the rays of light (the path that the particles follow). Indeed, it does do that as well. So there is an element of refraction, if very slight, in our perception of the light from the bird.
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~