I think my quarry is illusion. I war against magic.
I believe that, though illusion often cheers and comforts,
it ultimately and invariably weakens and constricts the spirit.— Irvin Yalom
Some otherwise competent individuals repeatedly and knowingly act counter to their own interests. They are not intending to hurt themselves; they are taken in by an illusion. The Soul Illusion results from the presumed, but bogus, premise of perception, namely that we see the world as it really is. In fact, what we see is a creation of our nervous system.
To make this case, consider the neural science answer to the familiar question: When a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, is there a sound?
No.
When the tree falls, it produces a series of pressure waves in the surrounding air. The ear drum converts these waves into a mechanical signal which is transmitted by 3 small bones to the fluid filled cochlea – the spiral bony canal of the inner ear. Hair cells of the cochlea are the actual receptors. Each is tuned to a particular frequency of the fluid waves. Hair cell vibrations are converted to electrical impulses, and transmitted along the auditory nerve to the auditory cortex where intensity and frequency of the vibrations are mapped. Neither pressure waves, physical movements of body parts [bones, hair], nor electrical signals are sound. Sound is an experience that is created by, and exists only in, the mind of the perceiver.
So, if there is no one around to hear it, a tree falling in the forest produces no sound — only pressure waves in the surrounding air.
Perception differs qualitatively from the physical properties of the stimulus. The nervous system extracts only certain information from the natural world. We perceive fluctuations of air pressure not as pressure waves but as sounds that we hear. We perceive electromagnetic waves of different frequency as colors that we see. We perceive chemical compounds dissolved in air or water as specific smells or tastes.
In the words of neurologist Sir John Eccles: "I want you to realize that there exists no color in the natural world, and no sound – nothing of this kind; no textures, no patterns, no beauty, no scent." Sounds, colors, and patterns appear to have an independent reality, yet are, in fact, constructed by, and only exist within, an individual’s nervous system. To make sense of the huge amount of sensory input it receives, the nervous system abstracts from raw sensation to create perceptions. All of our subjective experience, including our knowledge of the world around us, is the creation of our nervous systems. Our understandings are imperfect.
We confabulate the world we live in
Some neurological disorders result in memory impairment so profound that the patient is not able to remember how she got to the clinician’s office. When asked about the sequence of events that led to her arrival, the patient will often confabulate a story. The false explanation is called a confabulation [rather than a lie], because the patient is not intending to mislead the clinician. The patient seems to unconsciously create a plausible story to answer the clinician’s question.
Inside the skull it is dark and silent. The brain creates the subjective phenomena that we experience as images and sounds from the input it receives from visual and auditory neurons. These neurons transmit the information they receive from sensory organs that have the remarkable ability to obtrain information from the outside world and trasnalte it into signals the nervous system can use. However, our visual apparatus is only sensitive to a small portion of the electro-magnetic spectrum; likewise, there are many sound frequencies that are too low or too high for our auditory apparatus to perceive. The bloodhound, the bat, and the dolphin create different maps to the world through different sensory apparatus than we do, and so their representations of reality is different than ours. From the incomplete data about its environment, the brain creates—confabulates— a best guess of objective reality. It is adaptive for us to act as if this representation of our environment was valid.
The first-person experience of what it’s like to be taken in by an illusion along with the third-person experience of observing your perceptual faculties being fooled are offered as compelling evidence that the brain creatively constructs experience out of sensory data rather than rendering a valid and complete depiction of the objective world.
The slide show [above] and the preceding Optical Illusions page provide an opportunity to observe your perceptual system making interpretations that your Abstract Processing System realizes are bogus. Illusions are not confined to the visual modality—here is a link to some auditory illusions.
The Soul Illusion is the consequence of failing to appreciate the difference between the objective environment and our perception of that environment—that is, going beyond the adaptive convenience of acting as if our representations of reality were valid and believing that we see things as they really are.
In eastern philosophy we are viewed as trapped in "Maya.” The entrapment results from the tacit, but false, premise of perception that we perceive the world as it really is.
The point is: All subjective experience is a creative construction of a nervous system with a particular learning history and point of view. Your emotional reactions to the things that happens are based upon your judgments about them, which, in turn, are influenced by your past history, biological predispositions, and other sources of bias. Even though they feel like they are being caused by external events, your perceptions, appraisals, and emotional reactions are creative fictions of your making.
There may be an objective reality out there, but the only source of information you have about it comes through your sense organs. Your nervous system does its best to construct a representation of the enormous amount of fine-grained data it receives. And the best it can do is construct a cogent, internally consistent confabulation.