Reality

      What is real?  At times we can have the most vivid recollection of an event in our lives to the point it is almost as if we were watching a video or movie about the occasion. But when we inquire of others about that event, they have a completely different recollection of what happened!

     It really doesn’t make any sense to us!  We were there!  We know what happened!  Or do we?  Maybe the things we seem to recall with such details have only been realities within our own minds.  Maybe they didn’t really happen the way we recall them!  Maybe they didn’t happen at all!

     In the 1958 American musical-romance film “Gigi”, the song “I remember it well” was performed by Maurice Chevalier and Hermione Gingold.  The lyrics basically told the story that the man and woman had very different recollections of the events they are describing in the song.  The opening lines are, as they sang back and forth to each other: “We met at nine, we met at eight, I was on time, no, you were late. Ah, yes, I remember it well.  We dined with friends, we dined alone, a tenor sang, a baritone. Ah, yes, I remember it well.”  And the different recollections continued from there.  You can hear a very nice rendition at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQxM5rJ-uiY .

     I think we all have had those types of moments.  Perhaps however the mind is in actuality the center of reality.  It seems the mind is constantly attempting to protect us from the hurtful memories that we may have catalogued within it.  And it only wants us to remember things that are pleasant for us to recall.  The painful it wants to put aside and not recall the facts as they actually happened but as we wanted them to happen.

     When we think that it is only within the mind that we perceive the world around us this might very well mean that reality IS only within our minds!  Our other senses --- sight, hearing, touch, taste --- they have the obligation to transmit their findings back to our minds.  The mind then takes this information and fashions it into the things that we then perceive as reality.  If the mind receives faulty information or if it interrupts that information incorrectly, the reality we thereby comprehend is incorrect and faulty.

     One of the best illustrations of this is shown if we consider our eyes.  Without our eyes we cannot perceive the sights of the world around us.  But with our eyes, is the world around us really what we perceive?  Consider the fascinating article about how your eyes trick your mind on the BBC Future website article http://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/story/20150130-how-your-eyes-trick-your-mind/index.html .  I think you will find this information most surprising!  If you’d like to consider some more illusions visit: https://www.pcmag.com/news/21-optical-illusions-that-prove-your-brain-sucks .

     Although we are incredibly fascinating in our design, the human body and its function continues to be one of the greatest mysteries in the world.  But then again, we’re only human!

QUOTE TO CONSIDER

THOUGHTFUL GEM

"Never Forget:  

To a visitor from another planet,

we are the aliens!"