They say that the eyes are the window to the soul and maybe they're right about that. It often feels like the one true place where we can see a person's real intentions or feelings. This includes our own. We reveal a lot of our own thoughts without knowing it. Our eyes also allow us to see someone seeing the world around them. We have five senses (six if you believe in that sort of thing) that we use to perceive the world. It's up to each of us to interpret what our senses are telling us. This brings up the question: Is our whole world only what we experience?
Everything that happens only happens to us. That is to say that no matter what you see, hear, or even think about is based on you and no one else. Sure other people may influence what you perceive, but ultimately it's up to each of us to experience the world on our own. The other day I was standing outside and looked up to see a jet stream overhead. Based on the size and speed, it had to be a fairly large plane moving pretty fast. Another few seconds and I might not have ever seen it. That's not to say that those people on board wouldn't have been flying just because I wasn't around to witness it, but in my world it could have been the case. The whole topic may come off as seeming somewhat self-absorbed, however, when you think about it our world will always be limited or expanded by our interaction with it. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it of course it still makes a sound, but if you're not there to hear it then technically it didn't happen for you. That is based on the assumption that our world is what we perceive. With that there is potential for us to alter the inherent size of the world around us.
When I was twelve or thirteen I spent the summer on my grandparents' farm. Nothing particularly special happened that summer, but I had fun. After the summer was through, I came back home. One day not long after I arrived I was in the bathroom when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Something about that moment changed everything. I was suddenly aware that behind my eyes was the real me. Before that moment I had just taken for granted that I was here. I stared at myself for a long time, trying to comprehend that I was more than the sum of my parts. I was something more that was hidden away within my own body. It was a lot like when a child looks at a word and realizes that they understand what is written without having to ask for help. It was that same dawning of understanding that was staring back at me. I was too young to realize the full implications of that moment. I just knew that things felt different for the first time.
I'm guessing lots of people have that moment, where they're suddenly aware of themselves as something more than just a concept. That may only be the first step though as we're only scratching the surface of how not only our own minds work, but how we perceive information. What is the basis of our world? Is it what's around us or is it all in our mind? When a person is brain dead are they detached from the world permanently? Their body my still live on, but without their mind the world is dead to them and they to it. There have been stories of people who have been in comas or nearly brain dead returning. I've always wondered where their conscious mind went during that time. Maybe it was trapped in a sort of prison of the mind in a way that we can't detect it with modern science. If the world is what the mind creates and the mind isn't working properly then what does that do to the world? While those people are in that state are they technically dead even though we've managed to keep their bodies alive? Something may eventually happen where they wake up and return to their body, but we still don't fully understand how it happens. I think a lot of that has to do with we don't know where they are while everything is dark.
In the end we could be nothing more than a few million electrical impulses passing along organic wires within our brain. Those impulses have been configured in such a way that we're able to perceive sensations from around us. We could be nothing more than a bio-mechanical computer that's really good at processing data. After a few thousand years, like most programs, we've developed our own quirks. Maybe we've become the ghost in our own machine.
