A Matter of Perception

A verse from the Hindu scriptures or Vedas goes like this:

            || Asatoma Sadgamaya

                Tamaso Ma Jyothirgamaya

                Mrithyor Ma Amrutham Gamaya ||

The translation;

                Lead me from the unreal to the real, 

                Lead me from darkness to knowledge

                Lead me from death to immortality

The Hindu scriptures presupposed man would be in darkness. That he will not be able to discern the real from the unreal. In fact the Vedas go on to say that everything that you see is enveloped by Maya, the veil of ignorance. You need to remove the veil and only then knowledge is revealed.

Among our sensory organs, eyes are the most important. If our vision is OK we can see everything. Is what we see always correct? Can we conclusively say that if we can see something, then that thing is real and it exists? That would be tantamount to saying all that is seen exists and that which is not seen does not exist.  Doesn’t sound right does it? Your friends out of town do exist. Just because they are not here physically does not mean they are non-existent. What about things that are here but cannot be seen by your eyes. Does it mean that they do not exist? Air for example cannot be seen but can be felt. What about all the other elements like hydrogen in the atmosphere or oxygen that we breathe?  If we go further, what about the protons and neutrons that make up the mass of the oxygen atoms. Or the electrons that revolve around the nucleus. What can we conclude from this? One thing for sure. Just because we do not see something we cannot say that it does not exist.  



Likewise just because we see something, we cannot conclude that it exists. Because everything we see is a matter of perception. And perception is a play of matter, mind and intellect. Let us digress a little bit. Light falling on any object bounces off it. The bounced light travels in a straight line entering our eyes. The lens in our eyes adjusts itself to allow the light to fall on the back of the eye called retina. The image you get is upside down. Optic nerves carry the image to the brain on the physical level or mind the sublime level. Brain then compares the image with stored data. Your intellect helps the brain interpret the data and the cognitive process is completed. Perception is deemed to be incomplete if cognition is not affected. And there are many barriers to this process. Unless you are focused or fine tuned, you miss out on perception. And that is why the Vedas say that we are victims of Maya.

Stephen Hawking the world famous physicist and scientist talks about Maya in a different way. If you were to drop a stone into a pond the stone will create a ripple at the surface. The ripple will travel horizontally until it reaches a point where it is no more a ripple. As the stone travels downwards it will continue to create ripples until the stone is traveling no further at which point it will be resting on the floor of the pond. If you were to take a vertical cross section of this event you will get the shape of a cone with the least amount of ripple at the bottom and the maximum ripple at the top where the stone first impacted. Hawking called the inside of the cone the world where the impact of the stone was an event. The area outside of the cone did not perceive the event therefore to that area the impact of the stone was a non-event. When you expand that to the universe you get different worlds. World where cognition takes place and world where it does not and therefore is enveloped by Maya. Funniest thing is that both worlds coexist. It all depends on where you are when an event takes place.

Having realized the existence of Maya, what can we do to overcome its effect? The only solution I see is to expand our horizon. I am, therefore I exist will no longer hold good. We need to create noise, impact. We need to bring the knowledge of Maya to our roles in society. We need to reach out to people. Empower them with the skills that we have honed and make our presence felt. I call your attention to the 2nd line Tamaso Ma Jyothirgamaya. People out there want you to lead them from darkness to light.

Therefore go, make ripples!

by Premnath Menon

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