Limitations Of Perception (Part III : Illusions)

"Our physical senses are far too limited in perceiving the Divine"

Careful analysis shows that our knowledge through the material senses is defective. There are a lot of discrepancies. First of all, the senses themselves are limited, thus imperfect. Secondly, we easily become illusioned. Thirdly, we make mistakes. And fourthly, we lack experience. Let's have a closer look at the 2nd Limitation.

2. Illusions

Even within our limited range of perception, we suffer from illusions. You only have to ask a magician and he'll demonstrate how easy it is to deceive a person through illusions. He has hundreds in store up his sleeve. Our eyes are most easily illusioned.
Many of us have seen mirages on a hot summer day. As you drive down the highway you see what looks like small puddles of water up ahead. But in reality they are just illusions.
As school kids we studied 'refraction' in physics. If you fill up a glass beaker with water and partially immerse a pencil in it, the part of the pencil in the water appears bent - an illusion due to refraction of light.
If you stand between the railway tracks at ground level and look at the tracks as they stretch ahead, they don't seem to be parallel. They appear to converge and meet at a far distant point. But we quickly realise that our eye is lying. Are the center dots in both figures the same?
fig..
Psychologists and other students of perception have done much research into illusions, particularly in the realm of vision.
The sense of touch is also highly susceptible to illusion. If you cool your right hand sufficiently in water at 5°C and then dip it in a trough of water at 15°C, the water will feel 'warm.' But if your left hand has been preconditioned in 20°C water, then the trough of 15°C will feel 'cool.' Though the water is the same, it simultaneously feels both 'warm' and 'cool.' Hearing. Most of us have been fooled at least once. We have turned to what sounded like someone calling out our name, only to find out in embarrassment that it was a fault of hearing or a trick of the ear!

Spooky or strange sounds and uncanny noises are also sound illusions, which the ear bears when the mind is scared.

Taste. The tongue lies not only through words. If after having eaten a sweet chocolate or some sugary foodstuff, you drink tea; the tongue reports an absence of sugar. But in reality, the tea does have sugar. It is an illusion of taste!

Try tasting an orange after tasting sugar, the orange will taste sweet. Try the orange after a lemon, and the same orange will taste sour!

• Is the diagonal line straight?
• All the horizontal lines are parallel, but they do not appear so!
• The bright white triangle which seems to overlap the dark circles and V-shaped lines is an illlusion.
  In short, all our senses, apart from being limited in power are subject to illusions.

This is marked from a Spiritual Discourse by Sadhu Brahmaviharidas


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