Mind and Cosmos
135
Our experience shadows a background reality that, according to physics,
consists of vibrating force fields. They impact us by activating our sense organs.
It is on the basis of this sensory information that we get experience of the world.
This experience is given to us in myriad varieties and gradations of feeling. The
subtle and exuberant language of feelings must be sufficiently fine-grained that
sensations can be molded into all the knowledge of the world that is accessible
to us. It’s in the idiom of sensation that we articulate every meaningful detail
of what we see, hear and think.
The language of feeling is like all languages in one respect: Its “words” are
basically arbitrary, and have no necessary connection with their meanings.
English words such as “horse” or “farmhouse” have no mandatory connection with animals or buildings—they’re just sounds chosen by convention. In
the same way, the experienced quality of our sensations have only a formal
connection with what they mean to us. There is one difference, however: We
acknowledge that the sounds of words are arbitrary conventions, but we are
tenaciously committed to the idea that what we sense is firmly anchored in
reality.
The idiom of sensory feeling has a rich semantics. Every detail of our
environment—every subtle distinction which our survival requires us to be
aware of—must be represented by a feeling or a combination of feelings. The
texture and surface appearance of objects, their essential structure and outward
aspect, are represented by distinctive sensations. The way we perceive objects
and events around us does not reproduce their precise physical measurements,
but every feature has its own distinguishing sensory marker that we cannot
fail to understand. Also, everything we experience is covered with a veneer of
emotion which serves to highlight its meaning and make it more distinctive.
As explained in previous chapters, all sentient beings project the way objects
look to them onto the external world. We referred to this as a “necessary
deception”. It is therefore inevitable that we experience all the objects around
us in the very forms that our mind gives to them. We experience their features
as if those features were inherent in the objects themselves—but they’re not.
The very idea that objects have features is a human idiosyncrasy. The midlevel
universe has energy and mass, but does not have “features”.The belief in features
is the result of having sense organs which produce sensory experience. This
illusion leads to the corollary idea that every object has a “true” appearance, and
there is one correct way that it is. In actual fact, because there are no objective
features in the world, there is no such thing as a description of an object outside
of a mind. In the primal universe, objects have no shape or appearance: The
reason they don’t is that in the primal universe objects don’t need to “present
themselves” to anyone or anything.
135
Our experience shadows a background reality that, according to physics,
consists of vibrating force fields. They impact us by activating our sense organs.
It is on the basis of this sensory information that we get experience of the world.
This experience is given to us in myriad varieties and gradations of feeling. The
subtle and exuberant language of feelings must be sufficiently fine-grained that
sensations can be molded into all the knowledge of the world that is accessible
to us. It’s in the idiom of sensation that we articulate every meaningful detail
of what we see, hear and think.
The language of feeling is like all languages in one respect: Its “words” are
basically arbitrary, and have no necessary connection with their meanings.
English words such as “horse” or “farmhouse” have no mandatory connection with animals or buildings—they’re just sounds chosen by convention. In
the same way, the experienced quality of our sensations have only a formal
connection with what they mean to us. There is one difference, however: We
acknowledge that the sounds of words are arbitrary conventions, but we are
tenaciously committed to the idea that what we sense is firmly anchored in
reality.
The idiom of sensory feeling has a rich semantics. Every detail of our
environment—every subtle distinction which our survival requires us to be
aware of—must be represented by a feeling or a combination of feelings. The
texture and surface appearance of objects, their essential structure and outward
aspect, are represented by distinctive sensations. The way we perceive objects
and events around us does not reproduce their precise physical measurements,
but every feature has its own distinguishing sensory marker that we cannot
fail to understand. Also, everything we experience is covered with a veneer of
emotion which serves to highlight its meaning and make it more distinctive.
As explained in previous chapters, all sentient beings project the way objects
look to them onto the external world. We referred to this as a “necessary
deception”. It is therefore inevitable that we experience all the objects around
us in the very forms that our mind gives to them. We experience their features
as if those features were inherent in the objects themselves—but they’re not.
The very idea that objects have features is a human idiosyncrasy. The midlevel
universe has energy and mass, but does not have “features”.The belief in features
is the result of having sense organs which produce sensory experience. This
illusion leads to the corollary idea that every object has a “true” appearance, and
there is one correct way that it is. In actual fact, because there are no objective
features in the world, there is no such thing as a description of an object outside
of a mind. In the primal universe, objects have no shape or appearance: The
reason they don’t is that in the primal universe objects don’t need to “present
themselves” to anyone or anything.