Chapter Four — Shaking the Tree

A Zen master, Nan-in, from the Meiji era, poured tea for his visitor, a university professor who wanted to learn about Zen. He filled his guest’s cup and kept on pouring. When the professor observed that the cup, being overfull, wasn’t capable of receiving more tea, Nan-in said, “Like this cup, you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”

If a Tree Falls in the Forest …

So we are altering our physical bodies on a cellular level with our thoughts. In other words, it is our perception of our environment — not the actual environment — that is affecting our bodies.

So how does perception happen?

At base, reality is just a thought in our brains. This is because the human brain cannot perceive anything directly. Why is that? In part because the brain has to think about everything that our senses receive.

The brain is a highly effective filtration device: the network of cells that performs this function is called the Reticular Activating System or RAS for short. The RAS lets in only data that meets at least one of the following criteria: the data is important to your survival, it has novelty value, or it has a high emotional content. (Be sure to pay especial attention to the last one; it is most useful and we will be referencing it later).

If the brain did not filter out most of the information it receives we would go mad. Or at least not be able to determine what is of priority. So the train coming at our car would be of the same level of importance as the texture on the fabric of the car seat in front of us. Certain drugs have this effect.

Let’s just say that the RAS is a kind of robotic artist who paints a picture of your environment every moment you are alive: the RAS classifies most of the data it receives as unimportant, and paints it into the background, the information that it needs to focus on is important and assumes the central foreground position.

Sometimes what is in the background comes to the foreground. For example, you are standing on the sidewalk, and there is a lot of traffic noise. You are paying attention to a dog you are petting. Suddenly some of the traffic noise gets very loud, you become alarmed because the RAS assumes a possible threat to your survival, and has delivered that background traffic noise into the foreground of your consciousness. You look up to see a truck bearing down on a small child playing in the street. The RAS is triggered again, this time because of your emotional response. Now everything else, the street, the dog, your problems at work fade into the background as you rush to the child’s aid.

As stated before, the brain cannot directly perceive anything: The senses deliver impulses to the brain that it receives and classifies. In order to properly process that information it has to compare the new information to old information. It puts it in perspective, so to speak, by recalling what is not present: our history, our beliefs, our thoughts, or even our imagination; using this as a tool for processing the new experience in order to classify it.

“Reality is just a story we have been telling ourselves so long that we have begun to believe it.”
— the author

— excerpt from the book Parallel Mind by Aliyah Marr
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copyright 2007 Aliyah Marr