DAY 7
When the invention of motion pictures revealed that our eyes can be fooled by stringing together a series of snapshots at twenty-four frames per second, a deeper truth about reality was also revealed. The human brain works by the firing of neurons. Each firing is a burst of energy, followed by a pause, then the next burst. The bursts slice reality into bits of information from the five senses. When a train races past you, you are not seeing it in motion. You are seeing bursts of information in your brain that give the illusion of motion. Likewise, you don’t hear continuous sounds.
The continuity of your life is a necessary illusion. We have to see the world in motion so that we can live in motion, not frozen bits of sensation. Right now you are experiencing pictures and stories created in your mind through the same piecing-together process. When you wake up, these pictures and stories will be seen for what they are: artificial constructs of the mind. You will live from the “real” reality that is beyond pictures and stories—consciousness itself.
Sit in front of a moving image on your TV or computer—this can be anything, from people walking around to a news or sports event. Focus on something moving across the screen from left to right. In reality there is no person moving across the screen; not a single photon of light is moving across the screen. Instead, bursts of color are happening, each one totally stationary. By stringing these bursts in a sequence, the illusion of motion is created. Now notice how hard it is to see the actual process taking place before your very eyes. Your mind must see motion because, since you were born, the world has been a series of pictures in motion—this is how conditioned you are to accept an illusion as reality.