INTRODUCTION:
WE ARE WATCHING A COPY OF OUR LIVES
Right now, the book you believe you are holding, together with its printed
text and illustrations in bright, vivid colors, is in reality a three-dimensional
image in your brain. Similarly, the embossed logo you feel when you touch
the book's cover is something you are "touching" only in your brain.

You may think that the book is outside of
you because your hand can feel the smoothness of its pages. But
in reality, when you believe you're touching the book, you are turning
its pages inside your brain, and feeling their thin smoothness there.
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When you look at this book, the light reflected from its pages is converted
into electrical impulses by the cells of your eye's retina. These signals,
carrying details of the book's shape, color and thickness, are transmitted
to your brain's visual center via the optic nerves, where they are interpreted
into a concise whole. In this way, the book's appearance is recreated
inside the darkness of your brain. Therefore, statements like, "I'm seeing
with my eyes," or, "This book's in front of me" do not reflect true reality.
Your eye only converts the light it receives into electrical impulses.
The image of the book you behold doesn't lie outside you, as you have
always thought, but on the contrary, inside your skull. Furthermore, never
can you know for certain whether the visualizations in your mind reflect
the actual reality "outside," or even if there are material correlates
for them.
We perceive the world so perfectly that
we believe it to lie outside us, all around our bodies. There
is no disruption in the flow of the images, from a vivid, colorful
world formed by countless details. This can make us forget that
we are living in a world of perceptions and imagery that, in reality,
all takes place inside our brains.
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You could be thinking that this book lies outside you simply because
you can feel the smoothness of its pages under your fingers. But this
sensation of smoothness, just like the phenomenon of "seeing," is formed
in your brain. When the touch-sensitive nerve cells on your fingertips
are stimulated, they transmit stimuli to your brain in the form of electrical
signals. Receiving these messages, your brain's touch center interprets
them into such sensations as touch, pressure, softness or hardness, coldness
or warmth. And you, inside your brain, come to sense the hardness of the
book, the smoothness of its pages or its embossed logo when your hand
touches them. In reality though, you never can touch the actual book.
When you think you're doing so, in reality you're only turning its pages
in your brain and-again, in your brain-feeling the thinness and smoothness
of its pages.
The same is true for all your other senses. In the air,
the vibrating string of a guitar creates pressure waves, which then stimulate
the hairlike structures in the inner ear. The vibrations thus created
are converted into electrical signals, which are then transmitted to the
relevant center in the brain and interpreted there-whereupon you experience
the sensation of hearing the sounds of the guitar.
Likewise, your sense of smell is formed in the brain. Chemical molecules,
escaping a lemon's peel stimulate receptors in the nose, are converted
into electrical signals that are transmitted to the brain for interpretation.
In short, all that you can perceive-what you see, hear, taste, touch and smell-is
all recreated specially for you in your brain. Therefore, when we speak
of our perception of the surrounding environment, we are talking only
about our inner "copies" of those same colors, shapes, sounds and smells.
We perceive the world in so perfect a way that we believe in an external
reality. But that "reality" is not so very different from the dreams we
experience at night, inside our heads. In dreams, we are aware of the
external events, sounds and sights; even our own bodies. We think and
ponder. We feel the emotions of fear and anger, pleasure and love. We
speak with other people, whom we believe we are observing the same things
as they are, and even discuss them with them. Even in our dreams, we are
convinced that a material world exists around us. But upon awakening,
suddenly we realize that everything we thought we experienced took place
only in our minds.
When we wake up and say, "It was only a dream," we mean that our experiences
were not physical or "real," but only the products of our minds. While
awake, on the other hand, we believe that there's a one-to-one correspondence
between our perception and the physical world. But in fact, the experiences
in our wakeful state are lived out in our minds, just as our dreams are.
Why do you think that you are awake now? Probably because you feel this
book in your hands. You can comment on what you read; and everything around
you displays a consistent continuity. But these perceptions-the hand with
which you hold this book, the pages you're turning, the furniture surrounding
you and your location in the room- all these are only replicas observed
within your brain. Were you asked, "Right now, are you awake or are you
dreaming?" surely you would answer, "Of course I'm awake!"
Possibly you've asked yourself this question in your dreams, many times.
Of course, the answer you gave then-"Of course I am!"-would be exactly
the same as you'd give right now. But only now, when you're truly awake,
do you realize that your answer then was wrong.
So could it be that you're making the same mistake now? Who can guarantee
that you're not actually dreaming right now-or even that your entire life
has not been a dream? How can you be at all certain of the reality of
the world in which you live?
In the following pages, you'll see that this certainty can never be possible. First, let's examine some movies that deal with the scientific facts revealing this "reality" and the explanations we've given in various earlier publications.
FROM THE MATERIALISTS ANXIETY, WE CAN
DEDUCE HOW SIGNIFICANT THIS SUBJECT IS
Looking at the materialists around
us, we see that they're uneasy about the various concepts of matter's
true nature. They receive with haughty arrogance the public's interest
in the possibility that, just like dreams, the world we experience
is imaginary. They send out messages like, "Don't be fooled by idealistic
suggestions. Remain true to materialism." But this kind of response
reveals their nervousness over seeing this subject being brought
to public attention.
Their own philosophies are inherited
from Vladimir I. Lenin, leader of Russia's bloody Communist revolution.
In Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, written a century
ago, we find the following passage:
Once you deny objective reality,
given us in sensation, you have already lost every weapon against
fideism [reliance on faith alone], for you have slipped into agnosticism
or subjectivism-and that is all that fideism requires. A single
claw ensnared, and the bird is lost. And our Machists [adherents
of Machism, developed by the Austrian philosopher Mach, one of the
leaders of modern positivism] have all become ensnared in idealism,
that is, in a diluted, subtle fideism; they became ensnared from
the moment they took "sensation" not as an image of the external
world, but as a special "element." It is nobody's sensation, nobody's
mind, nobody's spirit, nobody's will.1
This passage betrays the great
apprehension with which Lenin discovered the reality that he wished
to erase from his colleagues' minds as well as his own. It continues
to cause apprehension among present-day materialists, but with one
difference: Today's materialists are a lot more nervous than Lenin
ever was. They are only too aware that this reality is now understood
with much greater certainty and clarity than it was, a century ago
for the first time in history, this subject is being related in
an irresistible way.
The materialists warn, "Do not
reflect on this issue, or else you'll lose your materialism and
you'll be lost to religion." The reason why is that the truth, now
being explained in context with the origin of matter, is destroying
the materialist philosophy, leaving it in such a discredited state
that there's nothing left to discuss. The materialists' nervousness
at seeing the world of matter disintegrate is a result of their
blind belief in matter, and their inability to come to terms with
the impossibility of experiencing matter direclty-which means that
materialism has no reason to be.
In the following words, science
writer Lincoln Barnett expresses the materialist scientists' paranoia
of this subject at even being just sensed:
Along with philosophers' reduction
of all objective reality to a shadow-world of perceptions, scientists
have become aware of the alarming limitations of man's senses.2
In every materialist coming face
to face with this subject, the fear and worry is clearly visible.
The 21st century is a turning
point in history; once this reality reaches all people, then materialism
will be wiped off the face of the Earth. For people who come to
understand this reality, it's irrelevant what they used to believe
or what they advocated before. The only important thing is not resist
once this reality has been recognized; to understand this truth
before it is too late-because death will make it understood, for
sure.
Rather We hurl the truth against falsehood,
and it cuts right through it and it vanishes clean away! Woe without
end for you, for what you portray! (Qur'an, 21: 18)
1. V. I. Lenin, Materialism
and Empirio-criticism, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970, pp. 334-335.
2. Lincoln Barnett, The Universe and
Dr. Einstein, New York: William Sloane Associates, 1948, pp. 17-18.
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