Chapter 2: What an Experience! (1)
Read Our Reality before reading this post.
What is really there in our Experience?
In everyday life we assume that our Experience is the world around us. This is not the case. Our Experience is carefully created and arranged by our brain using data from our eyes and other senses. It is a model rather than a copy.
The events in the model are laid out on a fixed background. We can see this in the following visual illusion (The Waterfall Effect). Stare at the dot in the centre of the moving image below for a half minute then at the pattern below:
Notice that the lower pattern appears to flow slightly inwards. The frame of the lower pattern shrinks slightly and stays smaller while the contraction effect is operating. There appears to be a continuous inward flow of the lower pattern but on close inspection the flow is a series of contraction-like events that are around a half to three seconds long and reset by saccades (moving the gaze).
The most interesting aspect of this illusion is that content is being placed on a fixed background that does not move which suggests that our Experience is like a canvas of fixed size on which events are drawn.
The fixed size would be a natural result of our visual space being like a sphere around the observation point. This provides three hundred and sixty degrees permanently available for the display of events. If the angle occupied by a pattern shrinks from 20 to 15 degrees the angle that is not occupied by the pattern expands from 340 to 345 degrees. This is a very important observation because it is strong evidence for Experience being arranged around a point.
We can also experience another type of fixed background by spinning round and round. When we stop spinning our visual image briefly continues to rotate but this moving image occurs against a fixed background or "frame of reference". Somewhere there is a fixed, steady set of physical things that receives the data we experience. The data changes but the frame of reference is constant. Sounds do not spin with the visual image, maintaining their position in the fixed reference frame within which the model of the body and vision spins.
Nets
When we glance from place to place in the view our eyes move over a constant image even though the images on our retinas are changing wildly. When we move our heads the whole image changes and is no longer constant. Our view is like an image on the inside of a large sphere that has our head inside it. This sounds crude but it is what it is like - look around.
When we are stationary the centre of the view is set by the position of our head. Our vision is a sphere of events that can be inspected with eye movements and wholly rotated by head movements.
If we spin round and round with our eyes and heads fixed in position relative to the body and attempt to walk forward the image becomes unstable and it is difficult to maintain balance. This is an amusing party trick for the young and should increase our admiration for dancers.
After we have been spinning round the visual sphere continues to rotate and seems to move against a deeper, fixed background.
If we spin round and round the position of the sound of a loudly ticking clock in Experience will remain fairly constant relative to the fixed position of the clock in the world and it is clear that it is our body that is spinning. Even when we stop and our visual sphere is still spinning the sound from the clock is in the same stable place. Get up, get spinning, see what it is like.
This separation of the modelling of sounds, sights and other sensations from the modelling of visual events suggests that they have differently managed contents that seem to be projected as different layers. There is even a layer that contains a crude map of our surroundings. A more appropriate term than "layers" is "Nets" which emphasises the looseness of the interpenetration of sound, vision, body position etc.
Most nets correspond to a type of sensation. Some nets, such as that which displays sound, stretch right around our heads and bodies. Vision is an exception because it includes events from in front of us but not from behind us.
If we are blindfolded and rotated in a quiet room we lose track of the location of doors and chairs etc. A remaining source of position data, apart from gravity, is the space where our arms and legs can move, this is closely based on our body image and the net for body position survives most manipulations.
Provided we are not stressing the system by deliberately rotating our bodies etc. the various nets that contain events based on data from the world are aligned so that we can reach out to pick up a ticking clock and see it in its proper place. The spherical nets are separate but interpenetrate each other.
Is Experience a single space with events from each mode of sensation being drawn as a group or is it multiple spaces that overlie each other?
Next article: Chapter 2: What an Experience (2)