Our mind/brain - Analogue and Digital

In the last note I shared what we perceive and why we do so. This article talks about an alternate form of perception, which if present would have been (or is) an interesting change from the monotony of the current way of perception.

How do we perceive the things we generally see? We usually take all the information we say at once and our brain processes all the information we get through our senses at once.

Eyes being one of the most powerful senses are the first to react. If we keep looking for an extended period of time, we start looking at various minute components of what we see, one by one. These minute components have various characteristics. These characteristics are perceived by the brain at once. However if we spend more time on one of the characteristics, we begin to compare it with a similar characteristic of another component. Then the brain may form one or more analogies and may indulge in comparisons or even judgement.

Consider a person walking into a garden. The moment he enters his brain processes what he sees and the brain classifies this setting as a "garden". Then he spends some time observing, through his various senses and may look at a flower bed. Then he starts looking at individual flowers. Then he may start observing the colour, fragrance, shape etc. (characteristic) of the flowers. After this information is processed, maybe in a fraction of a second, the brain may start comparing one or more characteristic.Lets say in this case, fragrance is being compared. This characteristic may then be compared to the fragrance of another flower. After this the brain forms connections. "X flower had a similar fragrance to the one I am currently smelling now".

Alternate Reality - How would you like it if you could look at something and your brain processed all the information at once separately and you could look at what information is being processed.Something similar to multi tasking in computers - opening a new tab for each existing component. Alongside, you are also aware of all the tabs that are being opened to perceive the individual components.

The brain became so fast that we could actually observe the thoughts gliding from one to another.

Extending the previous example in this scenario. the man walks into the garden. 6 tabs open for flower beds of 6 colours, each tab then subdivides into singular flowers in the bed and then further subdivides into characteristics of the flowers ... tabs are also opened for the various analogies, comparisons etc. But the best part, we are also aware of all the tabs that are being opened and all the processing that is going on inside them.

In my view, the first way of perception mentioned here is in total continuity and the second way presents the information in discrete blocks. A good analogy will be that the first information is analog and the second one is digital.

In both the cases, the perception is complete. A person sees the garden However the quality of information is different. This, in turn may lead to differences in the knowledge generated from the information that is perceived.

Perhaps this is what the scriptures meant when they talked about having control of our thoughts and minds. According to me, the richness of information in the second way of perception is greater - but that is another discussion