The Location of Perception
I prefer using perception rather than mind, soul, or consciousness because perception is the interaction with our physical brain and this action creates our mind, our soul, and our consciousness. It is the act of perception that makes us aware, that makes us to think, that gives us a reality. Mind, soul, and consciousness are descriptions to what perception has done. You perceive the boundary of your body as separate from the environment. You perceive yourself causing and doing actions and the effects from your actions. You perceive yourself separate from everything else. You perceive your thoughts, and you perceive yourself taking one thought and adding it to another thought. You perceive yourself thinking. You perceive changes and you perceive your mental states of desires, wants, fears, love, loneliness, depression, compassion, and so on.
So, what actually is perception? What is it made from? What causes perception? Where is perception located? Where is the place, the location, where perception can be found? Where is it that our ability of perception can be deciphered and dissected, and if possible, broken down into more elementary abilities?
Perception has no place until it interacts. A good analogy is a photon emitted from a source, such as a star, and reaches us millions of light years later. To the photon, it does not travel. It is on the same film frame at the time of its creation to it is being absorbed. It travels no space and no time. However, to us, we “observe” the photon travelling these distances of light years.
Perception is that photon, on the film frame. We, our body, our physical existence, are in another film frame, much slower as our medium makes everything move at a lower speed. Again, this is like us looking at a bacterium through a microscope. The bacterium sees itself moving very fast and appears from its own observation traversing over a long distance, whereas to us, the observers through the microscope, we see it barely moving a few inches per day.
Perception then has no time and no place. The interaction with our neurons gives the sensation of perception as this place and time inside our head. But, outside our head, outside the interaction, perception has no time and no place to be.
