Why Things Feel Solid
by Chris Ott
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In The Evolution of Perception I explain the concept that perception creates matter rather than the other way around. This idea sometimes confuses people because it appears to conflict with their gross intuitions. Our gross intuition conceives of causes as necessarily analogous to the things they cause. So for instance they make us feel that the cause of solid things must itself be a solid thing. Actually this is a fallacy of thinking called The Historical Fallacy. But just in case it's of any help I'll talk about why perceptual manifestations look and feel solid to our senses.
The question of why objects appear solid if they are mere experience appears to be based on the expression "Pinch me so I'll wake up." If I can feel it I can't be dreaming. It is true that objects are perceived and that they are perceived solidly, but this is merely because we experience them in terms of the properties of solidity. But it does not follow from this that objects are independent of their being perceived. We simply must not get overly lost in the analogy of dreams. This is perception we are discussing, its full impact, not night time dreaming where experience is diffuse. Here we'll go over the qualities that we are referring to, perhaps without fully realizing it, when we say something is solid. We'll show that there is no contradiction between these sensations and the general idea of perceptual evolution when it is understood properly.
At the very bottom I'll give an extremely simplified explanation, one that does not appear in any version but this one online.
People might wonder why, if physical objects are fundamentally perceptual, they look and feel solid. The answer is simply that they are solid. But to understand this we have to consider what it is we're really conveying when we say objects are 'solid'.
1. We mean those objects have extension. In other words we experience them as occupying a certain amount of space, to which we assign a numeric value relative to other objects in their environment. But if we understand the concept of perceptual evolution properly we see that it is in terms of these arithmetic values that the image is produced in sensation.
2. Objects feel heavy. By this we mean objects press themselves toward the center of the Earth under the influence of gravity. When we say we 'feel' this, we mean quite literally what we say - that we take the experience of pressure upon our skin and muscles as those objects press upon them on their path toward the Earth. This is to be expected from objects that are formed through the perceptual schema of gravity through which we are seeing and touching them. Of course objects in our experience will behave in terms of the perceptual laws upon which that experience supervenes.
3. Objects are hard. Again, what do we mean precisely when we say this? We mean that when we touch an object our hand cannot pass through it, but instead meets resistance. This grants to us the experience that we call 'hard'. Again, this is simply the natural perceptual laws of electromagnetic attraction and repulsion through which we are experiencing the object. Of course objects we perceive will behave by the quantifiable perceptual laws they supervene upon.
4. We feel them on our skin. We must of course again examine what we mean by this. As already stated, when I touch an object, the laws that govern all experience are such that I experience my skin meeting resistance. Stone has most resistance, water has less, air even less and so forth. The degree of this resistance that I experience gives to my mind the feeling of an independent object. It is not, as our gross intuitions convince us, the object that gives to the mind the feeling of its presence. Rather it is the reverse. The sensation of touch gives to the mind the feeling of its presence. In short, the mind interprets its sensations as representing to it a world independent of sensation. But in truth objects simply are their sensation.
5. They appear solid to our eyes. What do we mean when we say we see something? We mean we see color. Color is not them, nor even a property of them, but is an interpretation of frequencies of energy experienced as brain states through a perceptual schema. In other words certain frequencies of radiation are interpreted by the mind as red, others as blue, etc. What we see are our brain states. This is just basic perceptual physics.
6. They are persistent. Sometimes by 'solid' we mean that unlike a dream that vanishes quickly upon waking, which we say is not solid, solid objects persist. That is to say, they last. Actually all physical forms are impermanent. They simply last longer than dreams. Paper, metal, wood, all waste away with time. Stones last billions of years, but in time even stones wear to dust. Of such long term but not eternal persistence, what else would one expect of objects that are governed by the perceptual laws upon which they supervene. The degree to which those objects last or perish is determined by the natural laws that govern their mechanics - which are laws of perception.
7. Their material is permanent even if the objects they produce are impermanent. Science and reason tell us that the material out of which objects are made is what is permanent, even if those objects are impermanent. So at least the material must be solid. We'll give a bit of explanation of this idea. It is usual to speak of a primal stuff or substance that is malleable. A substance that is malleable is soft and can easily be made into different shapes. This stuff it is always assumed is what is eternal, and it is the forms that are molded from that substance that arise and then decay. The material that is formed, however, is permanent. This is true. In materialism that substance is a theoretical stuff called "matter" that cannot be perceived with the senses, and thus cannot be verified by observation. But in this new view, the malleable substance is perception itself, an activity which cannot be denied without self-contradiction. It is our perceptual activity that molds itself into those objects that we perceive. Thus perception is what is permanent, and the objects that it forms itself into that are impermanent. By the perceptual laws (natural law), that govern our perception, those objects and materials persist for a duration determined by those natural laws.
8. They feel hot or cold. The sensation of heat has everything to do with thermal laws, and nothing to do with anything else. When molecules vibrate, this causes the nerves in our skin to vibrate. Vibration is then interpreted by the brain as heat. Faster vibration is experienced as heat, slower as cold. There is nothing that is hot or cold. There is fast and slow vibration. Vibration, which we call energy, is necessarily most fundamentally mental. For what is vibrating? Nothing. Vibration precedes and forms the sensation of a thing. Thus it is not an object that vibrates, but vibration that forms the appearance of an object in the brain - with sensations such as heat.
9. Their properties can be measured with instruments. For instance we can measure weight, light, sound, and temperature with certain types of meters and scales. Let's see how this is consistent with objects taking their life from perceptual schemata. If we place a thermometer in a bowl of boiling water, the molecules in the mercury within the thermometer vibrate. This jiggling of the molecules causes those molecules to separate from one another, like ping pong balls separating in a wooden barrel that is shaken. This separation of the molecules causes the volume of space taken up by the mercury to increase, causing the meter to rise. This gives us a predictable and repeatable reading of the temperature of the water using a thermometer. However, both the thermometer and the bowl of water are seen in our experience. Our perceptual schemata concerning physical vibration, expansion, and the sensation of heat, which apply to the water, also apply to the thermometer. Thus they go up in tandem as would be expected. For they are all three conditioned by the same schemata - which are schemata of our perception.
10. The most obvious point of calling something solid might be that it isn't hollow.
solid: having the interior completely filled up, free from cavities,
or not hollow: a solid piece of chocolate.
I put this most usual sense of the word 'solid' last because I thought it least likely to confuse anyone. Anyway, in case it does, the same principles repeated above apply. All the properties of objects are latent in the schemata (organization) through which they are perceived. Natural laws are perceptual laws, including those that apply to mass and density.
So the properties of physical objects that we collectively refer to as their 'solidity' are entirely consistent with those objects being fundamentally perceptual.
Someone might be confused and think that this implies objects are in your head. But note that this is not a view that solid objects originate in the individual's perception. That view is called solipsism. Rather this view asserts that solid objects originate in universal perception, out of which even one's ordinary sensation of individuality arises. In this view primary qualities, such as proportion and natural law, originate in the collective and undivided whole; while secondary qualities, such as sound and color, that supervene upon those natural laws, originate in the brain states of the individual. Thus when I see an object, part of that experience is given to me, and the other part I impose upon it by my conditioned mind and brain states.
There are two aspects of human experience - the subjective and objective. On the one hand there are mental processes which constitute essential ingredients of human experience, and on the other hand there are things and objects to which they refer. The mental processes are partly dependent upon the immediately given objective situation, and partly dependent upon the functioning of accumulated sanskaras or impressions of previous experience. (Meher Baba, Di, Vol. 1, p. 54)
The objective is still perceptual, but it is in the collective mind.
If we were to summarize how all this works then we might do so as follows. First are space, time, and the natural laws that form in the original imagination of God. Out of these supervene and evolve forms in that imagination. Our body and brain are no less than such forms, though at a level of energy. Through the media of these energetic bodies and brains the forms (including those bodies and brains) are interpreted as the experience of solidity. The sensation of solid objects then is a spatial interpretation (akash) of a temporal vibrational interpretation (pran) of mental states (mana) in God's independent imagination. These decreasingly fine manifestations of God's thinking occur in God's imagination in order for Him to know Himself as formless, invisible, and infinite. Thus God precedes and forms all that we see, even us, in His infinite and eternal imagination. But God continually remains fully independent of all such dreamt journeying. Thus God is sometimes called the Unmoved Mover, the Causeless Cause, the First Cause, or just The Cause.
Simplified
Here is the simplest way I know to explain this.
Look at the pebbles in the photograph above. Pick one out in your mind, one you feel you can imagine holding in your hand, and imagine its texture and feel. Or find a real rock in the room you are in and roll it about in your hand as you read this meditation and do the assignment.
Get out a piece of paper and take notes of the qualities of your pebble as I name them. Give them descriptions, numbers, drawings and so forth. Be creative. Follow along. Keep returning to the pebble for your information, either the one imagined from the picture or your real one in the room.
There is nothing so solid as a rock. Stone will outlast anything else. Even metal wears away faster with time. There is nothing so solid and permanent as a rock. Jesus called Saint Peter his "rock" because Peter was so true, so unflinching in his faith, so solid. We have this expression, "solid as a rock." So we are certainly speaking of a solid object when we speak of a pebble. There is nothing less etherial and fake. This is why the hardest stones, diamonds, bring even higher prices than gold, which eventually fades.
Pick up a rock and toss it and it is pulled down toward the Earth by gravity. Drop it on your foot and it hurts. Pull it on a scale and it tips the balance. Analyze it by a chemical chart, along with a ruler and scale, and you can write down its approximate mass. Write down its size, its weight, and make notations of its shape. Make a sketch. You can examine and take note of this rock and find information you could describe for hours. Fill one page at least.
Now roll it around between your fingers and feel its coolness and texture. Or put it in the sun and feel how warm it is to the touch. Sense its roughness or smoothness and take note of this too. Tap it on the table and take note of its tone. Write it down. You should have a long list of qualities of this pebble, both ones you felt and saw with your five senses, and also ones you measured with a ruler and a balance scale. You have numbers jotted down, notations of geometric shape, hot and cold, color, texture, sound. Drop it and listen to the sound it creates. Note the pitch of that sound. A hertz meter could tell you the cycles of vibration it causes in the air when it strikes various surfaces. This helps to quantify that sound you hear.
Throw it through a plate glass window and watch all that takes place. Note all these effects too. You could even break it open with a hammer and look inside and place it under a microscope if you wanted and have even more notes.
Now you have quite a description of this pebble. You know all about it. You are an expert on it. And where did you get all this information? Did you have to ask anyone? No. You got it all from your own experience of the pebble. That's all it took. You did not need to look it up in a book. You extracted all these notes and facts straight from your own observations, made by you, using your senses and brain, your own direct experience.
Thus all you know of this rock is taken from your experience. If someone told you that it once belonged to George Washington, you would not be certain of it. It could be a legend. But what you do know of it came from your experience. That is where you found it, that is where you found its hardness, texture, color, weight, volume, shape, solidity, density, mass, temperature, tone, hardness, and so forth. Nowhere else. Thus how can you say it is somewhere else? Upon what basis?
You have been served by servile doctors. They don't understand.
If two people see this pebble and pass it back and forth and agree to its qualities just described, how is this so? It is because there is only one experiencer experiencing that same pebble experience through different mediums at different times. It does not follow from this that there are two pebbles. Still one pebble, but two mediums of one person most truly. If you pass the pebble from one hand to another, both hands feel it. But it is the same pebble. Thus you and your friend are one, experiencing the same pebble through different hands, and of course finding it the same.
There is nothing more simple. All that ever felt complex was generated by the mind confused by its sense of personal separation, and that sense is an illusion caused by the principle of personal delusion known as Maya. Why use the mind to solve your philosophical problems when it is the mind that produces them? So trust me and let it go. Don't worry. Be happy. Find your true Self.