The Reality of the Mind

The mind is a powerful thing. Without the brain’s interpretation of things we would basically have no sensations at all. No pain. No pleasure. For instance, think about a time when you got a cut and never noticed it. Then someone points out to you that you are bleeding or something and suddenly the cut starts to hurt. Why is that? Basically because now your brain is involved. It is sending signals saying something like, "Ooh, I bet that hurts!" And then suddenly it does just that.

So, my question is this...if an action can trigger a response from your brain which triggers a certain sensation, then can the brain be forced to trigger the sensation without the action? For instance, could you convince your brain that you are getting a massage and start to feel your muscles relax and the total release of pleasure associated with it? Could just the very thought of a sexual act cause your body to have the physical consequences normally associated with it?

I think science has a term for the last one at least and it is called "nocturnal emissions," or "wet dreams." A dream which is by definition "a series of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations occurring involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep" is totally in your brain. And yet it has the power to cause the same physical consequences of a sexual act.

So what other sensations do you think we could trigger just by convincing our brain that something is actually happening? Maybe that is why certain hallucinations seem so real to people. In their minds they are convinced that it is real and so their brain is actually making it so to them. It is almost as if they are altering reality just by thinking it.

Which leads to another thought altogether. If reality exists only by the interpretation of things by the brain, then does anything truly exist? It is like that old question, "If a trees falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, then does it make a sound?" I had a Psychology teacher tell me the answer was "No," because for sound to exist it must be interpreted. Otherwise it is just waves. What if reality were the same way? For reality to exist is must be interpreted.

Does that mean that reality is only in our minds?