THE FALLING TREE
A while ago I found this article about the falling tree. I will try here to paraphrase it as I thought it was interesting, and fits in with the concept of seeing.
“The objects of sense exist only when they are perceived. The trees in the garden are only there as long as there is someone to perceive them.”
In June 1883 in the magazine The Chautauquan the question was asked: ‘If a tree were to fall on an island where there were no human beings, would there be any sound?’ The article went on: ‘No. Sound is the sensation excited in the ear when the air or other medium is set in motion. ‘
The Scientific American later on gave a more technical answer saying that sound is a vibration, transmitted to our senses through the mechanism of the ear, and recognized as sound only at our nerve centers inside the brain.
The falling of the tree or any other disturbance will produce vibration of the air. If there are no ears to hear, there will be no sound.
The two major Jnanindriyas (sense organs) are the eyes and the ears. They convey information from outside the body. I have written about these in another article.
This whole thing of the perceiver and the perceived we encounter regularly. There is an interesting little book written by Swami Nikhilananda called ‘DRG-DRSYA, an inquiry into the nature of the seer and the seen’.
Basically in all perception there are three things involved:
The perceiver – the perceived – and the act of perceiving.
The act of perceiving stands in between the perceiver and the perceived. This goes for seeing and for hearing. Both the eyes and the ears cannot see or hear themselves, but are conduits to bring the outside information into the brain.
This outside information consists of electromagnetic information ( eyes) and concussion information (ears).
According to Einstein, Tesla and others there is NO physical world out there, only a world of information. Energy, frequency, vibration. This information is guided into the brain where it is transformed into a ‘physical’ world.
So coming back to the tree that does not make a sound when falling if there is no perceiver present, so too there is no ‘tree’ when the perceiver is not present.
Trees, sound, houses, people, classical music, are all created by US in our brain. MAYA.
In India this energy, this vibration, was called Brahma, the impersonal, eternal creative force, not to be confused with the personal god of mainstream religions.
Lyall Watson wrote a fascinating book about the concept of perception. In ‘Gifts of Unknown things’ he shipwrecks on a small island in the Indonesian archipelago where he spends some time, participating in the local village life. Thus he meets a 12 year old girl called Tia who is a dancer. At one point Tia, standing in the middle of a grove, made both spectators aware of the trees. Then, in a swift dance movement, she ‘took the trees away’, leaving Lyall and the little girl stunned. After some more dance movements the surrounding trees slowly ‘came back’ into perception.
