The hearing process also operates in a similar manner to the visual process. In other words, we hear sounds in our brains in the same way that we see the view of the outside world in our brains. The ear captures the sounds around us and delivers them to the middle ear. The middle ear amplifies the sound vibrations and delivers them to the inner ear. The inner ear transforms these sound vibrations into electric signals, on the basis of their frequency and intensity, and then transmits them to the brain. These messages in the brain are then sent to the hearing center where the sounds are interpreted. Therefore, the hearing process takes place in the hearing center in essentially the same way that the seeing process takes place in the seeing center.

     Therefore, actual sounds do not exist outside our brains, even though there are physical vibrations we call sound waves. These sound waves are not transformed into sounds outside or inside our ears, but rather inside our brains. As the visual process is not performed by our eyes, neither do our ears perform the hearing process.

The outer ear captures sound waves and delivers them to the middle ear. The middle ear amplifies these sounds and transmits them to the inner ear. The inner ear converts these sounds into electric signals on the basis of their intensity and frequency and then sends them to the brain.

     For example, when you are having a chat with a friend, you observe the sight of your friend in your brain, and hear his or her voice in your brain. As the view in your brain is formed, you will have a deep feeling of three dimensions, and your friend's voice is also heard with a similar feeling of depth. For example, you could see your friend as being a long way from you, or sitting behind you; accordingly you feel his voice as if it is coming from him, from near you or from your back. However, your friend's voice is not far away or behind you. It is in your brain.

     The extraordinariness about the real nature of the sound you hear is not limited to this. The brain is actually both lightproof and soundproof. Sound never in fact reaches the brain. Therefore, despite the volume of the sounds you hear, the interior of your brain is actually very quiet. However, you hear noise, such as voices, very clearly in your brain. They are so clear that a healthy person hears them without difficulties or distortions.

The brain is soundproof as well as lightproof. Therefore, even if the noises we hear are loud, the insides of our brains are very quiet. However, in this silence, there is a consciousness that can interpret electrical signals as a melody that he or she loves, or as the voice of a friend or the sound of the telephone ringing.

    You hear the symphony of an orchestra in your soundproof brain; you can hear all the sounds in a wide range of frequencies and decibel from the sounds of the leaves to the sounds of jet planes. When you go to a concert of your favorite singer, the deep and loud noise that fills the whole stadium is formed in the deep silence of your brain. When you sing by yourself loudly you hear the sound in your brain. However, if you were able to record the sound in your brain with a tape recorder at that moment, you would hear only silence. This is an extraordinary fact. The electrical signals that reach the brain are heard in your brain as sound, for example the sound of a concert in a stadium filled with people.

     All Smells Occur In The Brain

     If someone is asked how he senses the smells around him, he would probably say "with my nose". However, this answer is not the right one, even though most people would instantly conclude that it was the truth. Gordon Shepherd, a professor of neurology from Yale University, explains why this is incorrect; "We think that we smell with our noses, [but] this is a little like saying that we hear with our ear lobes."9

     Our sense of smell works in a similar mechanism to our other sense organs. In fact, the only function of the nose is its ability to act as an intake channel for smell molecules. Volatile molecules such as vanilla, or the scent of a rose, come to receptors located on hairs in a part of the nose called the epithelium and interact with them.

     The result of the interaction of the smell molecules with the epithelium reaches the brain as an electric signal. These electric signals are then perceived as a scent by the brain. Thus, all smells which we interpret as good or bad are merely perceptions generated in the brain after the interaction with volatile molecules has been transduced into electric signals. The fragrance of perfume, of a flower, of a food which you like, of the sea-in short all smells you may or may not like-are perceived in the brain. However, the smell molecules never actually reach the brain. In our sense of smell, it is only electrical signals which reach the brain, as happens with sound and sight.

    
     Conseqently, a smell does not travel in any particular direction, because all smells are perceived by the smell center in the brain. For example, the smell of a cake does not come from the oven, in the same way that the smell of the dish does not come from the kitchen. Likewise, the smell of honeysuckle does not come from the garden and the smell of the sea, some distance away from you, does not come from the sea.

     All of these smells are sensed at one point, in a related area of the brain. There is no concept of right or left, front or back, outside of this sense center. Although each of the senses seem to occur with different effects, and may appear to be coming from different directions, they all in fact occur within the brain. The smells which occur in the smell center of the brain are assumed to be the smells of outside materials. However, the image of the rose is generated in the sight center and the smell of a rose is generated in the smell center. If there is a genuine smell outside, you can never reach the original of it.

     George Berkeley, a philosopher who has realized the importance of this truth, says "At the beginning, it was believed that colors, odors, etc., 'really exist,' but subsequently such views were renounced, and it was seen that they only exist in dependence on our sensations."

The purpose of the nose is to receive smell signals and transmit them to the brain. The smell of soup, or a rose, is sensed in the brain. However, a person can sense the smell of the rose or soup in his dream, even in the absence of any soup or roses. God forms such a convincing collection of senses within the brain with the taste, smell, vision, sense of touch and sound that it takes a lot of explanation to demonstrate to people that all of these feelings occur in the brain and that they are actually not dealing with the originals of anything they see. This is the magnificent knowledge of God.

     It may be instructive to consider dreams in order to understand that smell is only a sensation. When people dream, in the same way that all images are seen very realistically, smells are also perceived as if they were real. For example, a person who goes to a restaurant in his dream may choose his dinner amid the smells of the foods that are on the menu; someone who dreams of going on a trip to the sea side senses the distinctive smell of the sea, and someone who dreams of a daisy garden would experience, in his dream, the pleasure of the magnificent scents. Likewise, someone who dreams of going to a perfume shop and choosing a perfume would be able to distinguish between the smells of the perfumes, one by one. Everything in the dream is so realistic that when the person wakes up, he or she might be surprised by this situation.

A person can picture the face of his wife or imagine the smell of a daisy in his brain with little concentration. The question then is that who is seeing without the need of an eye or smelling without the need of a nose things that physically do not exist nearby? This being is the soul of the person.

     In fact, it is not necessary to examine dreams to understand the subject. It is even sufficient to imagine one of the depictions that were mentioned, such as the example of the daisy. If you concentrate on the daisy, you can feel as if you are aware of its scent, even though it isn't there. The scent is now occurring in the brain. If you want to visualize your mother in your mind, you can see her in your mind, even though she isn't there in front of you; in the same way you can imagine the smell of the lily, even though it isn't there.

     Michael Posner, a psychologist and Marcus Raichle, a neurologist from Washington University comment on the issue of how sight and other senses occur, even in the absence of an external stimulus:

     Open your eyes, and a scene fills your view effortlessly; close your eyes and think of that scene, and you can summon an image of it, certainly not as vivid, solid, or complete as a scene you see with your eyes, but still one that captures the scene's essential characteristics. In both cases, an image of the scene is formed in the mind. The image formed from actual visual experiences is called a "percept" to distinguish it from an imagined image. The percept is formed as the result of light hitting the retina and sending signals that are further processed in the brain. But how are we able to create an image when no light is hitting the retina to send such signals? 10

     There is no need for an external source to form an image in your mind. This same situation holds true for the sense of smell. In the same way as you are aware of a smell which does not really exist in your dreams or imagination, you cannot be sure whether or not those objects, which you smell in real life, exist outside you. Even if you assume that these objects exist outside of you, you can never deal with the original objects.

     All Tastes Occur In The Brain

     The sense of taste can be explained in a manner similar to those of the other sense organs. Tasting is caused by little buds in the tongue and throat. The tongue can detect four different tastes, bitter, sour, sweet and salty. Taste buds, after a chain of processes, transform sensory information into electrical signals and then transfer them to the brain. Subsequently, those signals are perceived by the brain as tastes. The taste that you experience when you eat a cake, yogurt, a lemon or a fruit is, in reality, a process that interprets electrical signals in the brain.

     An image of a cake will be linked with the taste of the sugar, all of which occurs in the brain and everything sensed is related to the cake which you like so much. The taste that you are conscious of after you have eaten your cake, with a full appetite, is nothing other than an effect generated in your brain caused by electrical signals.

     You are only aware of what your brain interprets from the external stimuli. You can never reach the original object; for example you cannot see, smell or taste the actual chocolate itself. If the taste nerves in your brain were cut off, it would be impossible for the taste of anything you eat to reach your brain, and you would entirely lose your sense of taste. The fact that the tastes of which you are aware seem extraordinarily real should certainly not deceive you. This is the scientific explanation of the matter.

     The Sense Of Touch Also Occurs In The Brain

     
     The sense of touch is one of the factors which prevents people from being convinced of the aforementioned truth that the senses of sight, hearing and taste occur within the brain. For example, if you told someone that he sees a book within his brain, he would, if he didn't think carefully, reply "I can't be seeing the book in my brain-look, I'm touching it with my hand". Or, if we said "we cannot know whether the original of this book exists as a material object outside or not", again the same superficially minded person might answer "no, look, I'm holding it with my hand and I feel the hardness of it - that isn't a perception but an existence which has material reality".

     However, there is a fact that such people cannot understand, or perhaps just ignore. The sense of touch also occurs in the brain as much as do all the other senses. That is to say, when you touch a material object, you sense whether it is hard, soft, wet, sticky or silky in the brain. The effects that come from your fingertips are transmitted to the brain as an electrical signal and these signals are perceived in the brain as the sense of touch. For instance, if you touch a rough surface, you can never know whether the surface is, in reality, indeed a rough surface, or how a rough surface actually feels. That is because you can never touch the original of a rough surface. The knowledge that you have about touching a surface is your brain's interpretation of certain stimuli.

The fact that you are feeling the book you are reading now does not change the fact that the vision of the book occurs within your brain. As with the appearance of the book, the sense of touching the book also takes place in your brain.

      A person chatting to a close friend while drinking a cup of tea immediately lets go of the cup when he burns his hand on the hot cup. However, in reality, that person feels the heat of the cup in his mind, not in his hand. The same person visualizes the image of the cup of tea in his mind, and senses the smell and taste of it in his mind. However, this man does not realize that the tea he enjoys is actually a sensation within his brain. He assumes that the glass exists outside of himself, and talks to his friend, whose image occurs again within his brain.

     In fact, this is an extraordinary case. The assumption that he is touching the original glass and drinking the original tea, which appears to be justified by his impression of the hardness and warmth of the cup and the taste and smell of the tea, shows the astonishing clarity and perfection of the senses which exist within one's brain. This important truth, which needs careful consideration, is expressed by twentieth century philosopher Bertrand Russell:

     As to the sense of touch when we press the table with our fingers, that is an electric disturbance on the electrons and protons of our fingertips, produced, according to modern physics, by the proximity of the electrons and protons in the table. If the same disturbance in our finger-tips arose in any other way, we should have the sensations, in spite of there being no table. 11

     The point that Russell makes here is extremely important. In fact, if our fingertips are given a stimulus in a different manner, we can sense entirely different feelings. However, as it will be explained in detail in due course, today this can be done by mechanical simulators. With the help of a special glove, a person can feel the sensation of stroking a cat, shaking hands with someone, washing his hands, or touching a hard material, even though none of these things may be present. In reality, of course, none of these sensations represent occurrences in the real world. This is further evidence that all the sensations felt by a human being are formed within the mind.

9- www.hhmi.org/senses/a/a110.htm
10- Michael I. Posner, Marcus E. Raichle, Images of Mind, Scientific American Library, New York, 1999, p. 88
11- Bertrand Russell, ABC of Relativity, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1964, pp. 161-162

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