[ Sights and Insights, dept. ]
“As beautiful as it is complex, the fly’s brain has more than 130,000 wires with 50 million intricate connections.
They can walk, hover and the males can even sing love songs to woo mates – all this with a brain that’s tinier than a pinhead.
Now for the first time scientists researching the brain of a fly have identified the position, shape and connections of every single one of its 130,000 cells and 50 million connections.
One leading brain specialist independent of the new research described the breakthrough as a “huge leap” in our understanding of our own brains.” *
~ For some of us exploring our non-daul nature including and beyond appearances, perhaps the above may beg the question: ‘What is it that knows – is aware – of the brain?’
Well, that question arose when I read the above after I returned from one of my hikes here on Vancouver Island. The sky was clear blue with traces of white clouds driven lightly by a breeze passing over the serene bay waters as I climbed, crossing foot bridges over a gently burbling stream. At one point I paused – partly to catch my breath 😉 and watched as hundreds of flys seemingly climbed and danced up and down in a delicate sun ray; I was delighted by this seemingly mundane but astonishingly beautiful sighting and then walked on a little, paused and looked back at the same sun ray. I could not see any of the dancers dancing, yet I knew they were there. Indeed, from one perspective we may see things, and from another, not see what is there but know it is so.
Turning an inner eye to ‘normal’ everyday living, most of us only see the seen, ie. the brain, and do not see that which is seeing – awareness. In fact, timeless awareness which is not of the body/mind, is that which knows all experiencing in time, including the brain. That non-personal ‘eye’ of perception is seemingly clouded by personal conception, by conditioned beliefs that filter ‘what is’ thru conscious and subconscious desires and fears produced by and believed by, a supposed ‘person’ – the binary ego/mind with its either/or, good/bad interpreted sightings of what is in reality, One.
In fine, if one wants to see and know reality, one must abandon any and all beliefs that one knows it already. Apart from necessary functional and accumulated knowledge – which lets us build bridges and catch a bus! – real living lies only in moment-to-moment learning now. And that means one no longer lives and moves – psychologically speaking – in and from yesterday, from memory. And that also may indicate that, in truth, one does not know anything, there being no knower. 🙂
There is only the truth of this moment, as it’s presenting in awareness, here and now. In aware living, there’s a whole seeing, aka ‘love’, of all experiencing, and the wonder of knowing that one is, without knowing or needing to know, what one is. Ah, the mystery! Beautiful, yes. 🙂
* Thanks to Pallab Ghosh, Science Correspondent BBC Oct. 1/24
