Consider, for a moment, how we usually look at and experience a tree. There seems in our mind to be something outside us which we usually call a “tree,” light reflects off of its surface and into our eyes, the light is translated into an electo-chemical signal that is transmitted into the brain where we experience a lovely image which is a representation of that tree outside. We promptly recognize this and label it as “a tree.” Then, we may react to the tree in some way, perhaps admiring its beauty, or proceeding to sit under it, or maybe even to cut it down. As part of this process, we include a sense that “I” am looking at the “tree outside me,” and that there is separation between us. That is good, because otherwise you could not function in life if you did not know the difference between yourself and the trees.
But is that the only way to look at it? Buddhists, and many neuro-scientists these days, might point out that there is also a kind of feedback loop at work here, in which the cycle of tree, light, eye, brain and response might be judged one whole thing, one single mutually integrated phenomenon. For example, you have your sense of “you” inside you precisely because there are trees to see which you deem outside you. Seeing the tree and experiencing it gives you something to experience, not to mention sit under. In turn, your mind gives definition, and imposes characteristics on much of the world. For example, while the “tree” is likely a certain group of atoms which happens to reflect from it photons of a certain frequency of vibration, it is your brain which then interprets those photons as “green tree,” and even may add additional value judgments based on your own relative position and preferences, such as “tall green tree” (based on some inner comparison to your relative size) or “beautiful green tree” based on your tastes and sense of symmetry. In that way, while the atoms and vibrating photons may exist apart from you, in a very real sense the experience of a world of “beautiful tall green trees” only exists because there is you, and other human beings, to experience and mentally define things so. I doubt that a lady bug, for example, experiences those atoms in quite the same way and, if her brain is capable of thinking anything at all, it is probably not much more than as a surface to crawl on. Thus, there is the old question, “If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound.” Well, the answer is that some event may make vibrations in the air, but without some sentient ear to hear it and interpret the same as a subjective experience, there can be no “sound.”
In this way, there is a wonderful loop by which we human beings do very much create “beautiful green trees” out of our own thoughts (although something is likely out there), and in turn, the world “out there” lets you draw a line of inner experiences which you define as your “me in here.” You create the world in part, and that world lets you create your sense of “you” in part.
However, you do not need to draw the border of separation quite where it is, at the edge of your skin or the top of your head. You can also come to define yourself, in a very real sense, as the whole feedback loop itself.
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Originally Posted by EnlistedHipster
