A fascinating presentation on cognition and how we’re all allegedly living in some sort of a shared hallucination that we call reality, led to this…

In Our Persistence
by Michael Doyle

As I sit there listening
My neurons sparkling and glistening
I started to think
Of how these are on the brink

I could not say for certain
Despite the joy and the hurting
Who exactly am I really
With all the touchy and the feely

It all comes down to sequence
Synapses firing with consequence
All comes down to our best guess
Nothing more and sometimes less

It's all there as a hallucinated perception
Absent any deliberated deception
All of this is a matter of expectation
Fed through our mind's interpretation

Sensory impulses loaded as information
Then subject to our mental transformation
It's mutual two way flow of in and out
And of this cognition, there is little doubt

The world we experience is one of generation
As much from the inside as the outside's inspiration
It seems that hallucination is uncontrolled perception
And that perception itself is a controlled hallucination

Signals reined in from the outside
Filter through the signals coming from inside
Agreed on hallucinations for our reality
But, is it then, what might be meant by actually

From this it seems that being unified and yet apart
Comes down to the illusions and delusions of the heart
All of this is but a fragile construction
Easily leant toward the path of our mutual destruction

Even our bodies are at best guesstimation
What we think of as real is at best estimation
We are kept well and alive by interoception
With all of our body consisting of points of reception

Virtual reality when felt with deep immersion
Is true life felt in a slightly different version
All of these variables are subject to regulation
With each signal felt with its interpretation

Followed all the way through in staying alive
Are the nuts and bolts of doing more than survive
Predicted then in and into our best existence
We then are fully alive in our persistence 

When the end comes there is nothing to fear
As we fade into the oneness, we will there persevere 

(c) July 20, 2020  Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved