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If all external things are really inside the mind, and are only "projected" outwards, of course our own bodies, sense-organs, nerves, and brains, are really inside and are merely projected outwards. Now, do the sense-impressions of which everything is to be constructed "come flowing in" along these nerves that are really inside?
Unseen Worlds. Listen to what careful thinkers have said concerning the possibility of entire worlds existing in the same space occupied by us, but of which we are unconscious by reason of our failure to sense their vibrations: One says, "All our sensations are due to the impact upon our sense-organs of vibrations in some form.
I have never seen two tracks leading to the same burrow; nor is it likely, from what we shall presently see of their sense-organs, that a worm could find its way back to its burrow after having once left it. They apparently leave their burrows on a voyage of discovery, and thus they find new sites to inhabit.
An animal which is hungry is restless, it goes to the places where food is often to be found, it sniffs with its nose or peers with its eyes or otherwise increases the sensitiveness of its sense-organs; as soon as it is near enough to food for its sense-organs to be affected, it goes to it with all speed and proceeds to eat; after which, if the quantity of food has been sufficient, its whole demeanour changes it may very likely lie down and go to sleep.
I need only add that in the corium of man and all the higher Vertebrates countless microscopic sense-organs develop, but the precise relation of these to the sensations of pressure or resistance, of warmth and cold, has not yet been explained.
On this view the Sutra remarks, 'Even on the aggregate with its two causes, there is non-establishment of that'. That aggregate which consists of earth and the other elements and of which the atoms are the cause; and that further aggregate which consists of bodies, sense-organs and objects, and of which the elements are the cause on neither of these two aggregates with their twofold causes can there be proved establishment of that, i.e. can the origination of that aggregate which we call the world be rationally established.
This is clearly seen in the condition of the peripheral regions of the nervous system, including the sense-organs, which appear to be but very slightly acted on by their customary stimuli. The nervous centres must participate in this lethargy of the system.
Its highest representative is a headless trunk, without skeleton or legs. It has no brain in any proper sense of the word, its sense-organs are feeble; it moves by writhing. Its life is devoted to digestion and reproduction. Whatever higher organs it has are subsidiary to these lower functions. And yet it has taken ages on ages to develop this much.
The anatomist and the physiologist give us very detailed accounts of the sense-organs and of the brain; the physiologist even undertakes to measure the speed with which the impulse passes along a nerve; the psychologist accepts and uses the results of their labors. But can all this be done in the absence of any first-hand knowledge of the things of which one is talking?
How can one know certainly that there is a world of material things, including human bodies with their sense-organs and nerves, if no mind has ever been able to inspect directly anything of the sort? How can we tell that a sensation arises when a nervous impulse has been carried along a sensory nerve and has reached the brain, if every mind is shut up to the charmed circle of its own ideas?
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