Week 8 #2

    “The brain tricks us into believing something to be real when it is not, provided that such trickery provides with a survival advantage.” In the book Cerebral Mirage the author discusses how we perceive our world and that in fact our day to day reality is a relative construct which helps us survive. Case in point the author discusses the phenomena of near death experiences. Many people who have had these NEDs described varied experiences, some people see their lives in retrospect, others see religious or spiritual entities, and yet others like described in the book see a bicycle or a chapatti. “It may well be that whenever the body-brain is under severe stress (such as when one has a heart attack or is in a car accident), consciousness elicits an ultimatum package of patterned meanings, drawn specifically from one’s own unique biographical/psychological history, to encourage one to live and resist dying”, in this way the brain tricks us or uses our own memories, faith, feelings in order for us to continue living.