You're in Wonderland, but you think it's a lab.
Your wise ancestor leans in, whispers something impossible like, "That tree didn't grow; you shrank."
And your mind, bless its little logical heart, immediately wants to calculate the photosynthesis rate or measure the distance. See? Always explaining away the impossible. Always substituting a tidy label for the wild, raw isness.
This is the game. You perceive something utterly bonkers, and your internal scientist instantly slaps a sticker on it.
'Gravity.'
'Time.'
'Matter.'
Just words pretending to contain the untamable.
Take a masterful artist. And I don’t mean just any masterful artist, but the best of the best in his art. They create a painting of a majestic landscape. They use the colors, the shades, the perspective so well.
You stand there, completely tricked into thinking this 2D image is actually 3D. You point to the painted mountain and think, 'Ah, that's far away.'
It’s a flat surface.
But the illusion convinces you of distance, of separation between you and the apparently distant mountain.
So you’re not looking, you’re thinking about the looking. The mind labels the experience.
Now,
Why do you think it's any different with what you seem to perceive every single second?
Just because your mind tells you that mountain is 'over there,' that person is 'separate,' that feeling is 'yours alone'? It's the same trick.
The mind’s relentless labeling and spatial mapping create the experience of 'out there' separated from 'in here'.
It’s the ultimate vanishing act – making the present, unified moment disappear behind a convincing melodrama of me versus them.
Now let me ask you:
How do you know the actual people and objects in your world aren’t constantly shrinking and growing?
Seriously.
You watch someone walk away, and they get smaller.
They walk closer, they get bigger. Oh, it’s just a big face now.
This is a constant, wild, perceptual fluctuation.
But your mind, that diligent scientist, instantly provides the explanation: "Ah, they are simply getting further or closer to you.”
A baby doesn’t know this explanation. A baby just sees the visual data changing – objects inflating, deflating. A baby is onto something here. That’s why a baby look so awestruck; A baby sees the magic before the scientist brain kicks in with its boring, reductive labels.
You think you know. You have been told by parents, by teachers, by internet, by textbooks. They gave you the explanations, the formulas, the laws of physics.
You learned to believe that you cannot trust your direct experience – the simple, baffling fact of things just changing size and appearance – because you need science, you need explanations to be able to function. And poof. The magic, the sheer impossibility of direct perception, is lost. Filed under 'optical illusion' or ‘perspective.'
Maybe one day you take a bit of acid.
And suddenly your mind's frantic need to make a meaning out of everything just takes a vacation for a little bit. The scientist steps out for a smoke break. What are you left with? Pure, unfiltered sensory input.
Colors that breathe.
Sounds that have texture.
The feeling of the chair isn't just 'solid chair'; it's a vibrating presence.
Boundaries dissolve.
The hand isn't just 'my hand'; it's a swirl of sensation happening. The frantic narration stops. The constant explaining, categorizing, separating just... pauses. And for a moment, the world isn't a collection of explained things 'out there'; it’s just raw, unedited this, happening with impossible intensity, right here.
And not even that.
The world is Alice in Wonderland.
Objects, if there were objects, change size inexplicably until the scientist explains it away. Causes and effects blur until the scientist draws a sharp line. This is inexplicable magic happening with no beginning and no end.
But your scientist brain is working overtime, providing plausible, mundane explanations that cover up the sheer, dazzling miracle of what's actually happening.
It's desperately trying to make Wonderland fit into a textbook.
The payoff isn't finding the real explanation. It’s the trippy realization that the explanation itself is the filter.
The world isn't happening and being explained; the explained world is what happens when direct, inexplicable experience is filtered through the mind's desperate need for order, for cause-and-effect, for 'me' over here looking at 'that' over there.
And, It creates juicy drama ‘me’ against ‘them’.
The scientist isn't observing Wonderland; the scientist is creating a smaller, duller version of it by insisting on explanations.
The magic isn't lost; it's just hiding under labels. The separation you feel? It's the space between the raw experience and your mind's story about the experience.
If the mind's explanations are just stories we tell ourselves to make reality less terrifyingly magical…
Now, the question is:
Who exactly is doing the explaining?
And what would happen if just for one day you’d lost the ability to explain completely?