The Zero Sense: The Illusion of Perception and the Mind’s Power Over Reality

A sense that receives things before they’re filtered by perception, memory, language, or desire. A sense that perceives what is, without naming it.

What is truth?
A question that seems naïve at first glance – yet the moment it is asked sincerely, in a moment of pure reflection, the walls of certainty begin to tremble.

We assume we live in a clear, tangible, and comprehensible world – everything around us seems accessible the moment we look at it or touch it.
But is what we see, hear, and feel actually the truth?
Or is it merely an image our minds construct to deal with what cannot be perceived directly?

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Philosophers have warned us for centuries against placing blind trust in our senses.
Descartes doubted everything until he reached the only undeniable idea: that he thinks, therefore he exists.

Yet even this reassuring “existence” tells us nothing about the true nature of the outside world.
What we see may be an illusion.
What we hear may be an echo with no source.

Modern neuroscience shows us that the brain does not perceive the world as it is, but as it expects it to be.
The brain is not a passive receiver of stimuli, but an active creator of internal models.
It interprets input not by what’s really there – but by what it anticipates.

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We say we believe in black holes, gravitational waves, and the edge of the universe.
But we’ve never touched them. Never smelled them. Never truly heard or seen them with our own senses.

And yet, they’re real to us.
Why?
Because someone told us. Because there are images, calculations, scientists.

In this way, science becomes a new sense.
A sixth – or perhaps a surrogate – sense, filling the gaps where our five fail.

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You likely believe in the existence of China, though you may have never set foot on its soil.
Your ancestors believed in it too – long before maps or photos or videos existed – just because someone said it was there.

Truth, often, is just a well-traveled story.
Passed from one mouth to another until it settles in our collective mind as an unquestioned fact.

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But this leads to a deeper dilemma:
If conviction is the measure of truth, what happens when the mind can be convinced of anything?

What if conviction arises not from data, but from desire?
From longing?
From the deep psychological need for belonging or safety?

Then belief becomes a mirror – reflecting not the world, but ourselves.

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If you love a woman, a single proof of her innocence might suffice to marry her.
But if you despise her, not even a thousand proofs will satisfy you.

The issue lies not in the evidence, but in the one who interprets it.
The mind.
And the mind is not a neutral judge – it is a player with an agenda.

It doesn’t seek truth. It seeks confirmation.

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Even color is not spared.
We call this color green, and that one red.
But how do we know we see the same color?

We’ve merely agreed on a label for a wavelength.
Your “green” might be my “purple,” but we’ve both been trained to call it green.

So truth becomes a linguistic agreement, not a sensory certainty.

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And yet – we coexist.
Because we’ve agreed on names, reactions, responses.
If I ask for a green apple, you’ll bring one – regardless of what you actually see.

This shared illusion gives the appearance of truth.
But we’ve never tested it.
We don’t even know if our minds perceive the world similarly, or if each is interpreting it through a unique code.

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What if every mind has its own code – its own syntax for translating perception into meaning?
Just as fingerprints, irises, and DNA differ…
Maybe no two minds comprehend the same event identically.

The world may be one, but the interpretations are infinite.

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⚫ Maybe what we call “our truth” is nothing more than a finely woven collective lie –
A shared illusion absorbed since childhood…
So deeply embedded that we mistake it for reality itself.

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But what if there were… another sense?
A sense that doesn’t belong to the traditional five.
Nor to instinct.
But to something beyond all of them.

Let’s call it The Zero Sense.
A sense that receives things before they’re filtered by perception, memory, language, or desire.
A sense that perceives what is, without naming it.

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Maybe it already exists – within us.
But we never learned to use it.
Or perhaps we do use it, but the mind rejects its input.
Just as it sometimes rejects what it sees – when it clashes with what it wants.

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And here, the apple returns.
What is its real color, before light touches it?
Before your retina interprets it?
Before someone told you it was red?

Does the apple have a color at all?
Or is color just a mental projection – an illusion of the mind?

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Astrophysicists tell us that the spectacular colors of space are artificial – translated from radiation data into visuals we can process.
The real cosmos may be colorless.

What if everything is like that?
Painted not by reality – but by our craving for comprehension.

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Now we return to the Zero Sense.
It doesn’t label.
Doesn’t explain.
Doesn’t search for meaning in memory or culture.

It simply receives.
And only it – if it exists – can witness the original color of the apple.

Not the red we learned.
Not the green we agreed on.
But the true color –
The one no human eye has ever seen.

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Maybe it’s black.
Maybe it has no color at all.
Or maybe…
It’s a color beyond all human language and sensation.

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And that’s the heart of the idea:
Truth may not be something we see.
It may be something we were never meant to see.

The apple may not be red.
Or green.

It may carry a color…
That no one has ever seen.

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And yet,
It waits.