#1: What is the difference between your mind’s eye and your real eyes?
This was the first question out the box. I don’t like it, and my first instinct was to skip it, but that wouldn’t really be in the spirit of things. So I guess this is as good as any place to start.
The term mind’s eye — sometimes also referred to as the third eye — is an esoteric and spiritual concept, usually depicted as located on the forehead (I think), granting the viewer deep and profound perception beyond ordinary sight.
But I don’t buy that.
To me, the mind’s eye is a poetic description of a person’s imagination. Foresight, along with future fancies, fantasies, and fears could all be included in an understanding of this concept. The difference, of course, between the mind’s eye and your real eyes is that the real eyes are simply a biological visual-input apparatus (functioning very much like a camera; or rather, cameras function like the eye?). Your eyes can see, but they can never interpret, which is the business of the brain. What one set of eyes sees may very well be the empirical same as another, but the interpretations and physiological reactions to what is “seen” is often, if not always, a little bit different.
The difference between the two is a gulf apart. The mind’s eye is connected to the cognitive functions of visualizing, imagining, hypothesizing, and fantasizing.
Also interesting to note is that the visions of the mind’s eye come with no connotations. You can imagine good things, bad things, positive, negative, likely, unlikely, probably and impossible, and everything in between. The disposition of each individual determines these factors.
We see with the eyes, but we picture things with the mind’s eye.
