Page - 43 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 02/01

“This Voice Has Come for Your Sake” | 43www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/1, 35–47 presents functioning eyes, ears, and all the senses that make perception possible. We understand that seeing and hearing involve physical changes in matter, vibrating eardrums, stimulation of the optic nerve and the like. Yet we have all failed to hear or see something because we are concentrating on something else. Or we can hear without understanding, say a foreign language or a musical instrument from another culture. Within perception there are elements like attention and recognition that are not about matter. So another contribution to perception comes via the mind or spirit, which uses memory to makes sense of images coming in. Bergson notes, we can understand that spirit can rest upon matter and, consequently, unite with it in the act of pure perception, yet nevertheless be radically distinct from it. It is distinct from mat- ter in that it is, even then, memory, that is to say, a synthesis of past and present with a view to the future, in that it contracts the moments of this matter in order to use them and to manifest itself by actions which are the final aim of its union with the body.16 A recent article on memory by Michael Specter addresses the malleable nature of perception and the role of memory.17 He notes, Neurons are programmed by our DNA, and they rarely change. On the other hand, synaps- es, the small gaps between neurons turn out to be highly mutable. Synaptic networks grow as we learn, often sprouting entirely new branches, based on the way that chemical mes- sengers called neurotransmitters pass between neurons. ‘The growth and maintenance of new synaptic terminals make memory persist’ [Eric] Kandel wrote in his book In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind (2006). Perceptual capabilities then develop over time, as a result of experience, creating changes in the organism itself, which then affects its response to future events. Bergson seems to say one can slip from one reality to the other via perception. The error that many make, he says, is looking for that union of body and spirit in space, when we should look for the union in time. Time allows for changes in degrees, devel- opment, “growing intensity of life”, “ever-greater latitude of the activity of the living being”, the “independence of the living being in regard to matter”. One can step back from the flow, use the memory to select and organise, and influence the future. He says if you incorrectly think of body and soul in terms of space, “it is like two railway lines that cut each other at a right angle. If one thinks in terms of time, the rails come together in a curve, so that we pass insensibly from the one to the other.”18 While we cannot ignore the complexity of these issues, nor the gulf that separates an ancient writer from twentieth-century philosophers, Deleuze and Bergson present several ideas that help us think about the gospel. First, the self is a coming together of capacities for understanding. Second, perception is an event that unifies the body and 16 Bergson 1988, 220. 17 Specter 2014. 18 Bergson 1988, 222.