Phantoms!

I am reading "Phantoms in the Brain : Human nature and the architecture of the mind" by Dr. V. S Ramchandran. The book provides stunning cases, astonishing explanations ( though can be found in plethora of platitudes and wise saying) from scientific point of view, and a glimpse of power of investigative nature of science or of logical deduction.

Till now I have read about the Phantom limbs, virtual limbs in amputees. Dr Ram talks about and explains the curious case of missing limbs and the feeling associated with them, that they still exist.

He says its the mind which has mapping of the each and every body part that we see. It goes on explaining that how mind fools us into thinking & feeling that limb still exists which was amputated long ago,how mind has been trained since childhood to send signals to "the limb" which is contradictory to visual inputs, in case of amputees.

According to Dr. Ram pain is an opinion on the organism's state of health rather than a mere reflexive response to the injury. He goes on to logically conclude that vision has influence on our subjective experiences. In blunt words pain is an illusion created by mind which can be countered.

While thinking about the Phantom limbs it just occurred to me what about the phantom ideals and phantom principles! Aren't we trained or to say conditioned to believe in some ideals since childhood. Shouldn't we use the power of logical deduction to experiment with some ideals ,principles and perspectives? Or should we just blindly follow?

Don't we see masses being conditioned daily ? New phantoms being created every day? for example -- Recession, MNS's vote bank politics,Marketing of products etc..

Case with mind is it can be trained or conditioned to believe in anything and everything. One gotta analyze before accepting anything.