Reaching "The Truth of This World" Through Cognitive Science Analysis of Art—Dr. Hidetoshi Tomabechi × Takashi Murakami Dialogue Reveals Cognitive Structure and Path to Awakening—

“This world is an illusion created entirely by the mind”—these words from cognitive scientist Dr. Hidetoshi Tomabechi shake the very foundations of the “reality” we experience daily. We unquestioningly perceive the world unfolding before us in this very moment as “objective fact.” But what if that “fact” itself is merely a simulation generated in real time by the biological computer that is our brain?

The special dialogue between Dr. Hidetoshi Tomabechi and artist Takashi Murakami on Murakami Radio begins precisely with this fundamental question, traversing an overwhelmingly deep horizon of knowledge. Their conversation explores “the essence of coaching,” “the ability to abstract and leap dimensions,” “the core of art lies in reliving bodily experience,” and “cognitive warfare and intervention into the unconscious.”

Mindset Design is a media platform centered on perspectives like “Attention = Life,” “95% of the unconscious governs our lives,” and “Awakening from the brainwashing called common sense.” This dialogue precisely traverses all these themes through the precise lens of cognitive science.It delves far beyond the surface of the coaching boom, into the deeper recesses of human cognitive structure. It uncovers the hidden “truth” of this world’s structure, concealed within the act of appreciating art. This article thoroughly analyzes and examines the dialogue, extracting profoundly essential insights to update your brain’s operating system.

Overview and Core Message of the Dialogue: This World is Made of “Mind”

What Dr. Tomabechi repeatedly emphasized in this dialogue is a truth overwhelmingly simple, yet one most people never reach even in a lifetime: “This world is made of mind. And mind itself is made of mind.”

Organizing Dr. Tomabechi’s words, the core message of the dialogue can be structured as follows:

• The world is an “illusion” created by the brain: What we perceive as “reality” is the result of information processing constructed by neurons within the brain, not objective existence itself. As many humans exist, so many distinct “worlds” exist.
• “Recognition comes first” and “the goal comes first”: Humans can recognize specific things precisely because they have some purpose (goal). Just as the smell of food catches your attention when you’re hungry, the goal generates recognition, and recognition constructs the world.
• We delegate control of the world to others: Many people unconsciously delegate decisions about “what they want” and “what matters” to external sources like parents, schools, television, or politics. While making 100% independent judgments is essential, it is also the most difficult.
• Abstract thinking enables “dimensional leaps”: Just as an ant living in two dimensions would gain overwhelming survival skills if it could perceive three dimensions, raising abstraction dramatically expands the visible world. Artists are those who can achieve this abstraction without being taught.
• The essence of art appreciation is “re-experiencing physicality”: When viewing a painting, mentally simulating the brushstrokes. When listening to music, unconsciously recreating the performer’s finger movements. This is the core of art appreciation, and being immersed in that space of immediacy is paramount.
• Sound is a “density wave” received by the entire body: Sound is a wave of air density, and the entire body, not just the ears, receives its physical vibrations. Throughout human history, we have accumulated combinations of density waves that produce specific effects on the mind and body as “music.”
• Cognitive Warfare and Scientific Intervention into the Unconscious: Using fMRI and AI to decode and reconstruct states within the human brain, then embedding them into images or sound, the technology of “cognitive warfare” – transforming human cognition at a subconscious level – has already succeeded at the laboratory level.

These elements may appear disjointed at first glance, yet they are all united by a single principle: “The reality of this world is constructed by the brain (mind).” Understanding this principle is the essence of coaching, the essence of art, and the key to fundamentally transforming our lives.

“The World Is Made of the Mind” – The Structure of Reality Revealed by Cognitive Science

Goals create perception, and perception creates the world

The first thing Dr. Tomabechi spoke of as the essence of coaching is the true nature of what we believe to be the “world.” “Perception comes first, not the goal”—this single sentence encapsulates the most fundamental insight of cognitive science.

When you’re hungry, the smells of food around town suddenly become vivid. The moment you decide to buy a car, it seems like that exact model is everywhere on the streets. These are everyday phenomena we all experience, yet the mechanism behind them is profoundly significant.

The human brain receives over 11,000,000 bits of sensory information every second, yet it is said that consciousness can process only about 50 bits of that. In other words, of the vast information pouring down from the universe, over 99.999% is automatically blocked by the brain’s filter (the RAS: Reticular Activating System), and only a very limited fragment reaches our “consciousness.”

And what determines the setting of that filter is your “goal (purpose)”. When your goal changes, even while existing in the same physical space, what you see, hear, and feel fundamentally transforms. In other words, we each live in different “worlds” with different filter settings. The reality before your eyes is not objectively fixed; it is the rendering result “drawn” in real-time by your goals and knowledge.

Why Do We End Up Living in “Someone Else’s World”?

Dr. Tomabechi points to an even more fundamental problem: “Generally, we entrust what we want or what’s important to someone other than ourselves.”

Here lies the human tragedy. Through a structure that could be called societal brainwashing, our goal-setting is programmed externally from childhood. Is “getting into a good school” the goal? Is “getting a job at a stable company” the goal? Are these truly “goals that welled up from your own heart”? Or are they “others’ goals” that your parents’ anxieties, the inertia of the education system, or TV commercials’ images arbitrarily installed into your brain’s filter?

This is why Dr. Tomabechi stated, “Making judgments 100% on your own is difficult.” Our brains are default-set to “synchronize with the group’s values” as a survival instinct. Deviating from the group meant death in primitive times. However, in modern society, this synchronization function has turned into a fatal bug: “the inability to draw your own life using your own goals.”

This can be seen as a reversal of self-brainwashing.It’s a state where our unconscious ability to rewrite our minds—which should be used positively—is being exploited negatively by external forces. As Tomabechi Method’s Comfort Zone Theory demonstrates, our homeostasis (the function maintaining constant state) strives with all its might to preserve our “current goal setting.” That’s precisely why the first step is to ask: “Are my current goals truly my own?” This is the starting point of coaching and the initial awakening of consciousness and attention.

Abstract Thinking Changes Your Perspective—The “Leap in Dimension” and the Artist’s Secret

Two-Dimensional Ants and Three-Dimensional Freedom

Dr. Tomabechi’s “ant metaphor,” presented in a dialogue, is an exceptionally vivid metaphor for understanding human cognitive structure.

For a two-dimensional ant, whose perception is limited to the Earth’s surface, being stepped on by a three-dimensional human is a “completely random event.” It cannot be predicted or avoided. However, if that ant could “see” three dimensions—it could perceive a human approaching, predict a safe zone based on their stride and direction, and avoid it.

Dr. Tomabechi applies this directly to human society. He states that most people “live only in 2.1 or 2.2 dimensions.” While commuting or traveling to school might involve moving 5 or 10 kilometers horizontally, almost no one thinks 5 kilometers vertically. No one cares about the state of the stratosphere today, and almost no one thinks about the neighboring galaxy 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Yet Dr. Tomabechi is precisely concerned with that. “I care about the neighboring galaxy, let alone the neighboring star, 24/7, 365 days a year” — this statement might sound like a joke to the average person, but it is the real-life experience report of a “human cognitive space with elevated abstraction (dimension).”

Raising abstraction is like “climbing stairs”

Dr. Tomabechi further explains the core concept: “What you see when you raise one dimension is the abstraction ability, climbing the stairs.”

Abstraction is the cognitive ability to discern “common patterns” or “higher-level structures” behind individual, concrete phenomena. For example, seeing an apple, a pear, and a tangerine and recognizing the category “fruit” is the first level of abstraction. Further, grouping fruit, vegetables, and grains together as “food” is another level. With each step up this staircase, the visible scope expands exponentially.

In a business context, if “selling apples” is a concrete event, then “optimizing food distribution” is one level higher in abstraction, and “the interaction between human survival needs and the market economy” is an even higher level. The higher the level of abstraction, the broader the view becomes. Patterns of success or failure that appear “random” to others become clearly “just following a logical path.”

This is also the essence of what intelligent people are thinking. They aren’t “smart” in the conventional sense; they are “seeing the world at a higher level of abstraction.” Even walking the same streets, their minds map patterns, connections, and possibilities invisible to others.

Artists are “people who raised their dimension without being taught.”

And the definition Dr. Tomabechi arrived at is profoundly insightful: “People who somehow mastered that abstraction ability without being taught it. That’s what we call artists.”

This is a fundamentally new definition of art. While artists are often vaguely described as “people with keen sensibilities” or “people with aesthetic sense,” Dr. Tomabechi’s cognitive science analysis reveals that their essence lies in “abstract thinking ability.”In a world where others live in 2.1 dimensions, they can perceive 3 or 4 dimensions without being taught. They are people who can somehow “translate” that higher-order cognition into concrete expression (painting, music, sculpture, literature). That is the true nature of an artist.

Takashi Murakami’s honest response to this statement—”I didn’t get it at all. What are you talking about?”—is actually an extremely sincere reaction. This is because artists typically cannot verbalize “why they can do what they do.”Explaining abstract thinking through language itself requires another kind of advanced abstraction. From the perspective of cognitive scientist Dr. Tomabechi, the moment linguistic labels were applied to this tacit knowledge represents one of the most crucial intellectual connections in this dialogue.

The essence of art is “reliving bodily experience”—appreciation is imitation

Simulating the brush’s movement in the mind

One of the most shocking moments in this dialogue was when it was revealed that Dr. Tomabechi and Takashi Murakami had shared the “same experience.”

Dr. Tomabechi recounted that, drawing from his experience painting oil paintings in his youth, he would always simulate the painter’s “brush movements” when viewing masterpieces at the Louvre Museum.”I would simulate the brush movements of someone painting an oil painting.” Takashi Murakami, too, did exactly the same thing when appreciating paintings—tracking the brushstrokes and recreating their movements in his mind. However, Murakami expressed astonishment, stating, “This is the first time I’ve heard someone else describe it in words.”

This alignment is no coincidence. Dr. Tomabechi generalizes this observation: “I believe art is about recreating and tracing the physicality of its creator.”

In other words, appreciating art isn’t about expressing reactions like “It’s beautiful” or “It’s amazing.” It’s about the viewer mobilizing their own bodily memory to “re-enact” within their mind the physical actions the creator performed before the canvas—the pressure, angle, speed, thickness of paint, and timing. This very act of “reliving the experience” is the essence of art appreciation.

The Crucial Importance of Being in the “Immersive Space”

Dr. Tomabechi further emphasized that “being physically present is crucial” and pointed out that “distance learning simply won’t do.” This contains extremely important cognitive science insights.

Dr. Tomabechi used martial arts instruction as an example. When you throw someone, the person being thrown learns the most, but the physicality also propagates to those watching nearby. However, conveying this through video or text in “distance learning” is impossible.

Why? Because the human cognitive system perceives the world as “spatial information integrating all five senses.” When standing before a Monet painting in a museum, we receive far more than just “visual color information.”The minute texture of the paint on the canvas, the temperature and humidity of the museum air, the faint echo of footsteps in the silence, and above all, the overwhelming sense of presence that comes from standing at the exact same physical distance from the canvas as when Monet applied his brushstrokes—only when this comprehensive bodily information is integrated in the brain does a true “re-experience” within that space become possible.

Dr. Tomabechi’s experience of seeing “a child truly present in three dimensions” within Monet’s painting exemplifies this re-experience elevated to its ultimate state.Dr. Tomabechi’s brain reconstructed the existence of the child, which Monet had “hidden within the paint’s texture,” as visual information. Furthermore, this child had actually died during the period when Monet painted the work—a fact consistent with art history. This is not occultism, but the result of a highly trained cognitive system “drawing” information that would not be processed at the normal level of consciousness.

Mirror Neurons and Redefining the “Afterlife”

The existence of mirror neurons provides the neuroscientific basis for this “re-experiencing of bodily sensations.” These are nerve cells that fire as if performing an action oneself, merely by observing another person perform it. In art appreciation, the act of simulating the painter’s brush movements within the brain represents the advanced utilization of this mirror neuron system itself.

Dr. Tomabechi reached profound insights from his experience of “images suddenly flooding in” while listening to Mozart’s symphonies—a synesthetic (synesthesia) cognition. “That means the afterlife exists, right?”

The “other world” referred to here does not carry a spiritual meaning like the afterlife. Dr. Tomabechi clearly defines it: “There exists a space of knowledge beyond the level of human intelligence.” In other words, “the other world” is “a dimension of information that cannot be perceived at the normal cognitive level, yet definitely exists.“

Mozart “painted” a world using the overtone structure (biteon) of sound, which Dr. Tomabechi’s synesthetic brain then reconstructed as visual information. The fact this is possible signifies that “information exists in an invisible dimension, and we can access it through different sensory modalities.”Dr. Tomabechi defines the essence of “humanity’s cultural assets” as follows: past masters engraved “information beyond ordinary perception” into artistic works like paintings, music, and poetry, enabling later generations of appreciators to read it through different senses.

Art is the work of the “other world”—the act of transforming information that transcends the ordinary level of human cognition into visible and audible forms, bringing it down into this world. This is an extremely profound truth that lies beyond a deeper exploration of the issues of consciousness and attention.

Sound is a “density wave” received by the entire body—the integration of the five senses and the mechanism of cognition

Music is humanity’s accumulated know-how of “density waves effective on the body.”

Dr. Tomabechi’s discussion on the essence of sound fundamentally overturns our understanding of music.

Dr. Tomabechi points out that sound is a density wave created when speakers “push” air, and that we receive this density wave not only through the conventional auditory process of the eardrum vibrating and nerves detecting it, but with our entire body. Music is not merely a “pleasant/unpleasant stimulus,” but the crystallization of the know-how accumulated through trial and error over humanity’s long history—in Bach, Indian music, Chinese music, and more—regarding “combinations of density waves that produce specific effects on the mind and body.”

Furthermore, Dr. Tomabechi provides a detailed explanation of the structure of overtones (biteones). When playing the note A (440Hz) on a piano, frequencies twice (880Hz), three times (1320Hz), five times… and infinitely higher frequencies actually sound simultaneously. The difference in timbre is determined by the combination of these overtones.Harmonics beyond the human ear’s audible range (approximately 20,000Hz) interfere with each other. Their interference patterns influence the “resonance” of audible frequencies below. In other words, sounds we shouldn’t hear are altering the quality of the sounds we do hear.

Regarding Murakami’s experience of feeling refreshed after starting to use AI sound generation (like Suno), Dr. Tomabechi expressed empathy while clearly explaining the scientific mechanism. Sound is physical energy, and when the entire body receives it, physiological changes can occur. Dr. Tomabechi has developed the technology to intentionally design this as subliminal sound sources.

Emitting scents through sound, sapping courage—direct intervention into the unconscious

Several anecdotes shared by Dr. Tomabechi during the interview vividly illustrate the latent power of sound.

One story involved his work on the film ‘YAMATO: The Men of the Yamato’. He used sound alone to make the audience perceive the “smell of gunpowder.”Another involved introducing “sounds designed to demoralize” at an airport in a certain country for counter-terrorism purposes, which reportedly prevented actual terrorist attacks. These are applications of a technology called “active steganography,” embedding messages into the subconscious auditory-visual realm to trigger psychological and physical responses unnoticed by conscious awareness.

What’s crucial here is Dr. Tomabechi’s observation that art and this technology are fundamentally connected. What artists “accidentally achieved through intuition”—influencing the audience’s unconscious, stirring emotions, and rewriting cognition—is now becoming something “anyone can intentionally and reproducibly achieve” through cognitive science and AI.

This issue structurally aligns with the “attention extraction” discussed in the context of social media traps and advertising traps. Our unconscious minds have already become targets that can be intentionally manipulated. Yet simultaneously, pathways exist to harness this unconsciousness positively. The core issue always lies in “who uses this technology and for what purpose.”

Cognitive Warfare and Modern Society: Living in an Era Where the Unconscious Can Be Rewritten

Decoding and Re-injecting Brain States via fMRI × AI

The discussion of “Cognitive Warfare” toward the end of the dialogue represents its most serious section.

Dr. Tomabechi described research as follows: Show/play images and sounds to a person, then capture their brain state at that moment using functional MRI (fMRI). Analyze this with AI, then reintroduce it into the brain with slight modifications. By repeating this feedback loop, ultimately—for example, seeing red but the brain perceiving blue—cognitive rewriting has been successfully achieved at the laboratory level.

Dr. Tomabechi, as a professor at a U.S. defense-affiliated university, lectures on cognitive warfare in Washington, D.C. He states that this technology is already in the implementation phase as a system capable of imparting cognitive effects to images with the “push of a button.”

This is not science fiction. It is reality unfolding at this very moment.

We are already immersed in an “unrecognized cognitive warfare.”

Here, we must pause and consider something. The essence of cognitive warfare is “rewriting cognition without the opponent noticing.” In other words, a successful state of cognitive warfare is one where the target feels “nothing has changed.“

Even if not as sophisticated as Dr. Tomabechi’s research level, we are routinely exposed to cognitive rewriting in our daily lives.As discussed in The News Trap, the images and sounds repeatedly broadcast by the media unconsciously program our fear responses. The vast amount of creative content deployed by the advertising industry is designed to implant the goal “You need XX” into our brains. Social media algorithms determine feed display order knowing full well that emotions like anger and anxiety generate the highest engagement.

So are we powerless? The answer is no.

The greatest hope this dialogue offers lies in the very principle that “this world is made of mind.” External cognitive manipulation succeeds precisely because we remain “unaware” of its mechanisms. The moment “awareness” arises, metacognition (the awareness of one’s own cognition) activates, enabling us to inspect and recalibrate our own filters.

This lies directly on the extension of the mechanism discussed in ‘You Are the Placebo’: ‘thoughts change the body’.As the placebo effect demonstrates, a single belief (cognition) can even alter the body’s physiological responses. Therefore, reclaiming control of that cognition from external sources and consciously reconstructing it through our own deliberate choices—in Dr. Tomabechi’s words, “making judgments 100% by oneself”—is the ultimate defense and, simultaneously, the ultimate awakening.

Conclusion and Next Action: Practical Steps to Reclaim “Mental Control”

We have reached the deepest part of this article, which has analyzed and examined the dialogue between Dr. Hidetoshi Tomabechi and Takashi Murakami. Let us integrate the structure that has emerged here.

Ultimately, this dialogue points to a single, vast circular structure.

• “The world is created by the mind (cognition)” → Goal setting determines the filter, and the filter renders the world
• “Most people delegate their goal setting to others” → We live by goals unconsciously programmed by society, education, and media
• “By increasing abstraction, the visible world fundamentally changes” → Just as an ant perceives three dimensions, leaping dimensions liberates life
• “Art is the act of bringing information from dimensions beyond ordinary cognition into this world” → Viewers access it through embodied experience, elevating their cognitive dimension
• “Cognitive warfare technology is now in the implementation phase as a system designed to intentionally rewrite this cognition” → If you remain unaware, you are manipulated; if you become aware, you can reclaim your freedom

In other words, understanding the structure of this world, reclaiming your own goal-setting as your own, raising your level of abstraction, and accessing higher-level cognition through art—this is the “essence of coaching” Dr. Tomabechi speaks of, the “artist’s work” Takashi Murakami refers to, and the very “awakening” Mindset Design has pursued.

Next Action: Three Practices for Awakening

Rather than consuming this profound insight as mere “interesting talk,” we propose the following three concrete actions to update your cognitive OS:

• Start your “Goal Inventory” today: Write down the goals you currently pursue as “a given” (annual income, job title, social status, etc.). Then ask yourself about each one: “Is this truly a goal that arose from my own heart, or was it planted by someone else?” Becoming aware of the horror of continuing to invest your life in goals that aren’t 100% your own is the starting point for everything.
• Make time to access art through “physicality”: Stand before a painting in a museum and imagine the sequence in which the artist moved their brush across the canvas.When listening to music at a concert, mentally trace the movements of the performer’s fingers and arms. When you approach art not as “consumption” but with an attitude of “re-experiencing the creator’s physicality,” sound might appear as light, or you might feel the air emanating from a painting—an update to your subconscious mind may be activated.
• Practice daily metacognition about “what captures your attention”: The foundation of defense in cognitive warfare is “awareness.” The moment you pick up your smartphone, ask yourself, “Where is my attention trying to go right now?”After watching TV news, observe: “What emotions have been planted within me now?” This one-second meta-cognition is the first switch to deactivate unconscious programming. News and social media target your attention—your very life. The moment you become aware, you shift from being a victim to reclaiming your power.

“This world is an illusion created entirely by the mind”—Dr. Tomabechi’s words do not condemn us to despair. Rather, they represent the ultimate hope. For if the world is made by the mind, changing the mind changes the world. Rewrite your goals, reset your filters, and with each step up the ladder of abstraction, the reality you perceive becomes, quite literally, “another world.”

That first step begins the very moment you finish reading this article. What your mind chooses. What it directs its attention toward. That alone is the sole variable determining your “reality.”