The Barany Chair
The instrument phase of my Air Force training included a session in the Barany chair named for Dr. Robert Barany, an Austrian Nobel Prize winning physician. Dr. Barany’s early 20th century experiments led to the discovery of the vestibular system of the inner ear as the source of our sense of balance and body movement. The Barany chair was mounted on a rotational axis. The instructor would spin the blindfolded student in one direction, then slow the rate of rotation. The student would feel the sensation of stopping and beginning to turn in the other direction. It provided a lasting impression of the fact that you can’t trust your own sense of movement when you have no visual references.
It is a physiological fact that we can’t trust our own senses without some form of reference. We also can’t trust our own spiritual senses without God through His Word and Holy Spirit as our reference. Isn’t it interesting how God, through our experiences, illustrates His relationship with us. More on this in the next post.