1. A processor for efficiently recognizing sensory information including a plurality of recognizable features comprising: a feature recognition engine that resolves features from the sensory information and provides a feature information input; and a plurality of processing nodes, arranged in a hierarchy of layers, receiving the input at a lowest layer thereof and being constructed and arranged to simultaneously, and in parallel recognize multiple components of the features, and to transfer recognized features between the layers, and a filter at each node that receives from a bus and is configured to allow or reject a message communicated on the bus to proceed to an inbound buffer of the node for which it filters, and wherein each filter determines acceptance or rejection by comparing an input message to a value indicating the next input to accept, and wherein the value indicating the next input to accept is updated by retrieving a new value from a memory as determined by the current value and a clock, so as to build likely recognition candidates and remove unlikely recognition candidates; and a unit comparing a set of features retrieved from a hash table to an ideal feature and determining which feature from the set of features is the one that most closely matches the ideal feature.