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Friday, February 5, 2010

Real Perception

Real and true perception has more to do with involvement and sensitivity with total intensity and intense totality. I have many examples for this in real life experience and from our Itihasas, Puranas and history. Let me avoid the examples and get into the question of perception.


1] Our tool of perception the brain is a very delicate, susceptible but extremely capable instrument. However, in normal modes of our perception, we are often subject to certain errors of perception basically because our brain’s bio chemistry itself has a propensity to get conditioned and use those conditioning as tool of perception or very often presume assumptions as perceptions. These are known as classical and inevitable errors of perception. For example if you are sitting inside a train in a station waiting t o proceed on a journey and the train alongside starts to move, you automatically feel for a moment as if your train is moving. Whereas if you were sitting inside the station master’s room and see the same phenomenon then you won’t feel so , because then, you would not be expecting to move. So your expectation created the conditioning of your brain and you assumed as if you were moving, the feeling is almost real. It happens to all normal human beings. So in a way all perception is conditioned and intentional.[ a detailed account of this is available in COLIN WLSON’S excellent book ‘NEW EXISTENTIALISM’ ]

2] It is not often our perception but the scale of observation and frames of reference which create the phenomenon. The scale of observation depends on man; it is he who creates it. In nature, different scales of observation do not exist. There is only one immense, harmonious phenomenon on a scale which, in general, escapes man. The structure of man's brain necessitates dividing into arbitrary compartments and cutting up into isolated pieces. With the aid of several instruments science creates more phantasmagoria: "on our scale of human observation, as pointed out before, the edge of a razor-blade is a continuous line. On the microscopic scale, it is a broken but solid line. On the chemical scale we have atoms of iron and carbon. On the sub-atomic scale we have electrons in perpetual motion which travel at the rate of several thousand miles per second. All these phenomena are in reality the manifestations of the same basic phenomenon, the motions of the electrons. The only difference which exists between them is the scale of observation" [Human Destiny, Lecomte du Nuoy- a marvelous book that everyone must read – if I remember correctly this comes in 34th page.

3] Recently there was a report of a very great Violinist in USA playing the violin one day in a street corner and no one even bothered to notice him. In normal course people struggle to get tickets for his shows. Why this happened? In addition to all that was mentioned earlier about perception what is more important is not recognizing the artist but recognizing the music he produced with an aesthetic sense, even had he been an ordinary unknown artist any person with an aesthetic sense would have bothered to listen. This incident therefore indicates not only indifference but insensitivity to aesthetics.

4] With all these artificially created scales of observation, has science succeeded to unveil the mystery of substance? With every step science has been revising its hypotheses. Maybe (if not surely) even the basic phenomenon, the motions of the electrons, must be revised and adapted to the only one immense, harmonious phenomenon on the pramana scale of observation in its relation to microcosmic Nyava (and macrocosmic Hyang Vidhi), which is indeed Goethe's Weltseele (Welt Ather.)

5] Most often our perception is one-dimensional it cannot perceive from different perspectives much less through different modes of perception I mean multi-sensory and multi-pronged that is having macro vision and ensuring comprehension of even the minutest details of every micro element in the thing perceived. This is not possible to be taught and it has not been even attempted to be taught in known and documented history. But it happens automatically when the trinity of Intuition, Senses and Reason gather together and it is these that produce discoveries, inventions and creations.

6] There is a clear manifestation of this trinity in all forms of bakthi oriented literature and music.

7] If by intuition (or inspiration) we mean a sudden, direct and valid initial conception of a new system occurring spontaneously in the mind of the conceiver; by reason, a constant, logical mathematical, syllogistic (or dialectic) process of thinking of the idea through in its inductive, deductive, analytical and synthetic aspects; and by sensory experience, a perception of the sensory phenomena related to the idea and a sensory verification of it through empirical evidence (experimental, observational, statistical and practical), then all three types of mental activity are necessary for the discovery, creation, or invention of a significant cultural system. NEITHER INTUITION NOR REASON, NOR EMPIRICAL EXPERIENCE ALONE IS SUFFICIENT. Innumerable scientists have spent their lives in an empirical (sensory) study of phenomena without achieving any notable discovery. Multitudes of teachers of philosophy, logic, and mathematics have failed to conceive any new philosophical, logical, mathematical or other system. There have been millions of intuitive daydreamers, who, having stumbled upon an idea, have failed to clarify, develop, verify and apply it in constructing an original system. TRULY CREATIVE THINKERS HAVE BEEN FORTUNATE IN POSSESSING AND EXERCISING ALL THREE TYPES OF MENTAL ABILITY.

8] On the whole our perception is inherently extremely vulnerable and  influenced by environmental, cultural, social, religious, academic and many other forms of conditioning.

9] Because all our perceptions which emanate from our thoughts are , as the great JK used to say are caught in the vicious circle, a vicious circle which justifies the statement that all our knowledge is limited.

10] The vicious circle is like this every situation in life we 1] act or react 2] this action or reaction gives us 3] some knowledge or/and experience 4] this knowledge or/and experience is stored as memory in the form of 5] thought next time when we encounter similar or dissimilar situation we act or react based on the store house of these collective thoughts/knowledge. The grand perception can happen only when we get out of this vicious circle.

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