Perception is the World

Yesterday I was listening to a talk given by the teacher James Baraz, author of Awakening Joy. In this talk, James recounted his meeting of a 13 year old girl who claimed to have conceived of an idea for an invention that would eliminate war. She called this invention the “Perspective Helmet” and it would enable the wearer to see things from the perspective of whomever it was they wished, thus enabling the wearer to understand the other person’s point of view from a deeper level.

I am sure we all remember when the internet was abuzz about “The Dress” and whether it was blue and black or whether it was white and gold. It seems that these colors are so different from each other that the “right” way of seeing it would be obvious. However, because of differences that various individuals have in their ocular landscape, some individuals saw this dress as being one way, others had a different perception, which appeared equally as real to them. People in both of these camps believed that they had the correct way. Apparently there were quite a few heated debates over this photograph of a dress, which, as it turned out, was actually blue and black (although I saw it as gold and white).

We can be quite attached to the way in which we perceive the world around us and it is easy for us to forget that each of us has our own way of perceiving “reality”. It is important for us to understand that our ways of perceiving are based on thoughts and ideas. These thoughts and ideas were placed into our minds by our parents, our cultures, our religions, and our various experiences in life. But these thoughts and ideas that construct our paradigms are simply that, thoughts and ideas. We erroneously begin to believe that these are “our” thoughts and ideas, that these thoughts and ideas are “us”. We falsely identify with these amorphous, fleeting, non-physical, and largely arbitrary thoughts and thereby take it personally, sometimes even feel it viscerally, when someone disagrees with or attacks these simple ideas and perceptions.

In essence, these perceptions and thoughts are neither good nor bad. Further thoughts, attachments, emotions, and our self-identification with these non-entities makes us apprehend them, in our minds, as “good” or “bad”. But there is, at the ultimate ground of consciousness, no substantiality, realness, or existence to these views.

An important part of awakening is realizing this and knowing that whenever we become disturbed, whenever our equanimity is lost, it is simply because of a thought. It isn’t because of some action, but because of the thoughts we have surrounding the action. Our thoughts make our world. As such, the invitation exists as to which kind of world will we create for ourselves with our thoughts? We can’t really control which thoughts will appear in our mindstream and when, but we can control which ones we will continue to cultivate and which ones we will cut off. How will we use our powerful tools of perception? Will we create with them consciously or will will be ruled, unconsciously, by the self-cherishing, grasping mind, that believes itself to be these amorphous, insubstantial entities? 

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Krishnamurti’s Notebook 1

Everywhere there was silence; the hills were motionless, the trees were still and the river-beds empty; the birds had found shelter for the night and everything was still, even the village dogs. It had rained and the clouds were motionless. Silence grew and became intense, wider and deeper. What was outside was now outside; the brain which had listened to the silence of the hills, fields and groves was itself now silent; it no longer listened to itself; it had gone through that and had become quiet, naturally, without any enforcement. It was still, ready to stir itself on the instant. It was still, deep within itself; like a bird that folds its wings, it had folded upon itself; it was not asleep nor lazy, but in folding upon itself, it had entered into depths which were beyond itself. The brain is essentially superficial; its activities are superficial, almost mechanical; its activities and responses are immediate, though this immediacy is translated in terms of the future. Its thoughts and feelings are on the surface, though it may think and feel far into the future and way back into the past. All experience and memory are deep only to the extent of their own limited capacity by the brain being still and turning upon itself, it was no longer experiencing outwardly or inwardly. Consciousness, the fragments of many experiences, compulsions, fears, hopes and despairs of the past and future, the contradictions of the race and its own self-centered activities, was absent; it was not there. The entire being was utterly still and as it became intense, it was not more or less; it was intense, there was entering into a depth or a depth which came into being which thought, feeling, consciousness could not enter into. It was a dimension which the brain could not capture or understand. And there was no observer, witnessing this depth. Every part of one’s whole being was alert, sensitive but intensely still. This new, this depth was expanding, exploding, going away, developing in its own explosions but out of time and beyond space.

-Jiddu Krishnamurti, Krishnamurti’s Notebook

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