From my contemplation and experience,
Vision is to “See through”.
Vision is the act of penetration through the phenomenology of the world,
So as to never lose sight of the essence,
Which is the “ineffable infinite mystery” that underlies all.
Vision comes from transcendence.
The greater the transcendence, the greater the vision.
Vision is the capacity to recognize emptiness (appearances) and no-thingness.
To see that no thing/form is real,
And that the reality underlying things/forms is not a thing at all.
It is to see that every point of perception in your experience,
Is a doorway or window into the infinite.
It is when your light passes through everything,
And is not stopped by anything.
About wonder
‘Wonder’ is to see infinity, the boundless, and the limitless.
It is a kind of openness.
As the William Blake quote goes:
“If the doors of perception were cleansed,
Every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite.”
Feeling great wonder about something would mean,
That particular door of perception is open in you.
The science of attitude and perception
Every aspect of existence that we see outside,
Has a corresponding component of that within ourselves too.
Perception is from resonance/recognition/alignment.
That is why it is said “You only experience the self, not the world”,
OR “You experience the world only as reflected in your self”.
All perception is a kind of resonance between the outer and the inner.
It is not that the outer and inner are separated in time by a linear process.
They simultaneous spawn,
Like how the dreamer character and the dream environment spawn together simultaneously.
Like for example, if you start to hate some aspect of yourself,
At that very instant, you also simultaneously prime yourself into hating all other potential reminders/representations/symbols/patterns of that aspect from the outside.
This is because, reality is ‘experience’,
And experience is fractal in nature.
What you hold in mind, you see outside.
And what you see outside, you hold in mind.
You see similar motifs/patterns/symbols/representations,
i.e. all that reflect the idea that you are holding.
The outer-inner appear to be in a constant state of transaction.
Sometimes an inner change alters the outer perception.
Sometimes an outer change alters the perception of the inner.
So from this level of perspective,
There is not even a you vs an other or inner vs outer.
It is a single swath that instantly manifests together.
The attitudes I hold towards every aspect of existence,
Multiply themselves infinitely and instantly throughout the entire scape of existence.
When saying ‘The attitudes I hold…’, I was implying that I am the determiner.
But actually, when delving deeper, I see that even these attitudes,
Also seem to be ‘appearances’.
Rather then being something I determine,
They seem to be flowing through and expressing through me.
My ability to alter them or control them,
Seems to be determined by how much energy/power I have,
And my level of perception and dis-identification i.e. whether I can even perceive those attitudes as objects in my awareness.
This energy level is again conditional of sort, again the effect of many other cyclic processes.
To dis-identify from anything, you must first have the power/energy to separate yourself from it and see it as an object.
When enmeshed and identified into something,
Even if you can see this enmeshment,
You need enough power/freq/energy to extricate yourself out of that.
It is similar to how we need enough external force to overcome newton’s first law of inertia.
Generally, you function from a certain station of freq,
While accessing all kinds of states from there.
This I call the LOC (level of consciousness) of the subtle body.
I could say, ‘What you are is where you are seeing from’.
What you do not see, will be something you are subject to, and it will rule you from within.
What you do see, is something subject to you, and can be ruled.
For many people, what I see is that, their life-fires/soul are enmeshed and identified with their genetics (to varying degrees/levels).
It is like they are embedded inside those grids, and therefore all of their life fires only serve the demands of those structures.
They are completely unaware of this, because they identify totally with the feelings/perceptions arising from these grids.
It reminds me of animals, how they function only within 2 lines, only within a certain set pattern.
For human beings, it seems,
The bottom line is similar to reptiles/mammals,
But the top line is super high.
The spectrum is vast and there is enormous potential to rise up in awareness.
Desire and Perception
Is desire/interest because of perception?
Or Does perception itself come because there is desire/interest?
Or Do they both go together (arise together and pass together)?
In other words,
Do you see because you want to see?
Or Do you want because you see?
Or Do the seeing and the wanting go together?
Is desire the cause of perception?
Or perception the cause of desire?
For instance, for a child who has never tasted sugar,
There is no perception (of that thing) yet, therefore no desire.
But once there is perception of sugar (the thing), the desire for it is awakened.
This would be the case of ‘perception causing desire for that thing’.
It is the case of: “I never knew I wanted this, but now that I see it, I want it more than ever”.
‘Desire causing perception’ is “You see what you want to see (those things)”.
For instance, you are walking on the road and you want to catch a cab.
What do you see, just cabs and cabs right.
Generally causation implies separation in time.
But here, I would say both are simultaneous.
Like the burning fire being desire,
And the light emanating from it being perception.
The burning fire and the light emitted from it are simultaneous.
However, in my examples, those were cases of:
Desire for specific things and perception of those specific things.
Now this is what happens/plays out in time.
And you could find the causal relations between the 2.
Another related aspect to this is ‘desire and memory’.
Memory creates desire (for that memory)
Desire (for that memory) then seeks for more such memories.
Which came first? The memory or desire?
There is a kind of cycling between the 2.
Like hunger/desire and food/memories to satiate it.
Why perspective is so important
Suppose:
I took photos with an awesome DSLR of only cowdung in a place,
And sent you a collection of 150 such photos,
What would you think?
That the whole place is nothing but a pile of shit?
But the reality of that is, all the dung was spread quite a bit.
Each picture might have looked larger than life on your HD screen,
But the actual place was completely different,
A neutral normal ordinary place with everyone going about their usual business.
Now let’s take the opposite case:
The opposite phenomenon may happen in a place like Instagram.
When celebrities etc. take photos of places from strategic spots,
Wearing exotic dresses, and add magical filter effects,
All this would make the place itself look like a dream fantasy.
Based on watching all these exotic posts of such places,
I’m sure many might have traveled with their family with the hope of getting some taste of that same magic.
And maybe what they found was that the places fell far short of their expectation?
Maybe they were just usual ordinary places with everyone doing their usual stuff?
The kind of information pouring into our HD digital screens,
Can seriously warp our perception about everything.
It is of course not only pictures but also narratives of different events that hugely shape our perception and experience.
A very interesting story I read a while ago was about this very perceptual distortion.
The story is titled: The island news network, I think.
The story goes like this:
In a group of 100 islands, each island had its own news station.
Whenever there was a shark attack, which would happen once in 2 years in one of the islands, that would get reported in that island-specific news channel.
Then later they unified all of the islands and created a single news channel.
Now the news of the shark attack started showing up in the citizen’s HD screens every 2 weeks.
It was so frequent, and shown in such detail, that everyone in all the islands entirely stopped swimming.
So the amount of information in the world is infinite.
We have to be aware of the balance of our perspective and be conscious about this kind of warping and distortion that can so easily happen, considering how we have abundant access to audio/video/writings in today’s INFORMATION AGE.
I took photos with an awesome DSLR of only cowdung in a place,
And sent you a collection of 150 such photos,
What would you think?
That the whole place is nothing but a pile of shit?
But the reality of that is, all the dung was spread quite a bit.
Each picture might have looked larger than life on your HD screen,
But the actual place was completely different,
A neutral normal ordinary place with everyone going about their usual business.
Now let’s take the opposite case:
The opposite phenomenon may happen in a place like Instagram.
When celebrities etc. take photos of places from strategic spots,
Wearing exotic dresses, and add magical filter effects,
All this would make the place itself look like a dream fantasy.
Based on watching all these exotic posts of such places,
I’m sure many might have traveled with their family with the hope of getting some taste of that same magic.
And maybe what they found was that the places fell far short of their expectation?
Maybe they were just usual ordinary places with everyone doing their usual stuff?
The kind of information pouring into our HD digital screens,
Can seriously warp our perception about everything.
It is of course not only pictures but also narratives of different events that hugely shape our perception and experience.
A very interesting story I read a while ago was about this very perceptual distortion.
The story is titled: The island news network, I think.
The story goes like this:
In a group of 100 islands, each island had its own news station.
Whenever there was a shark attack, which would happen once in 2 years in one of the islands, that would get reported in that island-specific news channel.
Then later they unified all of the islands and created a single news channel.
Now the news of the shark attack started showing up in the citizen’s HD screens every 2 weeks.
It was so frequent, and shown in such detail, that everyone in all the islands entirely stopped swimming.
So the amount of information in the world is infinite.
We have to be aware of the balance of our perspective and be conscious about this kind of warping and distortion that can so easily happen, considering how we have abundant access to audio/video/writings in today’s INFORMATION AGE.
The idea of causation begins with you
The idea of causation begins with you.
If you see yourself as the ‘doer’,
You would accordingly see causation everywhere.
On the other hand,
If you see yourself as a non-doer,
That is, as an effect (of a deeper mystery/plane of forces) rather than a cause,
Then you see the same mystery reflected everywhere outside too.
Our perception of the outside is a fractal projection,
Whose pattern self-replicates from our inner pattern/understanding/view.
The depth to which you know yourself,
Is the same depth with which you see the outer existence.
If you see yourself as the ‘doer’,
You would accordingly see causation everywhere.
On the other hand,
If you see yourself as a non-doer,
That is, as an effect (of a deeper mystery/plane of forces) rather than a cause,
Then you see the same mystery reflected everywhere outside too.
Our perception of the outside is a fractal projection,
Whose pattern self-replicates from our inner pattern/understanding/view.
The depth to which you know yourself,
Is the same depth with which you see the outer existence.
I am a translator
I am only the translator/decoding-instrument,
Of the winds of vibrations I receive.
My in-sight sees/enjoys and translates the experiences,
That pass through me.
That is why my blog is titled ‘perception flow’ (in the URL),
Which is the collection of these translations.
I am just the seer.
I can play with whatever flows/passes through my space,
In the flowing river of content/appearances,
Like a spherical mirror or diamond,
Flying through creation and reflecting it in its own unique way.
All of this is what I have captured,
In the net of my perceptual faculty or vessel.
It is all food from the gods/higher-dimensions,
With which I enrich my being and experience.
But my true nature is simply “NOT”.
It transcends all of this.
I am not the seen nor the implied seer.
The seer-seen appear together and go together,
Like the negative-film and photo go together.
I appear as various seer-seen combos,
In the river of flowing content-appearances.
In my experience,
I alternate between all sorts of extremes.
I [tornado, whirlpool, distill, centrifuge](as a verb) everything into its essence.
And what I see is that the final essence of everything is source itself.
That is why I titled my blog ‘Journey to the Abstract’.
Since I see the greatest unity is also the most abstract.
God/source in a way is the ultimate abstract.
I feel like my life does not have a central sun,
It feels more like,
I’m moving fast in a train,
Post-midnight watching fireflies,
Whose lights bob in and out of existence.
Occasionally I do pass by some stations,
Which are full of bright lights.
A lot of the my life though,
Has been experienced in the twilight/liminal zone.
My favorite time of the day is sunset.
The sun yields,
To let all the lesser lights and the universe pour through.
The ego and the sun have a lot of similarities imo.
When the sun shines,
The whole sky is overpowered by its light and power.
While in the evening as the sun sets,
There is then the “revelation” of the cosmos/universe/stars.
Reminds me of life and death.
Maybe when we die, we will receive a similar revelation.
Of the winds of vibrations I receive.
My in-sight sees/enjoys and translates the experiences,
That pass through me.
That is why my blog is titled ‘perception flow’ (in the URL),
Which is the collection of these translations.
I am just the seer.
I can play with whatever flows/passes through my space,
In the flowing river of content/appearances,
Like a spherical mirror or diamond,
Flying through creation and reflecting it in its own unique way.
All of this is what I have captured,
In the net of my perceptual faculty or vessel.
It is all food from the gods/higher-dimensions,
With which I enrich my being and experience.
But my true nature is simply “NOT”.
It transcends all of this.
I am not the seen nor the implied seer.
The seer-seen appear together and go together,
Like the negative-film and photo go together.
I appear as various seer-seen combos,
In the river of flowing content-appearances.
In my experience,
I alternate between all sorts of extremes.
I [tornado, whirlpool, distill, centrifuge](as a verb) everything into its essence.
And what I see is that the final essence of everything is source itself.
That is why I titled my blog ‘Journey to the Abstract’.
Since I see the greatest unity is also the most abstract.
God/source in a way is the ultimate abstract.
I feel like my life does not have a central sun,
It feels more like,
I’m moving fast in a train,
Post-midnight watching fireflies,
Whose lights bob in and out of existence.
Occasionally I do pass by some stations,
Which are full of bright lights.
A lot of the my life though,
Has been experienced in the twilight/liminal zone.
My favorite time of the day is sunset.
The sun yields,
To let all the lesser lights and the universe pour through.
The ego and the sun have a lot of similarities imo.
When the sun shines,
The whole sky is overpowered by its light and power.
While in the evening as the sun sets,
There is then the “revelation” of the cosmos/universe/stars.
Reminds me of life and death.
Maybe when we die, we will receive a similar revelation.
The concept of negative vision
There was a story I heard Sadhguru narrate, and that played a great role in helping me reach this insight.
The story goes like this:
There was once a man who was a painter.
He acquired some disease from which his vision started slowly deteriorating.
His friend asked him, “What will you do if your vision gets too bad to paint anymore?”
The painter answered, “I will continue to paint until I can see.
If my eye sight gets too bad, then hmm, I will become an art critic.”
This story is hilarious and has a lot of irony.
But it also contains profound wisdom in it.
Positive vision = Presence of presence
Negative vision = Presence of absence
Then the question would be: How can there be ‘presence of absence’ at all?
The answer to that would be: Right! Absence cannot exist.
Presence of absence is the absence of the presence of something else.
That is ‘negative vision’.
The algorithm is:
It is like if I present a variable X, to you.
You see it as “not A”, “not B”, “not C”, and so on.
Like if I show you a laptop:
With negative vision, you would see it as, not a desktop, not a tablet, not a TV, and so on.
But that would preclude you from seeing the laptop as it really is.
Another example would be, if I show you a pink bottle, the positive vision person would really experience the pink bottle as pink (as it is).
But the negative vision person would look at it and say, this is not blue, not red, not green, and so on.
Positive vision is to see how “‘this’ is ‘this'”.
Negative vision is to see how “‘this’ is ‘not that'”.
The ‘that’ here is a holding on to an ideal or structure from memory like a ghost image in your perception and then using that to not only obscure what really is, but it also actively resists what is.
Negative vision is a disease, because it is dis-ease, you resist what actually is, with what you are holding on to from your memory which imposes itself like a ghost image in your perception and creates the resistance.
You hold on to this memory ghost, impose it and obscure ‘what actually is’, and also actively resist ‘what actually is’ in the process.
This concept that I explained above, has DEEP PROFOUND implications in illuminating this in-articulatable disease we carry in our lives.
My own life is replete with zillions of examples, where I have seen things with negative vision.
How many times, have you perceived/experienced/seen your surroundings/yourself /others with negative vision?
The story goes like this:
There was once a man who was a painter.
He acquired some disease from which his vision started slowly deteriorating.
His friend asked him, “What will you do if your vision gets too bad to paint anymore?”
The painter answered, “I will continue to paint until I can see.
If my eye sight gets too bad, then hmm, I will become an art critic.”
This story is hilarious and has a lot of irony.
But it also contains profound wisdom in it.
Positive vision = Presence of presence
Negative vision = Presence of absence
Then the question would be: How can there be ‘presence of absence’ at all?
The answer to that would be: Right! Absence cannot exist.
Presence of absence is the absence of the presence of something else.
That is ‘negative vision’.
The algorithm is:
It is like if I present a variable X, to you.
You see it as “not A”, “not B”, “not C”, and so on.
Like if I show you a laptop:
With negative vision, you would see it as, not a desktop, not a tablet, not a TV, and so on.
But that would preclude you from seeing the laptop as it really is.
Another example would be, if I show you a pink bottle, the positive vision person would really experience the pink bottle as pink (as it is).
But the negative vision person would look at it and say, this is not blue, not red, not green, and so on.
Positive vision is to see how “‘this’ is ‘this'”.
Negative vision is to see how “‘this’ is ‘not that'”.
The ‘that’ here is a holding on to an ideal or structure from memory like a ghost image in your perception and then using that to not only obscure what really is, but it also actively resists what is.
Negative vision is a disease, because it is dis-ease, you resist what actually is, with what you are holding on to from your memory which imposes itself like a ghost image in your perception and creates the resistance.
You hold on to this memory ghost, impose it and obscure ‘what actually is’, and also actively resist ‘what actually is’ in the process.
This concept that I explained above, has DEEP PROFOUND implications in illuminating this in-articulatable disease we carry in our lives.
My own life is replete with zillions of examples, where I have seen things with negative vision.
How many times, have you perceived/experienced/seen your surroundings/yourself /others with negative vision?
All identity is relational
The self-other is like a single magnet with its 2 poles arising together.
In our outer life:
* The self is implicit and the other is explicit.
* The self is the background and the other is the foreground.
And this seeing can be reversed too, as is done during deep introspection and contemplation.
* The other can be made the background, and the self can be made the foreground.
* Similarly the other can be made implicit and the self can be made explicit.
So the picture is the same in both cases, but depending on where you focus, the other pole get blurred out.Â
The image below shows the 2 possibilities of focus:
So the self-other arise together mutually and interdependently.
* So whenever there is a self, there is an other.
* And whenever there is an other, there is surely a self.
The sun-signs zodiac literature classifies the signs into 3 kinds of identity natures:
* Cardinal = Identities that have a firm foundation and keep expanding (Rajasic) = mind dominant = positive charge (in the magnetic field) = Symbolizes a Volcano = Conscious mind = Dynamic, Action-oriented, Initiating.
* Fixed = Identities that are fixed (Tamasic) = body dominant = neutral charge = Symbolizes a Mountain = Unconscious mind = Stable, Determined, Unyielding.
* Mutable = Identities that are constantly changing (Sattvic) = soul dominant = negative charge = Symbolizes a New Born baby = Superconscious mind = Subtle, Transformative, Reflective.
There is a lot of deep literature on this subject, I have really said very little above.
But this will help me to speak about certain other points.
You can either change yourself to fit more and more into the world or change the world to fit more and more into your self-conception.
* The cardinal identity type will only associate with things people places concepts etc., that expand its own identity structure. And it will avoid all the negative forces.
* The fixed identity type will try to change the other and the whole world to validate its own attachment to a fixed way of perceiving itself.
So the fixed type is in a way against both positive and negative forces because it wants to maintain the same perception.
* The mutable type will keep adapting and changing/shape-shifting itself into different roles and identities in the world like an explorer. It changes itself to explore the different dimensions of the world, rather than change the world per se.
In our outer life:
* The self is implicit and the other is explicit.
* The self is the background and the other is the foreground.
And this seeing can be reversed too, as is done during deep introspection and contemplation.
* The other can be made the background, and the self can be made the foreground.
* Similarly the other can be made implicit and the self can be made explicit.
So the picture is the same in both cases, but depending on where you focus, the other pole get blurred out.Â
The image below shows the 2 possibilities of focus:
So the self-other arise together mutually and interdependently.
* So whenever there is a self, there is an other.
* And whenever there is an other, there is surely a self.
The sun-signs zodiac literature classifies the signs into 3 kinds of identity natures:
* Cardinal = Identities that have a firm foundation and keep expanding (Rajasic) = mind dominant = positive charge (in the magnetic field) = Symbolizes a Volcano = Conscious mind = Dynamic, Action-oriented, Initiating.
* Fixed = Identities that are fixed (Tamasic) = body dominant = neutral charge = Symbolizes a Mountain = Unconscious mind = Stable, Determined, Unyielding.
* Mutable = Identities that are constantly changing (Sattvic) = soul dominant = negative charge = Symbolizes a New Born baby = Superconscious mind = Subtle, Transformative, Reflective.
There is a lot of deep literature on this subject, I have really said very little above.
But this will help me to speak about certain other points.
You can either change yourself to fit more and more into the world or change the world to fit more and more into your self-conception.
* The cardinal identity type will only associate with things people places concepts etc., that expand its own identity structure. And it will avoid all the negative forces.
* The fixed identity type will try to change the other and the whole world to validate its own attachment to a fixed way of perceiving itself.
So the fixed type is in a way against both positive and negative forces because it wants to maintain the same perception.
* The mutable type will keep adapting and changing/shape-shifting itself into different roles and identities in the world like an explorer. It changes itself to explore the different dimensions of the world, rather than change the world per se.
Sanity is relative
The concept of sanity is relative.
Relative to the:
1. Level of vision
2. Level of perception
4. Level of consciousness (LOC concept from David Hawkins)
5. Number/breadth/height of perspectives you can see
6. The dynamic range of perspectives you can hold at a time
7. The extent of your spatial vision
8. The extent of your temporal vision both forward (future) and backward (past)
Relative to the:
1. Level of vision
2. Level of perception
4. Level of consciousness (LOC concept from David Hawkins)
5. Number/breadth/height of perspectives you can see
6. The dynamic range of perspectives you can hold at a time
7. The extent of your spatial vision
8. The extent of your temporal vision both forward (future) and backward (past)
Journey to the Abstract 