Saturday, February 16, 2008

Perception


If I couldn’t touch or feel this keyboard with my fingertips, would this computer still exist?
If you were blind and could not read this text, would the sentences still be a reality?

For the human machine, reality revolves completely around us, we are at the center of this labyrinth, therefore, anything unknown to us…music we’ve never heard of, people we’ve not met, dimensions beyond the third…all these things don’t exist, at least not in our world, not until we perceive them with our senses.
But the limited human, with its life span and prejudices, cannot begin to perceive everything. Therefore, there must be realities beyond our comprehension, far beyond the worlds I have experienced through the senses.
In India, where a young girl braids her hair before going to the market, I do not exist. She doesn’t perceive me, therefore I’m null in her labyrinth…but do I still exist? Is nonexistence the same as non perception?
Perception brings what already exists into reality. Everything is constant- what is always happening and what is always not happening- this maintains eternally. It is our mental and sensual perception that interprets and shifts.

Imagine Sonia, her workday began smoothly, breakfast was tasty ( a perception) and she felt rested (a perception), the weather was clear ( a perception) and a passersby on the street smiled at her ( a perception); then, she took a phone call from a loved one that ended in an argument. She continues to walk on the same street, but she notices the men staring at her ( a perception), the weather seems too hot (a perception) and all of a sudden, she feels claustrophobic.

Has anything really happened? Has anything in the immediate existence changed? Or is it her mind and its interpretations that have been altered?Are they what is causing her to sense that something has happened?
It is only our perceptions that lead us to believe that we, they, or the environment are shifting. Nothing ever has happened and nothing ever will happen.

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