When you look at a tree, you perceive the tree. When you focus your attention onto a single leaf on the tree, you perceive the leaf, but you no longer perceive the tree, even though it is still in your field of vision. And when you further narrow your attention to the colour within that leaf, you perceive green, but you perceive neither leaf nor tree at that moment. Likewise, when you look — from a slight distance — at a forest, you perceive forest, not individual trees.
In each case, you perform not just a visual shift, but also an attention shift — a mind-shift in which you change the context of the attention relative to your stored paradigm.
When you look at a tree, the visual image is compared with mental records to find a match. In this case, three-dimensional shape, colour, texture, and overall arrangement of the visible components are checked. This checking of form to find a match occurs very rapidly because the mind classifies its records very efficiently. At this stage, “tree” is not yet perceived.
On finding the match for form, the mind directs the attention to check for function. The visual impressions are again compared with mental records to find the appropriate match — actual tree? picture of a tree? miniature tree? healthy? diseased? or dead? etc.
Once it is confirmed that the object can fit the internal concept of what a tree should be, both in form and in function, the visual object is mentally labelled with a name, and the tree is recognised, together with its values and meaning — the tree is now perceived.
With commonly encountered objects, the entire process is completed unconsciously in a fraction of a second.
When the attention shifts from “tree” to “leaf” or “forest”, it is as though the mind zooms a little in or out in referring to the paradigm. This analogy of zooming is limited, however, because the paradigm is not a simple 3-D structure, nor is it even analogous to the well-known “tree-structure” of regular classification systems. All the senses, including hearing, smell, etc., and not just vision, are incorporated. (How would you represent the smell of pencil-shavings in 3-D?)
Furthermore, every component of the paradigm is associated with personal emotions and values, linked to a central subjective notion of the self. The paradigm is multi-modal and multi-dimensional, with instantaneous links joining all its parts.
So, when you focus your attention to the colour within a leaf, the resultant perception is “green” (or “yellow”, or “red”, or whatever). But colour is not limited or unique only to leaves — not even green. The mind jumps to refer to another aspect of its paradigm. This jump is not just the relatively obvious shift in the external visual focus but a distinct internal mind-shift immediately following the visual shift. The mind-shift is imperceptible to the inexperienced observer, but it occurs with every perception, each time the mind refers to any aspect of its multi-dimensional paradigm to find a matching fit for any sensory experience in the process of perceiving.
Suppose you are watching an insect, with absorbed attention. During the time you are looking intently at the insect, you cannot notice background sounds and odours in your environment. After watching awhile, your attention slackens, and just then, you notice a bird calling from not too far away. As you re-direct your attention, it calls again, and you listen attentively to identify it. While you listen intently, you effectively have no vision: your attention is devoted only to the hearing. Then a gentle breeze wafts a floral fragrance your way. Examining the fragrance attentively, you neither see nor hear.
With each shift of your concentrated attention, there occurs an unnoticed parallel shift in your perceptual context, as your mind continuously tries to fit each sensory experience with meaning.
Perplexity arises when an easy fit cannot be found. Yet, the mind will often have found some kind of a tentative match, even if not a confident one. What the mind then does, depends on whether, within that split-second, it assesses the situation to be threatening. For example, you are walking in the country at twilight and you suddenly see a long, dark sinuous shape on the ground nearby. You perceive “snake!” and, startled, you jump away from it for immediate self-preservation. It does not move. Now no longer feeling under threat, you look at it with concentrated attention. Finally, you perceive that it was just a crack in the ground, and relieved, you resolve not to be unnecessarily startled.
If the mind cannot even find a tentative match within its paradigm for a sensory phenomenon, it will investigate the phenomenon more carefully to understand it as a new concept and incorporate it into the paradigm. This occurs most intensively in early childhood, but can, of course, continue at any time so long as the mind functions normally. (For many, paradigm-building continues fairly intensively right through the mid-twenties, after which it declines. Notice how people often become less and less observant, and more and more carelessly presumptuous, from their late twenties. Observe how people of different ages react to a novelty such as a plasma lamp.)
The kind of conditioning that a person has experienced determines the state of his current paradigm, and the state of his paradigm determines what he can perceive, and how he perceives (e.g., how he interprets with his perceptions). How a person perceives and behaves is therefore largely determined by his internal paradigm. This has important practical applications for the thinking person, especially if he wishes to improve himself and accord with actuality. It will not do for him to assume that his paradigm of reality is reliably accurate, for it is riddled with misconceptions. He must always be alert to inaccuracies, distortions, and delusions within his mind.
The unthinking person, however, presumptuously misperceives his way through life.
When describing survival, we usually do so in abstract terms. In actual practice and behaviour, however, survival is always referenced to the self. For any individual, survival is continuation of the self. And what, exactly, is continuation of the self?
The “self” is just a convenient notion, but one that has been so habitually resorted to, and so frequently reinforced, that it has acquired the most powerful feeling of reality of all within one’s experience. The mind refers all sensory and volitional experience to the virtual entity of a centre of experiencing (as in “centre” of gravity) — the experiencer (perceiver, thinker, doer), the ‘I’ — in other words, to the mind, this ‘I’ is the experiencer of everything seen, heard, sensed, cognised, thought, or intended.
The ‘I’ is the centre around which the entire paradigm of reality is formulated and to which all parts of the paradigm relate. In all conscious mental functions, the mind accords the highest importance to the ‘I’ by identifying with it. (However attractive a self-image it may have been elaborated into, this ‘I’ is nothing more than a mere notion, but this fact does not assist survival, and is therefore obscured by the ordinary mind.)
Survival, as “continuation of the self” is the volitional impelling of the momentum of continuing (i.e., continuing-to-be) of this notion of the ‘I’, so that there can be renewed involvements of the consciousness in the ‘I’. This volitional impelling is largely sub-conscious to the ordinary mind, but it is, nevertheless, volitional. It operates independently of any assistance from the bodily senses.
In addition, self-preservation has another mode of operation. In this other mode, action is largely conscious. The first of two fundamental rules for the ordinary conscious mind is that the ‘I’ must be safeguarded at all costs. The mind is conditioned to recognise danger and physical threat. In critical situations, the perception of danger causes the individual to do everything he can to protect himself and prevent consciousness of the ‘I’ from being permanently terminated, thus securing his immediate survival.
In calmer circumstances, the other fundamental rule dominates behaviour. This is the propensity for pleasure. It causes the individual to prefer pleasure, and, whenever possible, to seek out something pleasurable, and then to indulge in it. When not under threat, he will give attention to the ways in which he can prolong his life, improve security and comfort, and augment his well-being, whenever opportunities arise.
The main function of the perceptual system is to serve both these fundamental rules, towards conscious preservation and augmentation of the self.
Because of the pressures of biological survival, the whole perceptual mechanism is geared towards speed. Details which would improve the accuracy of the paradigm but have no discernible effect on survival are not perceived but ignored, or even suppressed, while factors which favour survival — including the perception of pain, danger, pleasure, desirability, and other subjective qualities — are emphasised.
Along the way to the Ultimate Reality, one of the most powerful of all insights is the insight into the entire process of perception, and the worldly significance of perception. The seeker will probably need some days to digest the understanding from this insight.
