On Human Perception
© 1996
Perceiver -- Filter of Personal Bias -- Essential Universe.
Over-simplified, these are the players in human perception. It's at the level of the filter of personal bias that we "create our own universe". This universe is illusory in that it is composed of and determined by our reactions to what we perceive of the essential universe through our filter of personal bias (a reaction to a reaction). It is conversely real in that we experience it and are changed by it. It is self-perpetuating and its relevance to the essential universe varies from individual to individual.
Perception through the filter of personal bias produces a polarized vision of the universe. This places us in contention with the essential universe as we try to supercede it with our self-created universe. Reflecting the subconscious binary-logic of the ego's most rudimentary self-defining, we end up experiencing the universe as divided into 'self' and 'other'. The pole of
'other' however, is completely referenced to 'self' and is not a perception of the essential universe...again, it is both illusory and real, a reaction to a reaction.
In a path of self-realization, an essential first-step is a scrutiny of one's filter of bias. Only when this filter is known and then set aside, is there a perception of the essential universe itself. Up until then, perception is completely self-involved, revealing more about one's own psyche than the universe.
Direct perception of the essential universe is the opposite of "creating our own universe". At the level of the filter of bias, we are separated/separating from the essential universe; but when this filter is set aside, we find ourselves to be within, and a part of, the essential universe.
This shift in perspective allows one to see that 'other' is 'self'.
Best to you,
:) Rawn Clark
3 Aug 96