Perception

From Session 154 found in Volume 4 of Seth's Early Sessions:


"Basically, the physical body has the potentiality for perceiving stimuli on a generalized basis. I mean by this that although the eyes are for seeing, the ears for hearing and so forth, the potentials of the physical body include the capacity to hear, for example, through any given portion of the bodily expanse.

"The same applies to seeing, and obviously to feeling or touching. It goes without saying that this potentiality is very seldom realized, but it is part of the human heritage. It is the learning process that conditions you to translate a given stimuli into data that will be picked up by a given physical sense; that is, translations always occur in any case.

"You may see an automobile for example with your eyes, and hear its sound through your ears, but it is also within the human capacity, ideally speaking, to hear the sight of the car, and to see the sound of the car. Practically speaking these capacities have been overlooked in human development simply because the ego hit upon the present model of perception, and clung to it.

"In other species within your field, however, some of these various methods have been chosen and utilized. Many animals for example literally see through the sense of smell. They quite literally perceive what you would call the sight of another animal, through the use of the sense of smell.

"They build up multitudinous variations of odours to build the likeness of a structure complete in its translations as to size, weight and so forth. Sound, then, can be felt as well as heard, although you might say in such cases that the sound is heard in the depths of the tissues. This however being an analogy.

"Now for a moment we will return to our material on action, and you may perhaps see why this fits in so well here. No action is identical to any other action. An action is never entirely dissipated, though it may pass beyond its particular field of origin. This transference, incidentally, from one system to another, necessarily changes the action itself; but for simplicity's sake we may say that an action has its reality within many systems simultaneously.

"The sight of our imaginary automobile, therefore, is perceived by you as a visual stimulus, because you are conditioned to perceiving it in such a fashion. But it is also possible to perceive our automobile in entirely different fashions within different realities, and from various perspectives.

"It is even possible for the physical individual to train himself to change the nature of his own perception of such objects. It is not a question of the car having certain properties, being real to one perceptive view and therefore necessarily unreal to another. To a very large degree, the portion of any reality that you can perceive is determined largely not by the given, so-called real object itself, but from the perspective, and because of, the senses with which you perceive it.

"The scent image built up by the animal is every bit as real as the visual image. Action cannot be caught and held, and the nature of perceiving an action changes the very nature of the action itself. It is indeed, here again, that tension causes such a change.

"Since perceiving the action is itself an action, the perceiving must because of its nature to some extent distort the object of perception.

"Again, in this distortion we see the creation, however minute, of a new reality. The universe is cohesive, but it is also more various than you know even now. The nature of our object, our automobile for example, is indeed largely determined by those who perceive it, for it is different things in reality, and not one thing. Electrically it has an identity, and would be perceived as an entirely different phenomena from within an electrical system, where there would be no perceptors of physical data.

"Within your field the automobile is perceived mainly as a physical object. Within some systems the same automobile would appear to be no more than a shadow. Within some systems the automobile would not be perceived at all, unless it were in motion. In other systems it would not be perceived at all, unless it were not in motion.

"These various conceptions of the automobile would also apply of course to the perception of any physical beings within the car; that is, their reality would also be perceived differently, according to the perspective systems which viewed them.

"You must indeed for practical reasons pretend as if the automobile had no reality except the reality with which you are familiar, but this is not the case. I mentioned feeling sound because this is a capability that lies latent within your own physical system, but this same sort of a juggling of perspective data is what happens, generally speaking, when inhabitants of a different system perceive realities that also have existence within your own system.

"It is really a building up of idea into a whole pattern that can be perceived by the camouflage senses. Any reality therefore will be variously perceived, and the nature of the reality will necessarily be distorted in the very attempt to perceive it. Here again we have our creative tension, whereby a new reality is formed as a result of the distortion itself. Within your system colours may be perceived as sound. The connections with human moods is only too apparent.

"They may also be tasted as well as sniffed, and these experiences are actually to some fair degree carried on continually beneath awareness, all adding up to the individual's perception of a given colour. Colours may even be perceived through an inner sense of balance. Their stability or instability is, therefore, subconsciously appreciated.

"Emotions may even cause a colour reaction. Any reality, regardless of which system it originates within, will appear to some degree within all systems. Even within your own system, though perhaps on a subconscious level, all emotions have a reality in colour. They have, as you know, a chemical reaction which is sniffed by other animals.

"From your odour, an animal instantly builds up an image of the state of your psychological condition."

... "We are heading here indeed, slowly but surely, toward a thorough discussion of the inner senses, which could not be given until you had a good background in the nature of action itself. For you should be able to see now that the inner senses allow a more faithful perception of basic reality than the outer senses could ever give.

"Reality is indeed not necessarily that which is constant within the various appearances of reality through all systems, as it is the perception of the whole picture of reality, or the sum of all reality as seen within the various systems. This involves quite a complicated point, and implies a complicated position; for true reality would not be completely either the reality of an automobile, say, as it appears within the physical system, or as it appears within the electrical system. It would not be that which appears identical to the two systems, but it would be indeed the sum of the realities of all systems, as applied to our weary automobile.

"The inner senses, by being free of camouflage information, are more or less "pure" perceptors, perceiving with but little prejudice of many realities while being imprisoned by none."