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A few important notes: Below is a visual metaphorical model of my idea of a process of perception as described in my book, The Evolution of Perception & the Cosmology of Substance. This model (and the theory in my book) explains what is known in western philosophy as "the primary/secondary quality distinction." It also gives an account for experience that is missing from contemporary western models of reality based on the corpuscular theory of reality that is holding sway in western philosophy at the moment. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it entails a view that we are all fundamentally of one cloth metaphysically, a view which, in my opinion, has powerful ethical implications. It may help to understand that my background is in cinema and philosophy. I have been a projectionist, a camera assistant, have a degree from U.S.C. film school and a masters in philosophy. Thus it should be little surprise that I adopt a cinematic metaphor to explain a philosophical theory of perception. See my images page for a concise visual recapitulation of the idea.

A Western Model of Advaita Vedanta

seeing through, and seeing as

Think of perception as light. Call it "the light of consciousness." This light is all that is.

If we want to speak of God (some have a problem with this) we would say that God is this light—the light of consciousness. This light doesn't have consciousness. It is consciousness. It doesn't have imagination. It is imagination.

What but imagination can imagine? What but consciousness can be conscious? What but perception can perceive? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Now use this analogy. God imagines ways of seeing, states of consciousness. Liken these 'ways of seeing' to lenses. God imagines lenses, and through these imagined lenses sees. But what does he see? What is the object of his perception? Light. Thus God is both projector and camera—subject and object. He sees nothing but himself through his imagined lenses. He is both what he sees (world) and what he does not see (the witness). He is both what he takes himself to be (body) and beyond what he takes himself to be. There is nothing that God (light of consciousness) is not.

When God looks through his lens (camera) he sees only the light that he projects. And even the lenses through which the world is formed and through which God is informed are nothing but figments of his imagination, thus not divided from himself.

What really exists in the absolute and eternal sense is the light. The percept (the image that God projects and sees) is illusion—an ephemeral figment of God's imagination. Yet this illusion is not separate from God, nor independent of him. Just as a person's dream is not really separate from the dreamer nor independent of the dreamer. There is nothing but the light. Thus illusion and reality both are of God. God is too infinite to be displaced by that which he creates out of himself, whether real or unreal.

He who knows everything displaces nothing. — Meher Baba

Now forget the camera for a second and consider only the projector. For we are going to discuss the creation of things perceived.

The projector has lenses. They are nothing but light (God's imagination) but through these lenses the world forms in the light (as appearances). God sees the light he projects from himself. How is this?

To understand this we must understand the lenses and what they form in the the world of appearances.

The very first lens that forms in God's imagination is time. And after it comes space. And through space and time we have the potential for the distinctions of before-and-after, backward-and-forward. But the source of the light (the spectator, i.e. God) is really located back with the projector where the light source is. The source or spectator is not really "in" time or space. Thus if we were to ask questions such as, "Which direction is the light moving?" or "Is the light moving from the projector or toward it?" we would be asking confused questions—questions that only make sense when looking through the lenses of time and space. For time and space (lenses in the imagination of God) do not really ever materialize except in appearance. So the light (spectator, i.e. God) never really 'enters' into the world of space and time, for they are merely imagined... just as the dreamer never really 'enters' his dream. But from the point of view of the mind of God that is immersed in his illusion (in the form of man or a woman) this is a very reasonable question to ask. Thus for our minds we must postulate and imagine God as both projector and camera, for we must imagine the light as moving in both directions.

In reality the whole matter of direction is a phantom. But we are ensconced in the dimensions that arise in the percept that result from these lenses. We cannot conceive any other way. So we must say the direction is both, yet in reality it is beyond both, for God in reality precedes the distinction.

That is a hard idea to get your mind around. That is a limitation of the mind born of its lenses and not the concept itself. The concept reflects truth. The cloud in our understanding is our own cloud.

Now we must use this analogy of the projector to see how the world forms, and especially to explain what is called in philosophy the distinction between the objective world (same for everyone, such as the mathematical formula of gravity) and the subjective world (affected slightly by the individual's interpretation and thus different for everyone, such as sense experience). This distinction is called in western philosophy the 'primary-secondary quality distinction.'

We account for this difference with the order of the lenses. When we understand the sequence of the lenses, we see why we find this objective/subjective quality distinction.

 

The secret lies in the order of the lenses. Each lens forms the raw material for the next distinction. For example natural laws are merely variations on pure relations of time and space, and the body of a man (or animal) is merely variations of pure relations of natural laws.

Study this picture. In it lies the key that unlocks the mystery of why the facts of reality were so hard to discover. Seeing the world through the distinction of time we use to say that there is time. And we cannot conceive of a world without it. This is because time is part of the fabric of our conception. We cannot discover the cause of our percept discursively then. It must be realized through deep introspection and imagination, postulated, and considered. This explains why it has been slow in coming and why western philosophy has moved in endless circles, chasing its own tail. Time, space, and natural laws, we thought, must be independent of perception since they are the same for every observer. They are independent of the individual person's perception, but not independent of perception itself—for they precede the rise of the sense of individuality. We have been mistakenly reading the effect of our experience into its cause. This error in thinking is called 'the historical fallacy' (as described by philosopher John Dewey).

Historical Fallacy: “A set of considerations which hold good only because a completed process is read into the content of the process which conditions this completed result." (John Dewey in The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology, 1896)

Now look at the picture below. It shows where in the sequence of the process of perception the primary and secondary qualities (and supervening worlds) emerge in the image.

Note that the Real Witness of all of the percept (both the objective world and every individual's subjective impression) is all the while at the point of the projector. The Real Witness (God) never really enters into his percept, but merely evolves the impression that He does. Thus in this view we are all One. In India this is called advaita vedanta, or literally unqualified "non-dualism," and in Sufism it is called wahdat-ul-shuhud (unity of witness) and wahdat-ul-wujood (unity of being).

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I have drawn light lines (depicted in gold in the chart immediately above) to show that the same light is passing through every lens, even each human body. And thus the experience of distinction of 'selves' is actually an illusion. This psychological impression of a divided self is called the "jiva" in advaita vedanta.

In this view there is only perception, an evolution of perception, in the imagination of God. God (light of consciousness) is the only perceiver and all that God ever perceives is himself (light). But in reality the percept that God perceives is his own invented illusion which he takes himself to be part of as man. When God (as man) realizes his real nature, he does not see light so much as becomes light and conscious of his true identity as light. This is called in mysticism, "God Realization," and in advaita vedanta "mukti."

What's worth recognizing from this illustration is the notion that each person is seeing the same world (built in the light that emits from the projector but is formed by the earlier lenses), but sees it slightly different (according to their own individual psychology and biology). Realize too that their psychology and biology that they are using as a medium of their perception is itself an outcome of the lenses (such as natural laws) that precede them in the process that is forming the image world.

Each person sees a slightly different variation of the same world. The world thus, in a sense, is filtered to you through your eyes and brain. But the one receiving the impressions is God himself actually. The one who searches is God himself. The one who becomes confused is God himself. The one who realizes his true nature is God himself. This is called nondualism, the view that there is no true separation in time because time never really existed at all. Thus division (world) is false, and unity (light) is real. But both are divine, both false and real, as both originate in God and remain in God.

From the point of view of one who has not gone beyond Maya, it seems that there are as many individuals as there are minds and bodies. In Truth there is one Universal Being behind the minds of seemingly different individuals, who through them has the experiences of duality. — Meher Baba

It is truer to say that the world is in you than that you are in the world. — Meher Baba

What is unique about this idea is that it does not fall into the notion of what I call "mind idealism" where thought creates the world. Rather it is both perceptual idealism and perceptual realism and obliterates the distinction, for the world that people (and animals) see is the real world and not a copy of some metaphysical archetype. Plato's forms become lenses or ways of seeing rather than things. The image world is the only world to see, thus not a representation of an ideal secondary world. Thus it is the first system that escapes representationalism. The system also is compatible both with evolution and belief in an all-creating, all-knowing, all-seeing God, yet does not collapse into the pitfalls of an external God. It is even compatible with existentialism, and one could do away with the idea of God if they had too many negative emotions tied up with the word "God." So it is a very elastic and adaptive basic concept. It represents a general paradigm shift, a turning inside out of our conceptions, but not a new dogma.

Another note of interest is that this model obliterates the need for a model of an atom. The natural laws (including quantum ones) are reassigned as perceptual schemata (lenses) or regular ways of seeing, rather than being viewed as we do as the properties of a theoretical entity.

Arguments for this view can be found in my book, "The Evolution of Perception."

If we were to sum up this view it is that consciousness (reality) creates matter (appearance). This isn't very original. What is original is the view of the order of lenses and the notion of replacing metaphysical entities with a process.

Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. —Luke 17:21

When mind soars in pursuit of the things conceived in space, it pursues emptiness; but when man dives deep within himself, he experiences the fullness of existence. — Meher Baba

File:Pd 4.jpg

Explanation of the chart above: In the evolution of perception, represented as progressing from left to right in the above chart, each perceptual schema (represented as pink ovals or lenses) gives rise to the raw material for the next perceptual schema. As they emerge in God's imagination, the impression they produce supervenes with the previous impression to form the world of appearances. The world of appearance is what we refer to as the phenomenal world. The world is illusion in every sense of the word, a complete chimera, a delusion. Yet what arises out of this process is God's own awareness of his existence. God himself is cause and world (appearance) is effect. Only the cause (God) ever truly exists. God, the Witness, (who is invisible) exists. The world (that appears) is illusion.

One of the problems that faces our times is the view of relativism. For instance, people seem to have misinterpreted the implications of quantum mechanics to be that the percept is entirely in the individual's mind. This misunderstanding is expressed in new age literature such as Seth Speaks and Jitterbug Perfume. The newly popular confused view is that everyone has their own reality (entirely!). This has led to the false idea that the whole world is an expression of your own ego or thoughts. An individual's thoughts, it is falsely assumed, is causing the image world. How absurd!

What needs to be understood is that some of the world that you perceive is the same for everyone and some is an outcome of one's personal biology and personal beliefs, i.e. an interpretation of that global reality.

Currently the world is divided into two false views. One is that the world is independent of all perception. The other is that it is dependent on an individual's beliefs. Both are wrong and incomplete. The whole world is perception, but not the perception of the individual.

The above model accounts for both the objective and the subjective. It does away with the old false dichotomy that it is one or the other.

Another outcome of this confusion is the sense that there is no 'truth' and that all beliefs are mere opinion—or worse—mere "language games" (Ludwig Wittgenstein). This frightening view has led to two equally frightening responses. On the one hand you have a loss of respect for truth and a view that everyone has their own truth... and of course a totally self-absorbed way of living. The other is in reaction to this nightmare—fundamentalism. Fundamentalism (the reaction to relativism) is now leading us backward to a time of dogmatism and superstition.

In the new view it is possible to have a clear sense of reality while remaining undogmatic. For one has a sense of what is true for all and what is not. And one need not choose between "all is individual" and "nothing is individual." So I think this view heals a terrible divide between relativism and fundamentalism.

Quantum Mechanics

Quantum mechanics has come to be associated with a lot of hocus pocus. People use the 'amazingness' of quantum events to justify almost anything. This is an unfortunate state of affairs as it leads to the argument from ignorance that can be abused to justify almost any nutty claim. In the new view quantum events are rather trivial. In "The Evolution of Perception" I explain what quantum events are and why they seem bizarre. They only seem bizarre through the lens of the old way of looking at reality. In the new way they have no hocus pocus and they have no important implications. Quantum events, in recent time, have been used to further justify that everything is in your head. This is a socially and scientifically dangerous misunderstanding. Quantum laws arise prior to the rise of individual mind. Thus the individual observer is not creating quantum events as certain people have thought. Nor are they very mysterious when understood in the context of an ordered process that gives rise first to individuality and then to the image world.

George Berkeley

George Berkeley was the philosopher with a view closest to this one. What Berkeley calls 'ideas in the mind of God' simply are lenses in this view, ways of seeing. But Berkeley failed to account for the influence of the principle of time and thus imagines God as truly distinct from our minds. Yet Berkeley comes amazingly close.

Myth

Anyone who has studied the work of Joseph Campbell has realized that the subject of myth is embedded in a deep mystery. I believe that myth arises in man's own mind and is a layer of man's individual lenses, born of thought and education. But what has mystified me is that all cultures have certain common myths (See The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell). This has made me wonder if I have it wrong. Does myth arise earlier in the process, before the rise of individual awareness? Or could it be that the universal mind (collective unconscious) realizes its own journey in the state of man as individual and then expresses this dimension as myth. If one studies what Campbell calls "the hero myth" he sees that it oddly reflects the whole process above as an inner journey. I think these are questions for future generations. Myth is key. In the hero myth man seems to have guessed his own real purpose, to journey into illusion to discover by trials his own real original identity.

Understanding how the model works

I want to try to explain the rationale behind the idea of an evolution of perceptual schemata (lenses) as described above, along with how these schemata give rise to the aspects of what we see.

My daughter once saw a steam shovel and asked what it was. Perhaps they call them back hoes now, but I said, "It's a steam shovel." Then she asked me how it was made and I said, "It was made out of metal." Then she asked me where all that metal came from and I said, "It was dug out of the ground." To this she asked how we got the metal out of the ground and I said, "We used steam shovels." Of course she laughed with delight because she had caught me in a circle of reasoning. So I made up the following story. "Long ago a man picked up a stick and dug up some soft metal near the surface of the soil. From this soft metal he made a little trowel. With his little trowel he could dig much deeper and dug up heavier metal. With this heavier metal he fashioned a strong hand shovel. With this strong hand shovel he dug up even more metals, mixed them to make even stronger alloys, and from these new alloys he fashioned a steam shovel and many other machines like cranes. And with these cranes he built this city."

As you see, the way out of circularity is to postulate a process. Otherwise we fall into an infinite regress. The same story can be told about the image-world and how it was formed. "Long ago there was perception, but it had a whim to know itself and so it went seeking. Since there was only perception, perception had to invent a first way of perceiving so it could build something out of itself. This first way of perceiving was distinction or duality, i.e. splitting in two. But this wasn't enough, for perception could not pull its distinctions apart from one another. So perception used distinction to make a particular kind of distinction which served as a medium in which to manifest its idea of distinction. And this way of perceiving was time. Time made it possible to perceive relations. Out of relations perception created natural laws. And out of these natural laws perception formed a body. And now looking through this body perception saw other bodies. And now using its old idea of distinctions perception divided the bodies it saw into up and down, good and bad, rich and poor. Then perception (seeing and moving about through the vehicle of its invented bodies) built buildings out of decomposed bodies (stone and wood) and shaped houses and roads and labeled some good and some bad, some sacred and some profane, etc. And then perception had created a world out of distinctions in a world that we call the world of duality, which is really only in the imagination of the one and only reality, which itself never really went anywhere since there was nowhere in reality to go but itself. But by this time perception was quite caught up in this fantastic illusion it had formed and took itself to be this one and that one. Slowly perception (in the form of a man or a woman) began to question the distinctions it saw all around itself and wonder about its true identity. And one day it dawned on perception that perception had always been, always was, and always would remain the one indivisible source of all that it had come to perceive. Then perception no longer took itself to be the things it saw, but rather their source. And it saw that that impression was simply its own indivisible reflection in the world of forms. The world was of Him, yet He was not of the world. In that moment perception realized that the world of duality was really nothing and that perception, its source, was really the everything."

In short, out of perception are formed the schemata of time and space. Out of the schemata of time and space are formed the laws of nature. Out of the laws of nature are formed bodies. Through bodies color, sound etc. are perceived. Through intellect cultural schemata are conceived, creating the cultural world around us.

Mysticism

What does this model allow us to see that is of spiritual value? In what way does this model help us understand what is and is not real?

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What is important to see through this model is that that which is truly real (on the left in the above diagram) precedes or transcends the percept, i.e. does not fall into the scope of its imagined schemata (seen in the gray region of the diagram). In other words, God (or Self) cannot be understood in terms of the dimensions that we think in. Even to say "God is One" is merely a concept understood in contrast to duality. And no such contrast can apply. Thus, the nondual mystics say of the transcendental, "Not one; not two." What they mean to communicate is that about the "I am" we can only speak in negative terms, for we have no schemata to understand it with.

"Even to say There is one God is wrong. God is so infinitely One that He cannot even be called One. One may only say, One is." — Meher Baba

"There are two things that exist: One and Many. One we call God; Many we call Illusion. Why? Because in Reality only One is. Even to call this One, One, is not right -- One is." — Meher Baba

To understand that the Alpha is beyond understanding and to see precisely why this is so is the aim and terminus of philosophy. To yearn to experience directly that which we 'cannot' understand with our minds is the starting point of mysticism. If this model allows one to see this single idea of reality and illusion, and the shadow born of mind that conceals this divide, then it is of value. Of course the 'eye picture' on the left is simply a symbol that maps to nothing that we can conceive. It is more a 'place-marker' for what we cannot know with the mind, but is in fact that which asks the question and seeks its answer.

Comparing the Old Model and the New

The old model was called 'representationalism.' Representationalism is the view that you are looking at something primary (noumenal or mathematical) and interpreting it with your brain. The new model is different. It is a seeing through invented evolved schemata (ways of organizing experience) and the result is seeing as. Each perceptual schema brings complexity to the percept, which itself is nothing but a seeing as. In this sense there is no subject or object, but rather an evolved process of simply seeing. What I see is entirely a result of how seeing is occurring. The sensation of the subject-object distinction materializes out of this process. In a sense there is no seer or seen, but rather simply seeing. But this is nothing new to the mystics. In reality this is the truly old model.

We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Biography

My connection to Meher Baba and eastern and western philosophy is unique. My parents were both artists and highly educated people. My father Lynfield Ott was partially blind. Having a parent who is struggling to paint to make a living for his family as he loses his eyesight will make you think a lot about perception. It was on our family's mind all the time. When I was small my parents met Meher Baba in India, leaving us kids at home in Woodstock with a baby sitter. This turned our world upside down. I began my career in motion picture animation, but wound up in philosophy -- philosophy of perception. All this took me in a big circle back to my roots -- to art and spirituality. I have a daughter, Megan, who lives with me full time. My interests have begun to include a new focus on Hinduism even though Meher Baba was a Zoroastrian and a syncretic universalist. I am especially interested in Advaita Vedanta. I am also interested in Sufism, Gnosticism, Christian Mysticism, Perceptual Psychology, and of course Meher Baba. A life of exposure to many things has left me with a very strong sense that he was a pristine human being, a true spiritual teacher, and almost undoubtedly all he said that he was. Anyone is free to disagree.

Getting my book for free

The article above was originally titled "A Model of Perception" and was intended as an addendum to my rather brief book "The Evolution of Perception," though it was written after the book's publication in 2004. My book offers rigorous arguments for this view and does not mention God, Meher Baba, or even mysticism. It is a difficult read, but for the determined it can be a valuable addition to any physics or philosophy library. Besides being available in softcover all over the internet. a PDF digital version is available free by email to any registered Wikipedia member who requests it. To request a free PDF copy of my book simply go to my main page at User:Cott12 and click the email link at the top of the page and request it.

• More Images (an almost purely visual recapitulation of the idea)
• User:Cott12 (email link at top of page)
• Soft Cover (100 pages)

Remember, "Love thy neighbor as thy self." It's what Jesus would do.

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