Going Out of Your Mind

Alan Watts liked to say, “By going out of your mind, you come to your senses.”

Our concepts are overlays on reality, although we usually confuse them for reality.

Consider constellations, for example.  We perceive and conceive of groups of stars as if they go together in a pattern, but that is not reality.  They do not intend to go together, neither do they go together the same way for everyone.  Different cultures have created different constellations out of the same stars.  In fact, the stars that we perceive as being close to each other are in fact nowhere near each other.  They exist at greatly different distances from earth, even though they look close together.  This is because we have only one point of view on them.

Here is where humans get into so much trouble in the world.  We confuse our limited points of view not only for reality, but with correctness.  We all believe that our point of view is right.  But, of course, it is tremendously limited and therefore wrong.  It is right only in the sense that if you feel cold it does not matter if I believe it is hot.  It is purely your perspective and your perception, and is therefore right only for you and only at that particular moment.

Two aspects serve to make these difficulties with believing our perceptions/conceptions even worse.  The first is the limitation of attention – attention is like a searchlight that can only see what is in its beam, and nothing outside of it.

The second is that we usually perceive only at one level.  If you were to look through a microscope at your body, you would see many different types of cells rushing about, exchanging proteins, and appearing to be constantly fighting or working with each other, all in a mess.  If you do not look through a microscope, but instead at a mirror, we perceive one separate being.  Which perspective is right?