FREEDOM AND THE PRISON
Dialogue 22K: I wonder if we could discuss this morning what perception means. Apart from
what the traditionalists, the professionals and the commentaries have said, what
is perception? What is it to perceive? Is it merely an intellectual process, is it
merely visual or is it a combination of both? The mind takes in more than the eye
sees. So when we talk about perception, what do we mean? Does it involve an
intellectual process, a verbal comprehension? Does the eye see in a linear or a
horizontal dimension?
B: You mean the eye as the sense organ here?
K: Yes.
SW: Is the perception of the eye, the visual, sensory perception of the eye, not
uniform? We come to this room, and I see the design of the carpet. Very soon I
am both seeing and not-seeing. The physical eye also does not, all the time, see
in a uniform state. There must be some factor other than the contact of the object
and the senses in the awareness that is ‘I see’. The first awareness of inattention
comes to me that way.
K: I have not come to that point; I am not speaking of attention and inattention. I
am trying to understand what perception means. All I know is that I see: I see
you sitting there; there is a sensory perception. The intellectual capacity of
thought and the sensory perception then hold the image. That is what we
generally call perception, is it not? Where does attention or inattention come into
all this?
A: I see an object. There is a sensory image of that object. Then there is the
memory of that image. When I see something else, the whole process begins
again.
K: Everything that is recorded—conscious as well as unconscious sensory
impressions, various images, conclusions, prejudices—is involved in perception.
I see you, and the various images that have been built through perception,
through association, and through prejudice, emerge. Thousands and thousands of
images are recorded and held in the brain cells. When I meet you, I turn on
attention and the images emerge. That is what we call perception, isn’t it? This is
the ordinary process of perception. Where does the trouble begin?
A: Are not sensitivity and its varying degrees vital elements in perception? My
perception of squalor is different from yours. Can you separate perception from
the degrees of sensitivity?—Perception is not the same to you and to me.